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| 1067 - Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty |
Posted on 28.04.2014, 25.04.2015, 04.08.2016
The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in the middle of New York Harbor, in Manhattan, New York City. The statue, designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi built by Gustave Eiffel and dedicated on October 28, 1886, was a gift to the United States from the people of France. The statue is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. A broken chain lies at her feet.
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1068 - The Statue of Liberty with Manhattan in the background |
The statue is an icon of freedom and of the United States: a welcoming signal to immigrants arriving from abroad. Bartholdi was inspired by French law professor and politician Édouard René de Laboulaye, who is said to have commented in 1865 that any monument raised to American independence would properly be a joint project of the French and American peoples. He may have been minded to honor the Union victory in the American Civil War and the end of slavery.
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| 1069 - Aerial view of the Statue of Liberty |
This masterpiece of the human spirit, which brings together art and engineering in a new and powerful way, is composed of thinly pounded copper sheets over a steel framework, designed by the French engineer Gustave Eiffel. Its symbolic value lies in two basic factors. It was presented by France with the intention of affirming the historical alliance between the two nations. It was financed by international subscription in recognition of the establishment of the principles of freedom and democracy. The Statue also soon became and has endured as a symbol of the migration of people from many countries into the United States in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.
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| 1070 - New York Harbor at dusk |
The torch-bearing arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1876, and in New York's Madison Square Park from 1876 to 1882. Fundraising proved difficult, especially for the Americans, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened due to lack of funds. Publisher Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World started a drive for donations to complete the project that attracted more than 120,000 contributors. The statue was constructed in France, shipped overseas in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then called Bedloe's Island.
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| 1541 - Statue of Liberty |
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In 1956, Bedloe's Island was renamed Liberty Island, and nearby Ellis Island was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument by proclamation of President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. In 1972, the American Museum of Immigration, in the statue's base, was opened in a ceremony led by President Richard Nixon. The museum's backers never provided it with an endowment to secure its future and it closed in 1991 after the opening of an immigration museum on Ellis Island.
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| 2735 The 130th Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty |
In 1984, the statue was closed to the public for the duration of the renovation. The torch, found to have been leaking water since the 1916 alterations, was replaced with an exact replica of Bartholdi's unaltered torch. It reflects the sun's rays in daytime and lighted by floodlights at night. The entire puddled iron armature designed by Gustave Eiffel was replaced. Low-carbon corrosion-resistant stainless steel bars that now hold the staples next to the skin are made of Ferralium, an alloy that bends slightly and returns to its original shape as the statue moves.
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