The Statue of Liberty (VII)

Location:   New York Harbor
Year:   1886

Since the Statue of Liberty was first erected, there has been an ongoing debate as to who "owns" the Statue, New York State or New Jersey.  The debate has its roots in history. When James, Duke of York (later King James II) received his Patents Royal for the Colony of New York in 1664, New Jersey was part of the colony. 

In 1665, the Duke of York paid off a gambling debt by awarding New Jersey to his drinking buddy George Carteret (who was from Jersey in the Channel Islands). The Duke retained, however, control of "all offshore islands" according to his patent. These included Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Block Island, Fisher's Island, Plum Island, Gardiner's Island, Shelter Island, Robbin's Island, Long Island, and all the islands in New York Harbor.  

Although New Jersey tried to claim Staten Island, nestled within yards of its shore, a Royal Commission unsurprisingly upheld the claims of the future king. The same went for the little specks of land later called Black Tom Island, Bedloe's Island, Governor's Island, and Ellis Island. Throughout their history, the small islands were owned by New Yorkers. They were only intermittently settled, being used mostly as pasturelands. 

During this period, the Bedloe's Island property was sold to the City of New York for use as a quarantine station.

In 1783, with the end of the Revolutionary War, surveyors tried to settle the New York/New Jersey boundary by drawing a straight (if utterly imaginary) line down the center of the Hudson River. Although the line squiggled to include Staten Island in New York, the surveys overlooked Bedloe's Island and Ellis Island both, which ended up on the New Jersey side of the line. Still, the only access to either was by ferry from New York City, they remained owned by either New York City or individual New Yorkers, and everybody just sort of assumed they were New York territory.

Not long before the War of 1812, the United States government built Fort Wood on Bedloe's Island. The New York Assembly ceded Governor's Island and Ellis Island to the United States as well. New Jersey was not involved in these transactions. 

However, with the opening of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, the border dispute heated up. Both New Jersey and New York claimed bragging rights over Bedloe's Island. New York wanted a ferry monopoly in New York Harbor. Both States wanted the tax and tourism dollars to be had from the Statue. Although, in the strictest sense, Bedloe's Island was (and is) Federal territory, both States claimed rights to the island. This dispute only grew hotter after Ellis Island became a Federal Immigration Station. 

The Statue of Liberty was declared a Federal National Monument in 1924, and in 1937, the Monument was expanded to include all of Bedloe's Island, which was renamed Liberty Island in 1956. In 1965, Ellis Island was added to the National Monument, though it was closed to the public until 1990.

Over time, Jersey City, New Jersey and the State of New Jersey both brought suit against New York for control of the islands, suits which the Federal Government dismissed in favor of New York on an historical basis.  It chided both States that Bedloe's and Ellis Islands were now Federal islands anyway, but that did not stop the bragging rights/tourism/tax dollar war, which only got worse when the Federal government began paying New York to maintain utility services to the islands. 

Still, the question of "Who Owns Liberty Island?" remained a kind of joke, a kind of squabble, and a kind of jurisdictional black hole for nearly 100 years. It began to erupt again in the 1970s as the Statue of Liberty Centennial approached: 

Both States issued "Statue of Liberty" license plates and other commemoratives.  

When Governor Cahill of New Jersey threatened to plant a New Jersey State flag on the island in the late 1970s, Mayor Edward Koch of New York announced a plan to resettle the City's homeless on the island. Cahill backed down.

During the run-up to the Centennial, when New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean announced a "New Jersey, The Home of Immigration" campaign, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York torpedoed it in the Press by saying sourly that his ancestors hadn't risked life and limb to come from the Old Country just so they could set foot in, eh, New Jersey. Kean dropped his idea.

The U.S. Supreme Court finally resolved the matter by awarding Liberty Island to New York in 1998. 

As a sop to New Jersey, Ellis Island was divided Solomonically by giving the Great Hall and the residential quarters (on the natural portion of the island) to New York and giving the Administration Buildings, the old hospital, the quarantine building, and the garbage dump, all on landfill, to New Jersey (as is only right and proper). 

Electrical power and mail service to Ellis and Liberty Islands is provided by New York, and water and sewage service by New Jersey. 

