Go Home | Go Back to Tips Page On June 21, 2000, my wife and I visited the famous statue of Liberty in New York City. 129 years ago, also on June 21, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, a French Sculptor, arrived Upper New York Bay. He noticed a small island off the tip of Manhattan Island, and realized it was the perfect location for the monument he was going to build. The island is called Bedloe's Island, after its original owner, a Walloon called Issac Bedloe. In 1956, the name of the island was changed to Liberty Island. Bartholdi decided Bedloe's Island would be the site of his monumental colossus, the Liberty Enlightening the World, also known as the Statue of Liberty. Six years ago, young Bartholdi attended a dinner party at the home of Edouard de Laboulaye. A writer, liberal, satirist, historian, scholar and professor of College de France, Laboulaye admired the American political system very much. Disappointed to the aftermath of the 1848 revolution and the monarch regime of Napoleon III, Laboulaye thought the American Constitution and democracy the best political system in the world. He was a leading admirer of the United States. During the dinner party, Laboulaye discussed his plan of sending a gift to United States, to commemorate the friendship between the two nations. During the Independent war, United States allied with France to defeat Britain. Laboulaye strongly supported the North during the American Civil War, and influenced the Napoleon III government not to recognize the Confederation. Laboulaye was also a leading abolitionist in France. At last, Laboulaye and his guests decided a statue would be sent to United States as a gift by the French people, and Bartholdi was commissioned to build this statue. Inspired by the Colossus of Rhodes Island, one of the wonders of Ancient World, and the goddess Liberta, the godless worshiped by the freed slaves in Ancient Rome, Bartholdi envisioned a giant statue of a woman holding a torch in her lifted right hand, symbolizing the Liberty enlightening the World. Because the Statue of Liberty was not a government project, the money was a big problem. To raise money, Laboulaye founded the Franco-American Union. After several years hard work, they raised enough money for the project. By 1876, after raised enough money, Bartholdi began the construction of the statue. To facilitate the transport, the skin of the statue was made of a thin layer of copper, measuring 2.5mm thick. The copper skin was shaped by hammering the copper layer against a wooden frame, a process called repousse. To support the copper skin, a wrought-iron framework was constructed by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. This iron framework was cleverly built to support the skin of the statue, and was strong enough to resisted the strong winds of the New York Bay. Soon after the completion of the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel began another famous project, the Eiffel tower in Paris. Bartholdi finished the statue on 1884. After exhibited in Paris, in 1885, it was dismantled and shipped to the United States. To support the statue, a base and pedestal was built by American architect Richard Morris Hunt within the walls of Fort Wood, a military post built by United States in 1811 to defend the New York Harbor. Shortly after the completion of the base, the initially raised fund is depleted. To raise the money for the pedestal, newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer launched a donation campaign on his newspaper, the New York World. He succeeded raising $100,000 by August 11, 1885. With this raised fund, Hunt soon complete the pedestal. The statue arrived Untied States in 214 packing cases in June, 1985. The assembling of the statue finished on October 28, 1886. Since then, the Statue of Liberty stands as a symbol of Freedom, New York, and the United States. The finished statue is 305 feet high measuring from the ground, has 354 steps from ground level to the crown of the statue, approximately equivalent to 22-story high. After we reached the crown following the slow moving crowd, we all found that stepping down was even more challenging with a pair of exhausted legs. After being subjected to every type of weather condition and air pollution for about 100 years, the statue was in bad shape in 1980s. Beginning in 1983, A joint team of both American and French engineers, architects, and artisans successfully restored the statue before the 100th anniversary of the statue in 1986. |