HDC OKs Columbus-Replacement Statue

Cristoforo Colombo was always aloft on his pedestal, looking out toward the harbor and sea, to catch the next ship and to sail off to his next conquest.

His replacement – the Italian, or perhaps universal, immigrant family – will have come from the sea, from far away, and to stay, to put down roots and to begin their American success stories.

That’s why they’re not going to be aloft on a plinth but at eye level, facing inward toward the park and the city they are helping to build. The viewer will be able look them in the eye.

That idea was one of many that percolated Wednesday night during a by turns inspiring and grueling three-and-a-half hour Zoom-assisted public session of the Historic District Commission.

Members of the Wooster Square Monument Committee were on hand for their second appearance before the HDC to seek approval for the design and placement of the sculpture, which is to replace the statue of Columbus removed from Wooster Square Park.

In the lingo of the HDC, the applicants sought a thumbs up for a ​“certificate of appropriateness.”

And by a vote of four to one, they received it, although many details remain to be worked out. 

The design for the sculpture to replace the Columbus statue removed during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests was created by Branford-based Marc Massaro. It was chosen by a 17-member city-appointed committed headed by Bill Iovanne, Jr. 

The project presented Wednesday night to the commissioners, after 14 months of work, reflected major revisions urged by the HDC and community, including restoring all the green space eaten up in a first draft, so that it all now will sit on the original footprint.

It still needs an OK from the Parks Commission and then a consummating final vote from the Board of Alders.

So what took three and a half hours?

First, volumes of public testimony, almost all of it in praise of both the statue and the dedicated work of the committee members. Praise came from Mayor Justin Elicker, former Mayor John DeStefano, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, alders and neighbors.

DeLauro said she saw the mustache of her grandfather and great-grandfather in that of the proposed sculptural dad. 

Fair Haven Heights Alder Rosa Ferraro-Santana, bearing a letter of support from a dozen other alders, said when she, as a little girl, and her parents arrived on these shores she was bearing ​“a raggedy suitcase” just like the one held in the hand of the sculptural figure.

After public testimony, Commissioners Doug Royalty, Tom Kimberly, Karen Jenkins, and Dylan Christopher, gamely led by Chair Trina Learned, got into the architectural and preservation weeds.

Though an official blessing was clearly in the offing, the commissioners pursued detailed questions. Such as: Should not the plinth or base really be preserved in tact? Is that not part of the historical fabric as much as the statue? Is that part of the responsibility of the HDC to preserve?

Certainly the New Haven Preservation Trust’s officer in attendance, Alex Eginton, thought so. The NHPT had counseled the committee and artist to go in that direction.

But clearly the proposed statue was sitting now on a base lowered by the removal of many stones. Was that an appropriate alteration? 

What about distributing those stones, repurposing them as a kind of edging element for flowers and floral ornamentation? Is that a kind of destruction rather than a preservation?

Commissioner Susan Godshall, who cast the only no vote on the proposal, argued so. She said the stones looked disorganized, and used the word ​“rubble,” although she crossed her fingers and took it officially back.

And what about the four lights poking up at the four corners of the new lowered base? Might they cause nocturnal light pollution as the commissioners as well as some members of public warned? Might those lights be lowered and recessed into a new base so they don’t look like four crows perched there, as New Haven Urban Design League Chairperson Anstress Farwell suggested?

And then the plaques to be bolted over the existing inscriptions … do we know whether they will be cast bronze or cast aluminum? Iovanne and the committee said that was still in process of being decided upon. 

Will the bolts inserted harm the existing engravings? No, sculptor Massaro assured the commissioners the foundry folks he’d spoken to promised they would cover but not harm or obliterate the historical record below.

Eventually the vote was taken and the applicants not sent back to the drawing board on these key points. They won a vote of approval and were told to come back item by item in future while the project proceeds.

Objectivity Alert: A Reporter's 2 Cents

From here on some opinion: In this reporter’s experience, not all items that come before the HDC are created, or treated, equal. Any other project with such an incomplete, by HDC standards, application, would simply not have passed muster.

But this was no ordinary project. It involves city-owned property and a controversial emotionally charged project. An exhausted all-volunteer committee at work already for a year and a half. An artwork that a lot of people, despite its inspirational Italian-American back story, still find aesthetically banal And palpable pressure applied by the attendance of so many A‑list political figures. 

All this made for a clear, if somewhat reluctant, thumbs-up from the commissioners on Wednesday night.

One of the speakers, at the two and a half hour mark, was city Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Becky Bombero. She read a letter from David Belowsky, the chair of the Parks Commission, who said he and his colleagues were looking forward to ​“receiving your recommendations.”

So the project now advances to the next level of approval, and the story is not yet over.