As the federal Columbus Day holiday approaches, a group of Italian Americans in Baltimore are continuing to raise money to build a replica of the Christopher Columbus statue that was torn down and thrown into the Inner Harbor last summer. The replica is almost complete and and should be done by the end of October, said Bill Martin, an organizer of the statue’s restoration who resides in Howard County.

The base of the statue has yet to be sculpted and approximately $70,000 still needs to be raised, he said. It remains unclear where the monument will go once it’s finished. “We’re trying to figure out where it can really go to be appreciated without being destroyed,” Martin said. Word of the project — and the legacy of the 15th-century explorer’s violent enslavement of native people — remains hurtful to Indigenous people in the Baltimore area.