Christopher Columbus statue installed on White House grounds

A marble statue of Christopher Columbus has been installed on the White House grounds near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, facing Pennsylvania Avenue, as part of President Donald Trump’s broader changes to the campus. The statue is a full-scale replica of a Baltimore Columbus monument that protesters dismantled and threw into the Inner Harbor in 2020 during demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd; recovered fragments were scanned to create the reproduction. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said the installation is meant to honor Columbus ahead of the United States’ 250th anniversary of independence and aligns with Trump’s planned “National Garden of American Heroes.” Critics note Columbus’s role in colonial violence following his 1492 arrival in the Americas, while some Italian American groups defend Columbus monuments as cultural-identity markers; former White House Historical Association chief historian Edward Lengel told The New York Times the move contributes to turning the campus into a “partisan battleground.”

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