Five years after it was splattered with red paint, toppled and dragged into a lake, the bronze statue of Christopher Columbus that stood for nearly a century in a city park in Richmond, Va., has been fished out, restored and given a new home. It now gazes out at a bocce ball court outside a Sons of Italy lodge some 300 miles away in Blauvelt, N.Y.
Boston’s marble Columbus statue was beheaded in 2020 — its second decapitation. Repaired and given to the Knights of Columbus, it was moved to the garden of a nearby church, where it now stands among religious statues.
