English: As seen in May 2021. The cooperative work of Florentine artist Renzo V. Baldi (who designed the statue and other sculptural elements) and locally-based architect Dwight James Baum (who designed the pedestal and site layout), the Columbus Monument is the centerpiece of downtown Syracuse's Columbus Circle. Standing atop a 29-foot pink granite obelisk symbolic of majesty and might is Baldi's eleven-foot cast bronze depiction of Columbus as a young man, facing westward with maps and charts clutched in his left hand. At the base of the obelisk are a quartet of bronze reliefs depicting Columbus' voyage to the New World and triumphant return to Spain, and below that is a fountain where gargoyles of turtles, shells, and grotesque sea creatures symbolize the perils of the trans-Atlantic voyage. The square itself was designed in mimicry of an Italian piazza and fulfills its function well - the square is a gathering place for office workers during the workday and a frequent festival venue off-hours. Like many of the monuments to Columbus that dot the cities and towns of the U.S. today, Syracuse's was conceived as an expression of the ethnic pride of the Italian-American community that had begun to coalesce on the north side of the city in the closing decades of the 19th century. The monument was the brainchild of Syracuse University art professor Torquato DeFelice, who began planning for it in 1910; however, groundbreaking was delayed until 1932, by which time the intended location had changed from Onondaga Park to what had heretofore been known as St. Mary's Circle. The monument was refurbished in 1992 in a state-of-the-art process directed by the Healy Brothers Foundry of Rhode Island, but became a center of controversy in the midst of the 21st-century reassessment of Columbus' historical legacy: in 2020, Syracuse mayor Ben Walsh announced plans to remove the statue and redevelop the site in honor of both Italian-American and Native American heritage, a decision that drew immediate backlash and legal challenges that were still ongoing at the time the photo was taken.