Columbus School enjoys topping off ceremony

On Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, students and staff of Columbus Family Academy joined Mayor John DeStefano, Jr., Alderwoman Migdalia Castro, State Sen. Martin Looney, the Superintendent and others in celebrating a topping off ceremony for the school.

Sixth grader Giovanni Preciado gave the official countdown as the construction beam swung into place on the $38.5 million project.

Topping off ceremonies fall between groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings and occur when the highest structural element of a project is about to be swung into place.

Work is underway for Columbus Family Academy at 255 Blatchley to receive a new 74,695 s.f. $38.5 million Pre-K-8 building that includes the demolition of the old existing building. The new dual language school, at 2 classes per grade, pre-K-8, will include a library media center, gymnasium, cafetorium, classrooms, guidance and support services, and features colorful brick tapestry walls and a courtyard.

The school is temporarily operating in swing space, at the former Strong School, until the new construction is complete in the summer of 2008.

The new school will include a Percent for Art project, a bronze sculpture by renowned sculptor Jose Buscaglia, honoring the school's discovery theme. It utilizes a sculpture of Juan Rodríguez Bermejo (better known as Rodrigo de Triana), a Morisco from Seville, the city most associated with the colonization of the Americas, as a symbol of the epic enterprise of discovery, the encounter of diverse civilizations, and its consequences on the past and present inhabitants of the Americas.

Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor on the expedition led by the visionary Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, sighted land from the crow’s nest of the caravel La Pinta. He is represented precisely at the moment of discovery, pointing to the island of Guanahaní (the original Arawak name of San Salvador in the Watling Archipelago of the Bahamas) and yelling “¡tierra! ¡tierra!” to the men on the deck below. That land is to become known as America and we, the spectators Rodrigo de Triana is looking at, are the direct descendants of the process of integration of the autochthonous populations with the immigrants from Europe, Africa and elsewhere. This is what is directly represented in the sculptural work itself, and what is to serve as the leitmotif to arrive at a deeper meaning beyond the given historical fact.