The Statue of Liberty Was Gifted By The French
The finished Statue of Liberty is formally given to the American ambassador on July 4, 1884, in Paris as a celebration of the friendship between France and the United States. Millions of people visit this famous statue each year!
The statue's concept originated in 1865 when Édouard de Laboulaye, a French historian and abolitionist, suggested building a monument to mark the freeing of the country's slaves, the persistence of American democracy, and the forthcoming centennial of American independence (1876). A statue that sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi may have previously suggested for the opening of the Suez Canal was the inspiration for sketches of a large figure of a robed woman carrying a torch that he produced in 1870.
In France, construction on the statue, properly known as "Liberty Enlightening the World," started in 1875. The finished torch and left forearm were put on exhibit in Philadelphia and New York a year later to aid in American fundraising for the construction of the statue's enormous pedestal.
The Statue of Liberty was built in 1884 and measured little over 151 feet high. It was made of hammered copper sheets that were molded over a steel structure that engineer Gustave Eiffel, who joined the project in 1879, had developed. The statue was disassembled and sent to New York City, where it would be meticulously put back together, after being presented to Ambassador Levi Morton on July 4 of that year in Paris.
More than 12 million immigrants entered the country between 1892 and 1954 thanks to the opening of the inspection facility on nearby Ellis Island six years later. Give me your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," Emma Lazarus wrote in her poem "The New Colossus," which was penned in 1883 to gather money for the pedestal and later inscribed on a plaque at its foot. The Statue of Liberty waved her torch over them.
