Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty — formally Liberty Enlightening the World — was a gift from the people of France to the United States, dedicated on October 28, 1886. Conceived as a monument to the alliance between the two nations and to the idea of liberty itself, it has become one of the most recognized symbols of freedom and democracy in the world.

For the millions of immigrants who arrived in New York Harbor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — many of them processed at nearby Ellis Island — the statue was often the first sight of America. Emma Lazarus's 1883 sonnet "The New Colossus," with its lines "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," was placed on a plaque inside the pedestal in 1903, permanently linking the monument to the nation's identity as a haven for immigrants.

The idea for the statue is traditionally traced to the French historian and abolitionist Édouard de Laboulaye, who envisioned a monument celebrating liberty and the friendship between France and the United States. The sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi took up the project, designing a colossal neoclassical figure of a robed woman — modeled on Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty — holding a torch aloft and cradling a tablet inscribed with the date of American independence.

Work began in France in the 1870s. To support the enormous copper skin, Bartholdi enlisted the engineer Gustave Eiffel, who designed an innovative internal iron framework that lets the copper exterior flex with changes in temperature and wind. The arm and torch were exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and the completed statue was assembled in Paris before being taken apart into 214 crates and shipped aboard the French frigate Isère, arriving in New York in June 1885.

The United States was responsible for the pedestal, designed by the architect Richard Morris Hunt. When fundraising lagged, the publisher Joseph Pulitzer used his newspaper, the New York World, to rally small donations from ordinary Americans. The statue was mounted on its pedestal on what was then Bedloe's Island and dedicated by President Grover Cleveland on October 28, 1886. It was proclaimed a National Monument in 1924 and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984, following a major restoration completed for its centennial in 1986.