Statue of Liberty Waited More Than a Year for a Place to Stand

The French ship Isere carried a unique cargo into the New York City harbor June 7, 1885. Loaded with 450,000 pounds of copper and iron, the frigate held 214 large crates full of statue pieces. The giant puzzle went together more than a year later to erect The Statue of Liberty. It was the tallest structure in New York City at that time.

The Lady was left languishing inside shipping boxes for months because America stopped building her pedestal when money for the large project ran out. Progress of the statue’s construction stopped and restarted several times both in France and the United States before Lady Liberty was set in place on a small island in the harbor. President Grover Cleveland officiated the dedication of The Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886.

A gift from the people of France, Lady Liberty symbolized friendship with America and the shared feelings of freedom and democracy. The statue’s original purpose was meant to celebrate the 100th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence. France missed the July 4, 1876, deadline by more than ten years because work on the statue stalled when the money ran out.

Contributions for the statue came from the citizens of France and the United States, not from the governments of either country. France agreed to pay the bills to construct the statue and ship it to New York City. It was the United States’ job to construct a pedestal to support the massive monument on Bedloe’s Island in the harbor.

As the construction progressed, France displayed pieces of the statue inside Paris to keep interest in the project going. That helped generate enough contributions to complete the statue in June, 1884.

Liberty’s right arm holding a torch was the first part of the statue that was completed. It was shipped to Philadelphia and displayed during the Centennial Exposition in 1876. The arm and torch section was displayed later in New York’s Madison Square Park before it went back to France. Visitors paid fifty cents to see the display. Money from ticket sales generated new interest and more contributions that were desperately needed.

Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of “The New York Times,” made a large contribution to help finance the pedestal’s completion. The wealthy entrepreneur solicited money from rich people living in New York, and he helped get the money needed to complete the project. His six-month campaign raised more than $100,000.00, and Liberty’s base was finished. That’s when the tedious task of assembling the statue from the hundreds of pieces began.

The traditional story about school children financing the cost of the pedestal with their pennies is only partly true. Pennies did help pay for the pedestal that had cement walls up to 20 feet thick. Actually, it was the deep pockets of Pulitzer and his wealthy friends that paid for the majority of the project.     

The completed statue was displayed in Paris until early 1885 when she was dismantled and prepared for shipping to the U.S. The outer skin consisted of 179,000 pounds of copper. The internal superstructure was made of 250,000 pounds of iron. She stood 151 feet tall from her feet to the top of her torch. Once the pedestal was finally completed, Lady Liberty was hoisted on top of it and measured 305 feet from the base of the pedestal to the top of her torch.

Auguste Bartholdi

Sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi created the statue. He named it “Liberty Enlightening the World,” which is the official title of Lady Liberty. He drew the basic design in 1867 and kept tweaking the image of Lady Liberty until construction began in Paris in the winter of 1875. That start was much too late for Bartholdi to meet the original deadline set a year later. To follow the original theme of the statue, the sculptor had the Lady holding a tablet in her left hand that read July 4, 1776 in Roman numerals.

Gustave Eiffel

Gustave Eiffel was picked to engineer the structure of the statue. He used an iron superstructure to frame the inside of the Statue of Liberty. Wood was used to give Lady her shape, and thin, copper sheets were pounded into shape and riveted into the wood. This process was designed by Eiffel to prevent contact between the copper surface and the iron interior, preventing corrosion and wear of the two metals. The copper was 3/32nds of an inch, about the thickness of a penny.

Eiffel distinguished himself a few years later when he designed the Eiffel Tower that became a Paris landmark in March, 1889. Bartholdi selected Bedloe’s Island to be the home of the monument. The sculptor toured the New York City Harbor years earlier and selected the island. He thought it was a perfect location for the stature to signify what he called “the gateway to America.” Congress changed the name of Bedloe’s Island to Liberty Island in 1938.

One hundred years of exposure to the salty harbor air took their toll on the monument. A major restoration project closed the statue in 1985 and part of 1986 so that needed repairs and improvements could be completed. It cost $87 million to bring Lady Liberty back to her original glory. The money consisted of donations. No government funds were used.

The repairs included replacing the 1,600 iron bands holding the statue’s copper skin in place. An elevator was installed, and a new, brighter torch was added. The original torch can be viewed by visitors inside the base of the pedestal. The Lady officially reopened on July 4, 1986.

Surprisingly, little was done to Lady’s copper skin. When visitors approach the statue for the first time, they often are stuck by her green color. That’s from a natural oxidation of the copper that acts as a preservative. It’s called patina.

An estimated 3.5 million people visit The Statue of Liberty annually. Most of them don’t see a subtle but important feature. In front of Liberty’s left foot is a long, sculpted piece of broken chain beneath her toga. Bartholdi put it there to symbolize freedom from oppression, which is the message “Liberty Enlightening the World” was built to give the world.

A recent renovation costing about $30 million greatly improved the stairways inside the monument. It made the interior wheelchair-accessible to the observation decks. For the first time, wheelchair visitors can get into the statue’s crown. The monument’s interior was closed for one year and reopened in October, 2012, after the stairwells were improved. That’s another example of how the Statue of Liberty will always be maintained and improved for future generations. 

Thanks for reading this blog. Visit this space in August to read another interesting subject. See my website at www.joevlatino.com.