All in all, New Jersey did not come out of this smelling like a rose. But if you've ever been through north Jersey, well, that's nothing new.   

    

The Statue of Liberty (VI)

Location:   New York Harbor
Year:   1886

The Statue of Liberty has been witness to some of the most wondrous moments in American history, and to some of the most awful.

Immigrants getting their first view of Lady Liberty

Who knows precisely how many immigrant ships passed under her welcoming gaze? What is universal is the reaction of the immigrants to seeing her --- awe and gladness and joy, mixed with a healthy dose of fear of the unknown in the New World.  Millions of New Americans came through the Golden Door where she so zealously stands sentinel. 

But she has seen other things.

From 1886 to 1916, the entirety of the interior of the statue was accessible to the public. Crowds could visit, and still visit  at a rate of 2.5 million per year, the head of the statue where they can gaze down upon New York Harbor through the 25 small windows set in her crown. Visitors to the torch had to be a bit braver, climbing a nearly vertical platform to emerge on a small balcony under the flame of the torch (which acted as a lighthouse for many years). Although vertiginous, the open-air view from 300 feet over the harbor was said to be awe-inspiring. 

Inside the crown

So glad to see you!

The ladder inside the torch-arm

The dizzying view from the torch

 

The first recorded terrorist act in U.S. history closed access to the torch, seemingly permanently.

In 1916, the United States was maintaining an uneasy neutrality in World War I. The Kaiser's government, however, seemed hell-bent on bringing the United States into the war through a series of truly stupid acts designed, ironically, to keep America out of the war. 

Although the U.S. was officially neutral, its neutrality was heavily canted toward the Allies, specifically Britain and France. The Germans were convinced that the United States was secretly shipping arms to the Allies (which was in fact the truth, through a complex net of private arms dealers and shippers). These shipments provided the Germans  a motive to sink the Lusitania in 1915, which cost 128 American lives.  After the sinking of the Lusitania, American neutrality became even more gossamer-like.

By the summer of 1916, one of the largest dumps for munitions destined to reach the Allies was on Black Tom Island, in New York Harbor, a few hundred feet off the Jersey shore, and connected to the mainland by a causeway. Black Tom Island was a literal powder keg, with millions of rounds of ammo, mortar shells, howitzer ordnance, torpedoes, grenades, rockets, and every sort of explosive imaginable stored there. Black Tom Island lay a few hundred yards due west of Bedloe's Island and the Statue of Liberty, and about an equal distance from Ellis Island with its thousands of immigrants waiting to be processed into the country. 

 

On the night of July 31st 1916, Black Tom Island exploded. German sabotage was suspected but not proved until the 1930s. Several ships at the island's wharves were vaporized, as were the people onboard and on the island (only about 25 people were killed, fortunately). Bullets, rockets, and all sorts of munitions began popping off randomly, making the island and its environs a very dangerous place. Emergency workers were forced to let the fire burn itself out. The explosion measured 5.5 on the Richter Scale and set the Brooklyn Bridge to swaying. Windows in New Jersey, Manhattan and Brooklyn were shattered for miles around. The roar was heard in Philadelphia. Ellis Island had to be evacuated. And Miss Liberty, closest of all, suffered structural damage (and a few dings from bullets) when the main brace upholding her torch arm was wrenched nearly off its anchors. After the chaos abated, repair crews repaired the ironwork supporting the arm, but suggested that the torch be put off limits to the public, which it was. It has never been reopened. During the 1984-1986 restoration for the statue's centennial it was decided that the internal structure of the arm was in such poor condition that it was replaced by a newly-constructed arm and torch. Where the old torch was lit from within, the new torch is gold leaf illuminated from below by powerful floodlights. 

The old torch, which is now on display inside the Liberty Island Museum

The new torch

Black Tom Island no longer exists as such, having been joined to the New Jersey mainland by landfill. But what was the island is now part of Liberty State Park (N.J.), and a monument marks the event. 

