Statue of Liberty
Liberty Enlightening the World, known more commonly as the
Statue of Liberty, is a statue given to the United States by
France in 1885, standing at
Liberty Island in the mouth of the
Hudson River in
New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors,
immigrants, and returning Americans.The copper statue, dedicated on
October 28 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship between the two nations. The sculptor was
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the
Eiffel Tower, engineered the internal structure.
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the
Repoussé technique. The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the U.S. worldwide,
and, in a more general sense, represents
liberty and escape from
oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the
Jet age, often the first glimpse of the
United States for millions of
immigrants after ocean voyages from
Europe.
The Statue of Liberty is located in New York Harbor, about 1.6 miles (2.6 km) southwest of the southern tip of
Manhattan. The island was officially called "Bedloe's Island" until it was renamed in 1956, but was popularly called "Liberty Island" much earlier;
[, "Bedloes Island (sometimes called Liberty Island from the Bartholdi statue on it of Liberty Enlightening the World)..."] O. Henry refers to it by that name in a 1911 story.
["The Lady Higher Up," from: p. 214; and Free ebook of The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems at Project Gutenberg; p. "Three hundred and sixty-five feet above the heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on Manhattan pointed her vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in the direction of her exalted sister on Liberty Island." (The story is a fanciful dialog between the statue of Diana then at Madison Square Garden and the Statue of Liberty.]Liberty holds a torch in her right hand and a tablet in her left. The tablet shows the inscription
JULY IV MDCCLXXVI—
July 4 1776, the date of the adoption of the
Declaration of Independence.
One of her feet stands on chains, symbolizing the acquired freedom. The
USIA states that the seven spikes in the crown represent the
seven seas and
seven continents.
The height from ground to the top of the torch is 305 feet (93 m); this includes the foundation and the pedestal. The height of the statue itself, from the top of the base to the torch, is 151 feet (46 m). The statue weighs 204 tons and the pedestal weighs 24,500 tons.
[Feuerstein, Gary, personal web page: Statue of Liberty Facts (weight of statue and pedestal)][National Park Service (1954): Dimensions of the Statue: "Weight of copper used in statue, 200,000 pounds (100 tons); Weight of steel used in statue, 250,000 pounds (125 tons) l Total weight of statue, 450,000 pounds (225 tons)"]The statue was built from thin copper plates hammered into wooden forms through a process known as
repoussé.
[ p. 231, "The statue is made of repoussé copper, one-eighth of an inch in thickness...."; online[1] ][, p. 21; online[2]; "One of the largest and most famous repoussé sculptures in the world can be found on Liberty Island in the New York City harbor...."] The formed plates were then mounted onto a steel skeleton. The pedestal is built from stone and
Rosendale natural cement.
A museum on the second floor of the pedestal, presents the history of the statue.
Inside the statue, a spiral stairway with rest seats at every third turn winds up to the observation deck in the crown. Before 1916, the ladder in the right arm holding the torch was open to the public, but it has for many years been restricted to staff use, for maintaining the lighting equipment in the torch. The interior of the statue has been closed to the public since 2001 (see below).
The poem "
The New Colossus" by
Emma Lazarus was engraved on a bronze plaque in 1903, after Lazarus' death, and 20 years after it was written. The plaque is located on a wall of the museum, which is in the base of the statue. (It has never been engraved on the monument itself, despite such depictions in editorial cartoons
[e.g. ]).
In its famous final lines, it says:
Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!Although Liberty Island is closer to
New Jersey than to
New York, and its physical location is within the borders of Hudson County, New Jersey, Liberty Island has been part of New York since the issuance in 1664 of the colonial charter that created New Jersey (see
charter text). Portions of nearby
Ellis Island that were formed by subsequent
landfilling are, under a
Supreme Court decision, part of New Jersey, but that decision had no effect on Liberty Island. The island is owned by the
federal government and is administered by the
National Park Service. (For additional details, see
Liberty Island)..
Discussions in France over a suitable gift to the United States to mark the Centennial of the
American Declaration of Independence was headed by the politician and sympathetic writer of the history of the United States,
Édouard René Lefèvre de Laboulaye. French sculptor
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to design a sculpture with the year 1876 in mind for completion. The statue was to be placed in Port Said and was designed as "Egypt carrying the light into Asia". The inspiration came from the giant statues at
Abu Simbel. The project would have gone further if
Khedive Ismail, the ruler of Egypt at that time, had not deemed it too expensive, though the advance payment was already made. The idea for the commemorative gift then grew out of the political turmoil which was shaking France at the time. The
French Third Republic was still considered as a "temporary" arrangement by many, who wished a return to Monarchism, or to some form of constitutional authoritarianism which they had known under
Napoleon. The idea of giving a colossal representation of republican virtues to a "sister" republic across the sea served as a focus for the republican cause against political opponents.
