Columbus Circle is a neighborhood and plaza in the downtown section of Syracuse, New York, United States.

At the center of the circle is a large fountain and the Columbus Monument, designed by the Syracuse-born architect Dwight James Baum and dedicated in 1934.

In October 2020 the city of Syracuse announced plans to remove the statue of Christopher Columbus and redevelop the circle into "Heritage Park."

[6][7] A 1911 letter to the editor of The Post-Standard by Bishop Ludden suggested putting a statue of Gabriel in the center of the circle.

In the early 1900s it began to develop with the construction of buildings including the Syracuse Public Library and Onondaga County Courthouse.

[5][1] Funds for the statues construction were mainly raised by Italian Americans living in the city,[1] through a Columbus Monument Association.

[5] Fundraising efforts included boxing matches on August 11, 1933, notably between Primo Carnera and Jack Sharkey, at The Arena in Syracuse.

According to a 2014 biography of Carnera, he was in favor of the statue as an Italian American himself, and had personally worked to be involved in the match.

[1][5] With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 it became more expensive to fund transport of the monument and stone that it would be placed on from Italy to Syracuse as the value of the US dollar decreased.

[1][5][13] Benito Mussolini, Italy's dictator at the time, supplied additional funds for shipping and also the sculpture's inscription "Christoforo Colombo, Discoverer of America.

[13] The granite for the monument's base was shipped along the New York Barge Canal and arrived in Syracuse on November 21.

President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson visited Syracuse in August 1966; he was scheduled to travel through the circle at 4:40 pm to a fanfare with Patti Page singing, bands playing, and local leaders introducing him before giving a speech for approximately 20 minutes on water pollution.

[17] In 1992 the statue was restored with state and private funds;[4] the project cost about $550,000, of which approximately one third was paid for by descendants of Italian American immigrants in the region.

The restoration included re-addition of four bronze sculptures of Native American heads to the monument that had been stolen in the late 1930s and were found in Orlando, Florida in 1986.

[28] On March 11, 2022, County Supreme Court Justice Gerard Neri found that the city had no right to remove the statue.