Six years after its statue of Christopher Columbus was unceremoniously dumped into Baltimore’s harbor, an organization of Italian Americans has raised more than $200,000 to replace it with a new memorial with a different theme.
The group, known as Italian American Organizations United, will hold a news conference on Wednesday, July 1, to outline plans for the replacement. It’s being held at the site of the vandalized statue, a plaza near the intersection of South President Street and Eastern Avenue, just west of Baltimore’s Little Italy neighborhood. It’s taking place almost exactly six years after the statue was ripped from its pedestal and thrown into Baltimore’s harbor.
The new statue is called the Anonymous Italian Immigrant Family Memorial. According to a media alert about Wednesday’s event, it will depict “an Italian immigrant husband alongside his wife holding their infant child.”…