NYC Keeps Its Christopher Columbus Statue, With Commentary Added

(Bloomberg) -- New York City will retain the iconic statue dominating Columbus Circle honoring the 15th-century Italian explorer, while adding “historical markers” describing massacres and other hostile acts against the indigenous Caribbean islanders he encountered on his voyages.

The decision announced Friday by Mayor Bill de Blasio came after a commission conducted four months of public hearings into a citywide review of statues, spurred by actions in the south last year to tear down monuments to General Robert E. Lee and other Civil War rebels who fought to uphold slavery. The movement led cities and institutions nationally to review buildings and monuments honoring historic figures now documented to be racist.

The review included whether to remove a lower Manhattan Canyon of Heroes plaque of French Field Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, honored with a 1931 ticker-tape parade for his World War I military victory over Germany, who later became the collaborating leader of Nazi-occupied France. The mayor said that plaque would stay.

A statue of J. Marion Sims, a 19th-century surgeon who used black slaves for non-consensual gynecological experiments, will be relocated to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn from its more prominent spot at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street in Manhattan’s Central Park. Informational plagues will be added.

“Our approach will focus on adding detail and nuance to -- instead of removing entirely -- representations of these histories,” de Blasio said in a statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Shepard at mshepard7@bloomberg.net, Stacie Sherman

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