People & Places: Columbus Day at Prospect Park

Buffalo, NY is one of the many places in the country that observes the nationally recognized holiday honoring the controversial man who had led the expedition from the Old World to the New World. Driven by the false conviction that Asia was much closer to Europe than it truly was, Columbus pioneered the persecution of America’s natives through enslavement and he died never knowing that he had come upon a pair of new continents. A statue of Columbus is in Prospect Park on Buffalo’s West Side near Columbus Parkway.

Photograph by Robert Thuerck