Various sources cite different models for the face of the statue. One indicated the then-recently widowed
Isabella Eugenie Boyer, the wife of
Isaac Singer, the sewing-machine industrialist. "She was rid of the uncouth presence of her husband, who had left her with only his most socially desirable attributes: his fortune and... his children. She was, from the beginning of her career in Paris, a well-known figure. As the good-looking French widow of an American industrialist she was called upon to be Bartholdi's model for the Statue of Liberty."
[(Ruth Brandon, Singer and the Sewing Machine: A Capitalist Romance, p. 211)] Another source believed that the "stern face" belonged to Bartholdi's mother, with whom he was very close.
[(Leslie Allen, "Liberty: The Statue and the American Dream," p. 21)] National Geographic magazine also pointed to his mother, noting that Bartholdi never denied nor explained the resemblance.
[(Alice J. Hall, "Liberty Lifts Her Lamp Once More," July 1986.) ]The first model, on a small scale, was built in 1870. This first statue is now in the
Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris.
It was agreed upon that in a joint effort the American people were to build the base, and the French people were responsible for the Statue and its assembly in the United States. However, lack of funds was a problem on both sides of the
Atlantic. In France, public fees, various forms of entertainment, and a lottery were among the methods used to raise the 2,250,000
francs. In the United States, benefit theatrical events, art exhibitions, auctions and
prize fights assisted in providing needed funds. Meanwhile in France, Bartholdi required the assistance of an engineer to address structural issues associated with designing such a colossal copper sculpture.
Gustave Eiffel (designer of the
Eiffel Tower) was commissioned to design the massive iron pylon and secondary skeletal framework which allows the Statue's copper skin to move independently yet stand upright. Eiffel delegated the detailed work to his trusted
structural engineer,
Maurice Koechlin.
On
June 30,
1878, at the
Paris Exposition, the completed head of the statue was showcased in the garden of the
Trocadéro palace, while other pieces were on display in the Champs de Mars.
Back in America, the site, authorized in New York Harbor by Act of Congress, 1877, was selected by General
William Tecumseh Sherman, who settled on Bartholdi's own choice, then known as Bedloe's Island, where there was already an early 19th century star-shaped fortification.
|
Bartholdi's design patent |
On
February 18 1879, Bartholdi was granted a
design patent, , on "a statue representing Liberty enlightening the world, the same consisting, essentially, of the draped female figure, with one arm upraised, bearing a torch, and while the other holds an inscribed tablet, and having upon the head a diadem, substantially as set forth." The patent described the head as having "classical, yet severe and calm, features," noted that the body is "thrown slightly over to the left so as to gravitate upon the left leg, the whole figure thus being in equilibrium," and covered representations in "any manner known to the glyptic art in the form of a statue or statuette, or in alto-relievo or bass-relief, in metal, stone, terra-cotta, plaster-of-paris, or other plastic composition."
[ p. 299 [3]]Fundraising for the pedestal, led by
William M. Evarts, was going slowly, so
Joseph Pulitzer (who established the
Pulitzer Prize) opened up the editorial pages of his newspaper,
The World, to support the fund raising effort. Pulitzer used his newspaper to criticize both the rich, who had failed to finance the pedestal construction, and the middle class who were content to rely upon the wealthy to provide the funds. Pulitzer's campaign of harsh criticism was successful in motivating the people of America to donate. (It also promoted his newspaper, which purportedly added ~50,000 subscribers in the course of the statue campaign effort.)
Financing for the pedestal, designed by American architect
Richard Morris Hunt, was completed in August 1885. The cornerstone was laid on
August 5, and pedestal construction was finished on
April 22 1886. When the last stone of the pedestal was swung into place the masons reached into their pockets and showered into the mortar a collection of silver coins.
Built into the pedestal's massive masonry are two sets of four iron girders, connected by iron tie beams that are carried up to become part of Eiffel's framework for the statue itself. Thus
Liberty is integral with her pedestal.
