Statue of Liberty, originally named "Liberty Enlightening the World," was a gift from France, unveiled on 28 October 1886 at Bedloe's Island (later Liberty Island) in New York Harbor. There, President Grover Cleveland accepted it as a long-delayed commemoration of a century of American independence. Rising 151 feet above an 89-foot pedestal, it was then the tallest structure in New York City.

The French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi had designed the statue with assistance from the great engineer Gustave Eiffel. It was then shipped from Paris in sections. The project's sponsors were a group of French liberals who tirelessly promoted the United States as a model of popular government rooted in stability and order and wanted France to follow the American example. Accordingly, Bartholdi's gigantic classical goddess carries a tablet representing the American Declaration of Independence. Yet she faces outward, stolid, strong, and unmovable as beams from her upraised lamp radiate across the sea.

The history of the Statue of Liberty is largely a story of its growing centrality and importance among the cherished symbols of the American nation. At first it differed chiefly in size and location from numerous other classical goddesses who crowded the nineteenth century's repertory of symbols. But size and location were crucially important. She was an overwhelming presence at the entry to America's greatest city. As more vaporous goddesses faded in the harsh light of modernity, the great statue became the centerpiece of a magical American place, recognizable everywhere through postcards and magazine covers, with the New York City skyline rising behind her.

To many Americans she also conveyed a profoundly personal message. The millions of immigrants who were landing at New York City in the early twentieth century saw in this majestic figure their first intimation of a new life. In her uplifted arm they read a message of welcome that said, "This vast republic wants me!" By 1910 public schools in some large cities were reenacting in pageants (with a teacher as the statue) the gathering of immigrants into an inclusive nation.

The use of the statue to identify America with an active promotion of freedom received further emphasis in the Liberty Bond drives and parades of World War I and from the ideological mobilization of the United States against totalitarian regimes during and after World War II.

In domestic affairs, embattled images of the statue also energized campaigns for civil liberties and women's rights.

In the mid-1980s, a fabulously successful fund-raising campaign led by Chrysler executive Lee Iacocca produced a deep restoration of the statue, capped in October 1986 by a four-day extravaganza celebrating its centennial.

Bibliography

Dillon, Wilton S., and Neil G. Kotler, eds. The Statue of Liberty Revisited: Making a Universal Symbol. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994.

Liberty: The French-American Statue in Art and History. New York: Harper and Row, 1986.

Trachtenberg, Marvin. The Statue of Liberty. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.

Encyclopedia of American History Copyright © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.