History May Lie Under Columbus Pedestal

As the debate rages on about this week’s removal of the Columbus Monument in Wooster Square—and what to replace it with—yet another voice may soon emerge.

It belongs to the people who raised the money and erected the Columbus statue—if you believe that Italian and Spanish coins, along with Italian-language newspapers from October 1892 constitute a “voice.”

Those items are contained in a time capsule inserted within the concrete of one of the cornerstones of the statue.

So reported Jason Bischoff-Wurstle, the photo-archivist at the New Haven Museum.

Alerted by the Independent about the possibility of such a capsule existing, Bischoff-Wurstle went on a search. (He had provided similar information back in 2012 about the time capsule of the Lincoln Oak on the New Haven Green)

The Independent suspected there might be a capsule there because we received a tip to that effect from New Haven activist Paula Panzarella. Panzarella said she remembered, as the removal of the statue in recent days jogged her memory, that she had had a conversation back in 1992 with an older Italian-American man. He had mentioned the time capsule to her. Panzarella’s conversation was likely occasioned because of the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America.

We told Bischoff-Wurstle about that. Normally he would have turned to digitized newspaper archives. But thanks to Covid-19 closings, he had no access. So he contacted Laura Macaluso. She’s the author of The Public Artscape of New Haven. He asked her if she knew of a time capsule in the monument. Follow the story