September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001 Miss Liberty had a front row seat to the destruction of the World Trade Center only a thousand yards away across the harbor. The Statue was immediately closed to the public for safety concerns. Access to Liberty Island was reestablished at the beginning of 2002, and the pedestal was reopened only after security improvements in 2004. The Statue itself was not deemed accessible until 2009. The statue was closed again for a year in 2011-2012 to allow for the installation of handicapped-accessible elevators. She reopened on October 28, 2012, but closed the next day for evaluation in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.  The Statue of Liberty reopened on July 4, 2013. 

As a symbol of America, the Statue of Liberty has been a prime target of directors of dystopian films. She was first destroyed on celluloid in 1933 in the film Deluge. Since then, she has been inundated, knocked down, blown up, and otherwise violated at least 35 times in films like The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day, Deep Impact, Meteor, and most famously in The Planet of The Apes (1968). Alfred Hitchcock filmed a fearful scene atop the torch in Saboteur.   

Saboteur

  

Independence Day

The Day After Tomorrow

Planet of The Apes

Exactly why giving Miss Liberty such a hard time has become a staple of a certain genre of films is unclear; but personally, I think they ought to treat the old girl with more respect.
 

The Statue of Liberty (V)

Location:   New York Harbor
Year:   1886

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

"The New Colossus" was written as part of a Statue of Liberty fundraiser in 1883 by poet and playwright Emma Lazarus, a Jewish-American of Sephardic descent. Lazarus was a cousin of Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Benjamin Cardozo. A product of the Progressive Era, Lazarus' works often concerned social justice for the poor and for the newly-arrived to these shores.

 

Lazarus died at age 38, probably from Hodgkin's Lymphoma, in 1887.  Although "The New Colossus" was associated with the Statue of Liberty even before her death, it was not until 1903 that friends of Lazarus convinced President Theodore Roosevelt to formally declare "The New Colossus" to be the official verse of Lady Liberty. Lazarus' poem, engraved on a bronze plaque, is now mounted on the pedestal.  

 

The Statue of Liberty (IV)

Location:   New York Harbor
Year:   1886

The Statue of Liberty was finally completed in 1885. After Bartholdi took re-delivery of the arm and other portions that had been sent to America for fundraising, she was fully assembled in Paris that year to test her integrity. She was then dis-assembled, crated in 214 containers, and shipped back to America on the French cargo ship Isere. The Isere nearly foundered in a storm while in transit, but Miss Liberty made it to her permanent home safely. Some of her components had crossed the sea three times. 

Once in America, the statue was warehoused for several months awaiting the completion of the pedestal. 

 

In the Spring of 1886, assembly atop the pedestal began. In 1984, during her most extensive restoration to date, it was discovered that the workmen who originally assembled her had installed the head incorrectly. The head was two feet off center. They had merely used an ice pick to punch ragged holes in the copper sheathing to run the bolts through. This was corrected during the restoration.

The Statue of Liberty was finally dedicated ten years after her expected due date, on July 4th 1886.  

She immediately began to take on her familiar verdigris patina as the copper sheathing oxidized. This patina actually protects the metal beneath. This colorized photo shows what she looked like immediately after construction.

The Statue of Liberty (III)

Location:   New York Harbor
Year:   1886

The creation of the Statue of Liberty was a 21 year process. Although Bartholdi wanted to begin work on the Statue of Liberty in 1865, the political situation in France was unfavorable. France was being ruled by Napoleon III, and although Napoleon III was a social democrat and a progressive in many areas, he was also a compleat imperialist and a rock-ribbed monarchist who would have seen Bartholdi's statue as a paean to revolution. Anyone at the time speaking of "liberty" --- much less a man creating a gigantic figurine in honor of the idea --- would have been subject to probable arrest, imprisonment, torture in jail, and exile to Devil's Island --- that is, if they were not executed outright. Bartholdi waited for a change in the social and political climate, hoping that he could complete the statue in time for the U.S. Centennial, but, as it transpired, he could not even begin work until 1870. It was not until then that the Franco-Prussian War swept Napoleon III's reign out of existence. 

Bartholdi hired Georges Gustave Eiffel, who had designed the famous tower bearing his name, to build the steel core of the supporting structure and the massive framework to which Bartholdi's 300 massive copper plates would be affixed. The statue was designed to sway in the wind between 3 to 6 inches to maintain its structural integrity. The copper plates are 3/32 of an inch thick --- the width of two pennies. 

