Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island

The idea for the Statue of Liberty, which was originally called Liberty Enlightening the World, came from the French writer, politician, and political activist Edouard de Laboulaye in 1865 as a way to honor America’s 100^th year of independence and democracy, while at the same time making an underhanded political statement against France’s current ruler, Napoleon III (how ironic for what was essentially a dictatorship to be honoring a democracy). While the idea took hold with the pro-democracy idealists, it took over a decade for work on the statue to begin.

Sculptor Auguste Bartholdi designed the statue and began working with a crew of artists in 1876. Bartholdi had already designed a lighthouse for the Suez Canal, though the project never came to fruition. The lighthouse design was of a massive female figure holding a torch in an outstretched arm. His new statue was nothing more than a modification of that idea.

Statue of Liberty

While the Statue of Liberty appears to be a solid sculpture, it is actually a hollow shell only two pennies thick and supported by an interior steel skeleton that was designed by Gustave Eiffel, who would later go on to design the Eiffel Tower. As sections were completed, they were put on display at various exhibitions around the world. The arm and torch were first unveiled at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and the head and shoulders were completed in 1878 and shown at the Paris Universal Exposition. The entire statue was completed in 1881 and was assembled over the next three years for display in Paris.

Photos of the Statue of Liberty being assembled in Paris

As part of the deal, it was the Americans who had to supply a pedestal for the statue and pay for its assembly in New York. Unfortunately, raising money from the public had not been very successful, and when the statue—now disassembled—arrived in the United States in 1885, it was put into storage. Funds were finally raised largely with the help of newspaper baron Joseph Pulitzer. Pulitzer promised to publish the name of every donor in his newspaper, The World. This not only raised money for the completion of the pedestal, but Pulitzer sold thousands of newspapers, for those who donated bought copies just to see their names in print. The campaign raised $100,000 of the required $300,000 price tag for the completion of the statue.

The site of the Statue of Liberty was to be at the center of Fort Wood on Bedloe’s Island. The fort was obsolete for defensive purposes due to the invention of rifled artillery during the Civil War. Unlike cannonballs, rifled shells could easily blast through the walls of masonry forts such as Wood. However, while the fort itself was closed to make room for the statue, the rest of the island remained a military base until 1937.

The pedestal was completed in early 1886, and the entire statue was ready for dedication on October 28^th. During its assembly, a French flag hid the face of the statue, and during the dedication it was removed by Bartholdi himself.

The Statue of Liberty was eventually turned over to the War Department in 1901 and designated as a National Monument in 1924 by President Calvin Coolidge. However, it wasn’t put under the management of the National Park Service until 1933. In 1937, when the U. S. Army left the island for good, the National Park Service began plans to turn the former military base into a park. Army buildings were removed and replaced with promenades and lawns. Work was halted during World War II, and it took all the way until 1957 for the landscaping on the island to be completed (the island’s name was changed to Liberty Island in 1956). In May 1965, President Lyndon Johnson added Ellis Island to the park. Today, 4.5 million people visit Statue of Liberty National Monument each year, making it one of the Top 20 most popular National Parks.

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