Focus on Columbus Monument (Buyens) and explain the Site and dedication.
Copley Square was first chosen as the location for the statue. However, after an exhibition of the model, its design was heavily criticized by the State Arts Commission. The Commission rejected the plan to place the statue at Copley Square, leading the monument's organizers to select the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End, the first church built for Boston's Roman Catholics, as an alternate location. The Boston Advertiser provided a detailed account of the monument's supposed flaws at the time:The execution is commonplace. The faults of the statue are lack of fine sentiment, of movement or beauty of form. It would seem as if the artist had conceived Columbus as a man of piety, but puts the fact that he achieved something affecting the geography of the world before the spectator as boldly as a schoolboy who points at his globe, just barely missing the labels as infantile artistic efforts.The statue was dedicated on October 21 in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. The ceremony took place for Columbus Day with a parade, followed by a procession where Captain Nathan Appleton revealed that the Governor of Massachusetts, the Mayor of the city of Boston, the Italian Consul, and the Collector of the Port of Boston had all appointed a committee to erect a statue to Columbus in the Public Garden but the project was never carried out because of a lack of funds. The Sacred Heart Review praised the Buyens statue for being accomplished despite "the united energies of all those functionaries."In the 1920s, the statue was discretely relocated to St. Anthony's Church in Revere to equally balance a statue of St. Anthony standing on the opposite side of the church. Marty Carlock wrote in A Guide to Public Art in Greater Boston that the "huge statue overpowered its site" at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.
Cathedral of the Holy Cross Public Garden Copley Square