Longtime Bronx Columbus Day Parade organizer Tony Signorile said when he arrived in America with his family in 1961, the statue of Christopher Columbus in Columbus Square was the second one he visited, after the Statue of Liberty.

“What I learned both here and in Italy, was he was a voyager - he sailed from Italy to Spain with no money, got money from the queen and he sailed the Atlantic,” he recalled. But threats to take down statues of the famed explorer for his treatment of the natives he colonized could cast a shadow over the upcoming parade he prepares every year.