CAST BY GORHAM, PROVIDENCE, FROM THE MODEL BY FREDERIC BARTHOLDI, EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Fittingly cast for the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in St. Louis, the Gorham Foundry first cast Bartholdi's Christopher Columbus in silver in May of 1893. The monumental figure was by and large the most impressive and largest figure cast in silver. The model itself was commissioned by Gorham, who enlisted Parisian artist Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (d. 1904), and passed up designs submitted by American artists for the historic Exhibition.