October 1925
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Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty |
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STATUE OF LIBERTY It Stands To-day for 150 Years of Friendship Between France and the United States. Forty Years Ago Next October It Was Unveiled. New York Harbor presents an amazing moving panorama. Great steamers are putting out toward the European lanes. Weary old tramps, battered and dirty, creep in from the sea. A broad-beamed ferry as gentle as an old family horse pokes along with commuters from Staten Island. Heavy-Iaden barges come two abreast with a sputtering, grunting tug between. A division of destroyers back from battle practice is on its way to anchorage up the Hudson. A swift, slender Coast Guard cutter is setting out for duty on rum row. Mlle. Liberty looks down on the picture with bronze-green eyes, tirelessly holding the torch with her great right arm. Officially her name is "Liberty Enlightening the World ; " the public calls her the "Statue of Liberty ." She is approaching the discreet age of twoscore and ten, for it was just half a century ago that a group of promInent Frenchmen first proposed her as a gift to the United States to symbolize the friendship of France. Ten years passed, however, before she stopped traveling around in pieces and took up her abode on Bedloe's Island. 
BARTHOLDI'S STATUE OF LIBERTY - NEW YORK BAY Her Grecian lips seem to say, "I hold high my torch as a pledge for the continuation of a century and a half of friendship between nations that cherish liberty as the sacred hope of the universe." Liberty Enlightening the World is the work of Frederick Auguste Bartholdi, who, born in Colmar, Alsace, grew up in time to fight on the staff of Garibaldi in the Franco-German War of 1870. His idea, which took form when he visited New York City after the war, was that the statue should be presented to the United States in 1876 to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of American independence. On his return to France he set out with a group of enthusiastic associates to gather the money to carry out the project. French cities, general councils, societies and thousands of individuals - among them many who were very poor - contributed sous and francs until at last $700,000 was in hand. Meantime $300,000 was collected in the United States to build the pedestal. The time was too short to permit the erection of the statue in 1876, but the forearm and torch reached America for display at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In 1885, the French steamer lsere brought the remainder to New York in two hundred and ten packing cases. The parts were then put together and the masterpiece unveiled in 1886. The statue is the largest of its kind in the world. Miss Liberty is a "perfect thirty-six," measured by feet, not inches. She is one hundred and eleven feet tall and thirty-five feet around the waist. Her mouth is three feet wide and her nose four feet long. The United States Government pays all her bills, chief among which is five hundred dollars a month for the lights in the torch. 
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Statue of Liberty Homepage Statue of Liberty Facts Statue of Liberty Web Links Statue of Liberty Gallery Statue of Liberty News Questions from Visitors to this Site World's Greatest Statues This page maintained by Gary Feuerstein gary@endex.com 26 December 2003 
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