The Statue was completed in France in July, 1884 and arrived in New York Harbor on
June 17 1885 on board the French frigate
Isere. To prepare for transit, the Statue was reduced to 350 individual pieces and packed in 214 crates. (The right arm and the torch, which were completed earlier, had been exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1876, and thereafter at
Madison Square in New York City.) The Statue was re-assembled on her new pedestal in four months' time. On
October 28 1886, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated by
President Grover Cleveland in front of thousands of spectators. (Ironically, it was Cleveland who, as Governor of the State of New York, had earlier vetoed a bill by the New York legislature to contribute $50,000 to the building of the pedestal.)
["On This Day, The New York Times, May 2, 1885, "Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about construction of the Statue of Liberty"] In any event, she was a centennial gift ten years belated.
In 1916, the
Black Tom Explosion caused $100,000 worth of damage to the statue, embedding shrapnel and eventually leading to the closing of the torch to visitors. The same year,
Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of
Mount Rushmore, modified the original copper torch by cutting away most of the copper in the flame, retrofitting glass panes and installing an internal light. After these modifications, the torch severely leaked rainwater and snowmelt, accelerating corrosion inside the statue. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt rededicated the Statue of Liberty on its 50th anniversary (
October 28 1936).
As with all historic areas administered by the National Park Service, Statue of Liberty National Monument, along with Ellis Island and Liberty Island, was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places on
October 15 1966.
In 1984, the Statue of Liberty was added to the
World Heritage List.
[http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=307]Origin of the copper
Historical records make no mention of the source of the copper used in the Statue of Liberty. In the town of
Vigsnes, near
Stavanger, Norway, tradition holds that the copper came from the French-owned Visnes Mine.
[ (Tourism website) "Vinsnes Mining Museum: The copper mines at Visnes were in operation until as recently as 1972. The copper for the Statue of Liberty in New York was extractad here."][ A U. S. copper industry website. "The Statue of Liberty contains 179,000 pounds of copper. It came from the Visnes copper mines on Karmoy Island near Stavanger, Norway, and was fabricated by French artisans."] Ore from this mine, refined in France and
Belgium, was a significant source of European copper in the late nineteenth century. In 1985,
Bell Laboratories used emission spectrography to compare samples of copper from the Visnes Mines and from the Statue of Liberty, found the spectrum of impurities to be very similar, and concluded that the evidence argued strongly for a Norwegian origin of the copper.
Liberty Centennial
The Statue of Liberty was one of the earliest beneficiaries of a
cause marketing campaign. A 1983 promotion advertised that for each purchase made with an
American Express card, American Express would contribute one penny to the renovation of the statue. The campaign generated contributions of $1.7 million to the Statute of Liberty restoration project. In 1984, the statue was closed so that a $62 million renovation could be performed for the statue's
centennial.
Chrysler chairman
Lee Iacocca was appointed by President Reagan to head the commission overseeing the task (but was later dismissed "to avoid any question of conflict" of interest).
[ "Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel... dismissed Mr. Iacocca on Wednesday from the commission 'to avoid any question of conflict' of interest arising from Mr. Iacocca's simultaneous service as head of a private foundation that has raised $233 million for restoration of the statue and Ellis Island. The foundation also awards contracts for the restoration work."] Workers erected scaffolding around the statue, obscuring it from public view until the rededication on
July 4 1986. Inside work began with workers using liquid
nitrogen to remove seven layers of paint applied to the interior of the copper skin over the decades. That left two layers of
tar originally applied to plug leaks and prevent corrosion. Blasting with
baking soda removed the tar without further damaging the copper. Larger holes in the copper skin had edges smoothed then mated with new copper patches.
Each of the 1,350 shaped iron ribs backing the skin had to be removed and replaced. The iron had experienced
galvanic corrosion wherever it contacted the copper skin, losing up to 50% of its thickness. Bartholdi had anticipated the problem and used an
asbestos/
pitch combination to separate the metals, but the insulation had worn away decades before. New bars of
stainless steel bent into matching shapes replaced the iron bars, with
Teflon film separating them from the skin for further insulation and friction reduction. Liquid nitrogen was again introduced to parts of the copper skin in a
cryogenics process which was treated by a (now defunct) Michigan company called
CryoTech to ensure certain individual parts of the statue were strengthened and would last longer after installation.
The internal structure of the upraised right arm was reworked. The statue was erected with the arm offset 18" (0.46 m) to the right and forward of Eiffel's central frame, while the head was offset 24" (0.61 m) to the left, which compromised the framework. Theory held that Bartholdi made the modification without Eiffel's involvement after seeing the arm and head were too close. Engineers considered reinforcements made in 1932 insufficient and added diagonal bracing in 1984 and 1986 to make the arm structurally sound.
|
Original torch, replaced in 1986. |
A new torch replaced the original, which was deemed beyond repair because of the extensive 1916 modifications. The 1886 torch is now located in the monument's lobby museum. The new torch has
gold leaf applied to the exterior of the "flame," which is illuminated by external lamps on the surrounding balcony platform. Upgraded
climate control systems and two elevators (one to the top of the pedestal and a small emergency elevator to the crown) were added. The Statue of Liberty was reopened to the public on
July 5 1986.