From the beginning, Bartholdi planned to erect the statue in New York Harbor. Although groups in both Boston and Philadelphia offered to pay for the entire cost of the statue if the site were moved to their city, Bartholdi refused to consider any site but New York. He had in mind specifically Bedloe's Island lying just southwest of the tip of Manhattan Island. 

 

Bedloe's Island was the site of Fort Eliezer Darby Wood, a star-shaped fort constructed for but not completed until after the War of 1812. By 1870, the fort was obsolescent, and Bartholdi felt that the fort could be used as a base for the pedestal he envisioned. 

The face of the Statue of Liberty is based upon that of Bartholdi's mother. Bartholdi wrote of the design: "The surfaces should be broad and simple, defined by a bold and clear design, accentuated in the important places." He wanted to avoid complexity, deducing correctly that the size of the statue would make too much facial detailing overwhelming. 

As the thing developed, Bartholdi's statue took far longer to design and cast than he originally anticipated. Bartholdi knew he could never finish the statue in time for the Centennial, but he worked diligently on sections that could be more easily transported in support of fundraising efforts. Still, it was not until 1875 that Bartholdi announced the creation of the Franco-American Union to raise funds for the statue.

The arm was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. When it was viewed, contributions for the pedestal flooded in from all over America. One of the chief fundraisers on the American side of the ocean was 19 year old Theodore Roosevelt, New Yorker, and future President of the United States.

  

The head was a major attraction at the Paris Exposition in 1878.

While fundraising for the statue itself progressed in France, the pedestal began to be built atop 65 foot tall Fort Wood. Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper magnate, alone raised over $100,000 for the pedestal, $40,000 from his own pocket, over $60,000 in donations as small as pocket change. The pedestal is a square structure 89 feet high. 

The Liberty Island Museum, located in the lobby of the pedestal, chronicles the difficulties and triumphs that France and the United States overcame to together build an enduring symbol of freedom. The museum also covers how the Statue of Liberty's interpretation has changed since its erection in 1886.

 

 

The Statue of Liberty (II)

Location:   New York Harbor
Year:   1886

"Liberty Enlightening The World" was not the first "statue of liberty" conceived for the United States. A statue for the top of the national Capitol Building was part of architect Thomas U. Walter’s original design for a new cast-iron dome, which was authorized by Congress in 1855. Like Bartholdi's later, larger statue, the statue planned for the Capitol dome was intended to be a neoclassical representation of "Libertas." 

The original drawings showed a 16-foot statue of a woman holding a Phrygian Cap on the long rod with which a slave would be symbolically touched during manumission ceremonies in ancient Rome. The Phrygian Cap, sometimes called a Liberty Cap, or a bonnet rouge for its color, was worn by former slaves in Classical times as a symbol of their emancipation.  Sculptor Thomas Crawford of Mississippi was commissioned to create the statue of liberty. 

Crawford felt that the original design lacked impact, and so he sculpted three maquettes, each representing "Libertas" somewhat differently.  Each drew heavily on 19th Century depictions of "Columbia." 

 
Although Senator Jefferson Davis (later President of the Confederacy), who was in charge of the Capitol Dome project in Congress, liked the designs, he, by all reports, "exploded in rage" when he saw that all designs incorporated the Phrygian Cap. Although Davis' assistant, Montgomery C. Meigs (later Quartermaster-General of the Union army) had initially approved the Phrygian Cap design, Davis wrote, "[The historical meaning of the Cap] renders it inappropriate to a people who were born free and should not be enslaved.” Privately, he cursed Crawford, a fellow Mississippian, for designing a "goddamned abolitionist statue." 

The Phrygian Cap was removed. Instead, Crawford designed a crested version of a Roman helmet, “the crest of which is composed of an eagle’s head and a bold arrangement of feathers, suggested by the costume of our Indian tribes.”  He also draped the figure, now named Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace, in an Indian blanket, brooched with a large "U.S."  The Statue of Freedom (as it quickly became known) is holding a sheathed sword and a shield with thirteen stripes.   

