The Statue of Liberty

She boasts being the tallest metal statue that has ever been built, and, at the time she was finished she was also the tallest constructed object in New York City.  In fact, she’s 22 stories high; that’s 151 feet tall and weighs in at 225 tons. Her arms are 42 feet long and the torch she holds is 21 feet in length. Her index fingers are eight feet long and she has a nose that’s 4-foot 6-inch in length.

The statue was finished in June of 1884, and “formally” presented to the U.S. on July 4, 1884 even though she was still in France.    She didn’t actually became available for public view on what is now Liberty Island until shortly after final assembly was completed on October 28, 1886 by way of a ceremony with President Grover Cleveland being the event speaker, a few months more than ten years after the original July 4, 1876 deadline that was initially intended; she had been anticipated to be a 100^th birthday gift to the United States from France.

Advertised to be a gift from "the French people to the American people," master sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi had initially envisioned the statue to be a new “Wonder of the World”, which he first intended to be placed at the entrance of Egypt's Suez Canal. But history and politics got in the way, so it is said that Bartholdi looked to America and decided it would make a perfect gift for celebrating America's Centennial.

As Paul Harvey might say, now for the rest of the story:

Historians often say that in 1865 a young French sculptor named Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi attended a banquet near the town of Versailles, where he entered into a conversation with Edouard de Laboulaye, who was a prominent historian of the day.

De Laboulaye, it seems had great admiration for the United States and her achievements, he commented that the U S centennial was approaching in 1876.  In addition he suggested that it would be a good idea for France to present America with a gift to commemorate the occasion. But did not have an idea as to what might be appropriate.  Bartholdi is said to have proposed a giant statue of some sort and in turn considered this possibility it for the next six years.

Bartholdi had most of the details worked out in his mind several years prior to the upcoming centennial, by 1861 in fact.   The new American monument would be an enormous statue of a woman he would call “Liberty Enlightening the World.” Construction of the statue would be paid for by the people of France, and the base / pedestal that it stood on could be financed and built by the people of America.

The concept keyed him up so much that he soon scheduled passage on a ship and sailed to New York so he could find support. When his ship entered New York Harbor, Bartholdi noticed a small, 12-acre piece of land near Ellis Island, called Bedloe’s Island which many years later was renamed Liberty Island; this island he thought was the perfect place the statue he envisioned.

Bartholdi traveled around the U S for the next five months getting support for the statue. When he returned to France, he quickly realized that the government of Emperor Napoleon III was openly hostile to the democratic and republican ideals represented by this Statue of Liberty. In fact he probably feared being jailed if he continued to speak of the project openly. So Bartholdi decided to kept a low profile until 1874, at which time the Third Republic was proclaimed after Third Napoleon III’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

Shortly after Bartholdi went back to work, he founded the group called the Franco-American Union, consisting of both French and American supporters of the project in an effort raise money.  During this time he also recruited Gustave Eiffel (who later become famous for the Eiffel Tower) to design the steel and iron framework that was required to hold the statue up.

Bartholdi estimated that it would require $400,000 to actually build the statue in France but as you might guess, public fund raising for the project was not an easy task. Work frequently had to stop when cash ran out, and deadline after deadline was missed.

Meanwhile in the United States, things were not going nearly as well. There was a little enthusiasm, but not as much as there was in France.  After all, it was a French statue and Americans were proud people.  Not everyone was sure the country really needed a French statue, even for free (we were being required to pay for the costs associated with the pedestal after all). Congress did call a vote in regard to the issue and the gift was unanimously accept, but, wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t provide funding for the pedestal, nor did the city of New York. The state said no as well.

When work on the statue was finished in June of 1884, Bartholdi had original planed to dismantle the statue as soon as it was completed, pack it, and send it to the U S, where it would be reassembled atop the pedestal on Bedloe’s Island. But, unfortunately, the pedestal wasn’t even close to being finished.

Then in September of 1884 work on the pedestal has to a stop when the project ran out of money. It was estimated that yet another $100,000  (which would make a total of 2 Hundred K) was needed. When it looked like  New York was coming up empty-handed, the cities of Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and San Francisco began to compete to have the Statue of Liberty built in their back yard.

As recently as 1883 the U.S. Congress had voted down a fresh attempt to provide the additional $100,000 toward the cost of the pedestal; it turns out that the historic vote so outraged Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the “New York World” news paper, that he started a campaign in the pages of his newspaper to raise the necessary funds.    But after two months of non-stop “pleading”, he had raised exactly $135.75 of the original estimate of $200,000 needed to build the pedestal.  The good news here was that the first 100,000 had already been raised; the bad news, it had been spent.

The other good news is that Pulitzer made another attempt to raise the money. After a second effort by Pulitzer using constant ads in his news paper publication; finally on August 11, 1885 Pulitzer’s $100,000.00 goal was met and it took only about 4 months to finish up the project.  Over 120,000 people had donated to the effort, which made the average donation about 83¢ per person.

And as is also often said, the rest is history!

Additional fact of interest:

Two years of restoration work was completed prior to the statue's centennial celebration on July 4, 1986. Among other repairs, the multimillion dollar project included replacing the 1,600 wrought iron bands that hold the statue's copper skin to its frame, replacing her torch, and installing an elevator.

When the statue arrived in June of 1865, from France, it arrived dismantled and in 214 packing cases including a total of 350 pieces. The last rivet of the statue was driven Oct. 28, 1886, when Pres. Grover Cleveland dedicated the monument.  

The Statue of Liberty was closed to visitors following September 11, 2001, but Liberty Island, which is a National park, was reopened on December 20, 2001.  And yes she witnessed the devastation of the Twin Towers that September day as well.

The famous verse associated with the statue: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …” were not added to the pedestal until 1903. The verses are part of a sonnet composed by New York poet Emma Lazarus in 1883; she had donated the sonnet to an auction that was held at the New York Academy of Design to raise money for the statue’s pedestal.

Sources …

http://middleeast.about.com/od/middleeast101/a/statue-of-liberty-egypt.htm http://www.neatorama.com/2007/05/31/the-true-story-of-the-statue-of-liberty/

http://gonyc.about.com/cs/attractions/p/statueofliberty.htm