David L. Wolper produced the centennial extravaganza,
[Geist, William E. (1986): About New York; from Jellybeans to Wigs, Liberty Season Is On.The New York Times, July 18, 1896, section B, page 3: "William L. Fugazy, chairman of the State Statue of Liberty Centennial Commission..." "David L. Wolper, executive producer of Liberty Weekend..."] which lasted three days, drew 12 million people, and is said to have been the largest public event in the world as of that date. Following Rooselvelt's example, President Reagan attended and made a speech reopening the restored statue.
Liberty Fanfare, composed by
John Williams, was commissioned to celebrate this event.
After 9/11
Until
September 11 2001, the interior of the statue was open to visitors. They would arrive by ferry and could climb the circular single-file stairs (limited by the available space) inside the metallic statue, exposed to the sun out in the harbor (the interior reaching extreme temperatures, particularly in summer months), and about 30 people at a time could fit up into her crown. This provided a broad view of New York Harbor (she faces the ocean, and France) through 25 windows, the largest approximately 18" in height. The view did not, therefore, include the skyline of New York City, however. The wait outside regularly exceeded 3 hours, excluding the wait for ferries and ferry tickets.
Liberty Island closed on
September 11, 2001; the islands reopened in December, and the statue itself reopened on
August 3 2004. Currently, the museum and ten-story pedestal are open for visitation. The interior of the statue remains closed, although a glass ceiling in the pedestal allows for views of
Eiffel's iron framework.
Visitors to Liberty Island and the Statue are currently subject to restrictions, including personal searches similar to the security found in
airports.
That was not the first time, however, that the Statue of Liberty had been threatened by terrorism. On
February 18,
1965, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced it had uncovered a plot by three commandos from the
Black Liberation Front, who were connected to
Cuba, and a female co-conspirator from
Montreal seeking independence for
Quebec from
Canada, who were sent to destroy the statue and at least two other national shrines - the
Liberty Bell in
Philadelphia and the
Washington Monument in
Washington, D.C.In May 2006, a bill was proposed in Congress which, if approved, could re-open the crown and interior of the Statue of Liberty to visitors. Approval or disapproval of this bill will probably occur in early- to mid-2007.
On August 9, 2006
National Park Service Director
Fran Mainella, in a letter to Congressman
Anthony Weiner of
New York stated that the crown and interior of the statue would remain closed indefinitely. The letter stated that "the current access patterns reflect a responsible management strategy in the best interests of all our visitors.".
["Statue of Liberty's Crown to Stay Closed" Associated Press, August 9, 2006]Jumps
At 2:45 p.m. on
February 2 1912,
steeplejack Frederick R. Law successfully performed a
parachute jump from the observation platform surrounding the torch. It was done with the permission of the army captain administering the island. The
New York Times reported that he "fell fully seventy-five feet like a dead weight, the parachute showing no inclination whatsoever to open at first", but he then descended "gracefully", landed hard, and limped away.
["Parachute Leap Off Statue of Liberty; Steeplejack Had First Thought of Jumping Off the Singer Building. Steers With His Arms And Lands Safely on Stone Coping 30 feet from Water's Edge—He Won't Talk About It." The New York Times, February 3, 1912, p. 4]The first and so far only death on Liberty Island occurred on
May 13,
1929. The
Times reported a witness as saying the man, later identified as
Ralph Gleason, crawled out through one of the windows of the crown, turned around as if to return, "seemed to slip" and "shot downward, bouncing off the breast of the statue in the plunge." The body landed on a patch of grass at the base, just a few feet from a workman who was mowing the grass.
["Youth Plunges Off Statue of Liberty Crown, 200 feet High, in First Suicide at That Spot." The New York Times, May 14, 1929, p. 1] |
The Statue of Liberty copy on the river Seine in Paris, France. Given to the city in 1885, it faces west, towards the original Liberty in New York Harbor. |
Hundreds of other Statues of Liberty have been erected worldwide. There is a sister statue in Paris and several others in France; they exist in Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Vietnam; one existed in Hanoi during French colonial days. There are replicas in theme parks and resorts, replicas created as commercial advertising, and replicas erected in U.S. communities by patriotic benefactors, including no less than two hundred donated by Boy Scout troops to local communities, including
Birmingham, Alabama. During the
Tiananmen Square protest of 1989, Chinese student demonstrators in
Beijing built a 10 m image called the
Goddess of Democracy, which sculptor Tsao Tsing-yuan said was intentionally
dissimilar to the Statue of Liberty to avoid being "too openly pro-American".