Crawford died in 1857, leaving only the plans for the approved model behind. The model was  completed Italy in several parts, and was shipped to the United States after a long delay. The ship carrying the statue nearly sank during the crossing (oddly enough, the same thing happened to the ship carrying Bartholdi's statue almost thirty years later).  The statue did not reach Washington D.C. until December 1859.  

Bronze casting began in Maryland 1860, but the Civil War delayed completion of the casting and completion of the Dome both. Due to manpower needs caused by the war, the foundry foremen all joined the military (on both sides), and the statue was finalized by Philip Reid, who was, irony of ironies, a slave.

Late in 1863, construction of the dome was sufficiently advanced for the installation of the statue, which was hoisted by former slaves in sections and assembled atop the cast-iron pedestal. The final section, the figure's head and shoulders, was raised on December 2, 1863, to a salute of 35 guns. 

The Statue of Freedom has graced the Capitol Dome since then, except for four months in 1993, when it was removed for extensive restoration. The figure stands atop a half-globe representing the Earth girded by the National Motto, "E Pluribus Unum ("From Many, One").  

She stands 19 and one-half feet tall, and weighs 15,000 pounds. The top of her crested helmet is 288 feet above ground level. 

The Statue of Liberty (I)

Location:   New York Harbor
Year:   1886

The Statue of Liberty, less well-known by its proper name, "Liberty Enlightening the World" or in French, "La Liberté éclairant le monde" is a neoclassical sculpture that stands on Liberty Island (formerly Bedloe's Island) in the midst of New York Harbor, just south of Manhattan Island. 

 
"The Lady With The Lamp," "Lady Liberty," "Miss Liberty," or "The Lady In The Harbor" is an iconic symbol of the United States of America.  At the time it was dedicated, New York Harbor was (as it remains) the key point of entry into the United States for immigrants and visitors, and the sight of the Statue from shipboard, from the air, or simply dominating the harbor, is tremendously evocative for those who come to our shores, and for their descendants. The statue is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet of laws) upon which is recorded the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

The statue is crowned with a seven-pointed diadem representing both the rays of the rising sun, the seven continents, and the seven seas, symbolizing the scope of freedom. 

 

She holds aloft an immense torch in her right hand. 

 

A broken chain (difficult to see from the ground) lies at her feet. 

 
The statue was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi as a Centennial birthday present from the people of France to the people of the United States, reaffirming the bonds between the U.S. and its first ally. 

Inspiration for the statue came from many classical sources. "Columbia" is a female representation of the United States, similar in appearance to Miss Liberty. 

 
Libertie is often anthropomorphized as a woman in French art and sculpture, and classical statues of  the goddess Libertas were common in the ancient world. Among the most immediate of inspirations was   Eugène Delacroix's famed painting, Liberty Leading the People (1830). In this painting, which commemorates France's Revolution of 1830, a half-clothed Liberty leads an armed mob over the bodies of the fallen. Bartholdi, however, wanted to avoid any suggestions that Miss Liberty herself might be violent.  

According to tradition, if not to the official history endorsed by the United States government, Bartholdi was moved to create the statue based upon a comment made by a French law professor and politician, Édouard René de Laboulaye in 1865. In the wake of the defeat of the Confederacy in the War Between The States and in the light of the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished American slavery,  Laboulaye commented that the Centennial of the United States was barely a decade away, and that any monument raised to the Centennial of American independence would properly be a joint project of the French and American peoples. Considering further, he said, that the monument should be a birthday gift to the United States.

Dedicated on October 28, 1886, Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty is truly immense: 

She weighs 450,000 pounds. 

She stands 305 feet and one inch tall from ground to torch tip (including the pedestal). The figure herself is 151 feet and one inch tall, making her the largest statue in the world.  

She is constructed of 300 huge copper plates sheathing a steel skeleton designed and foundried by George Gustave Eiffel. 

Lady Liberty wears a size 879 shoe.  

She has a 35-foot waistline. 

Her right arm is 42 feet long, her right hand is 16 feet and five inches long, and her index finger is eight feet one inch long. 

Her face is 17 feet and three inches long, and her head is ten feet wide.