[Tsao Tsing-yuan. "The Birth of the Goddess of Democracy." In Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China. Edited by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Elizabeth J. Perry, 140-7. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1994.]The Statue of Liberty quickly became a popular icon, featured in scores of posters, pictures, motion pictures, and books. A 1911 O. Henry story relates a fanciful conversation between "Mrs. Liberty" and another statue; it figured in 1918 Liberty Loan posters. During the 1940s and 1950s, pulp Science Fiction magazines featured Lady Liberty surrounded by ruins or by the sediments of the ages. It has been in dozens of motion pictures, such as the 1942
Alfred Hitchcock movie
Saboteur, which featured a climactic confrontation at the statue. The
1988 film
Working Girl opens with a flying camera shot that circles around the statue. More recently it was featured in
X-Men where Wolverine battles Sabertooth. It was the subject of a 1978
University of Wisconsin prank in which Lady Liberty appeared to be standing submerged in a local lake. It has appeared on New York and New Jersey license plates, and on the uniforms of at least one sports team. It was the subject of magician
David Copperfield's largest vanishing act. Several video games have used it as a setting, including
Civilization II, Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots, Spiderman 2, and Deus Ex.
Image:Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes.jpg|The Statue of Liberty famously appears in the final scene of Planet of the ApesImage:libertymendota.jpg|February 1979: Statue of Liberty apparently submerged, Lake Mendota (Madison, Wisc.)Image:Novum_Eboracum.jpg|American WWI poster "Remember Your First Thrill of American LibertyImage:sl-shadow.jpg|Statue's of Liberty profile in front of the sun.Image:Liberty-statue-with-manhattan.jpg|Statue against ManhattanImage:Liberty-Manhattan.jpg|The same picture at sunsetImage:Statue-Of-Liberty.jpg|Statue of Liberty from a vantage point near the baseImage:Statueoflibertyparis.JPG|Statue on Grenelle Island in Paris*
Goddess of Democracy*
Liberty Island*
Marianne*
List of statues*
Columbia
*Holdstcok., Robert. editor Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. London: Octopus books, 1978.
*Moreno, Barry. The Statue of Liberty Encyclopedia. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
*Vidal, Pierre. Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi 1834-1904: Par la Main, par l'Esprit. Paris: Les créations du pélican, 2000.
*Smith, V. Elaine, "Engineering Miss Liberty's Rescue." Popular Science, June 1986, page 68.
*
Statue of Liberty Photo Tour*
Statue of Liberty Statues, Figurines and Models*
Satellite view of Statue of Liberty - at WikiMapia = Google maps + Wiki
*
Statue of Liberty Facts*
Statue of Liberty Ferry*
History of the Statue of Liberty - About.com*
Statue Of Liberty Webcam Live*
Statue of Liberty National Monument (
National Park Service)
*
The official Historical Site handbook—dated 1954; very complete historical account; details on improvements, "how to reach," "visitor facilities," etc. are of course out of date.
*
Statue of Liberty*
PBS documentary about statue of liberty made by Ken Burns*
American Park Network - detailed history
*
Statueofliberty.org The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation and National Park Service run page to raise the $5 million necessary to reopen the statue to the public.
*
The Statue of Liberty article by
Alexandra Kollontay, 1916.
*
Another way of seeing the Statue of Liberty : Graphs and animation(24 hours in the life of the Statue)*
Air photographs*
Pictorial of the Statue of Liberty on Tysto
*
Photographs 2006Some resources in French
*
Statue of Liberty - Liberty Enlightening the World : Ellis Island*
Statue of Liberty - Liberty Enlightening the World*
Statue of Liberty - Liberty Enlightening the World : Paris : Grenelle Bridge*
Statue of Liberty - Liberty Enlightening the World : Paris : Luxembourg Park*
Statue of Liberty - Liberty Enlightening the World : Metropolitan Museum of ArtOther links
*
Google aerial view*
Lady Liberty on Lake Mendota, pictures of the University of Wisconsin prank
*
GoogleEarthHacks 3D Statue of Liberty plug-in for Google Earth
*
Miss Liberty Mod for Grand Theft Auto III by ODIE
