DailyCelestialChallenge Wednesday: Structures

Statue of Liberty

Far from being a romantic story, the construction of the Statue of Liberty is full of difficulties. Economic and political difficulties that complicated its construction and were even about to cause it to be erected in a city other than New York.

It all started in 1865 when a young French sculptor named Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi went to a banquet near Versailles. There he met and conversed with Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent French jurist and historian of the time. De Laboulaye, a great admirer of the United States, observed that the country's centenary, to be held in 1876, was approaching, and thought it would be a good idea for France to make a gift to the young nation to commemorate such an event. But what kind of gift? Laboulaye asked himself. Bartholdi saw an unbeatable opportunity to take the conversation to his land and proposed a gigantic statue of some kind. The idea was well received but it stayed in that, an idea, and it would take almost six years for the project to take its first steps.
By 1871, Bartholdi already had most of the details resolved, in his mind, of course: the American monument would be a colossal statue of a woman and would be called "Freedom illuminates the world". The cost would be borne by the French, and the pedestal on which it would settle would be financed and built by the Americans.
In June of 1871, Bartholdi traveled to the United States. During the trip he chose the Island of Bedloe, later known as the "Island of Freedom", to place his sculpture and, during the following 5 months, he tried to get support for his project by traveling all over the country. After that time he returned to France, where the government of Emperor Napoléon III (the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) was openly hostile to the democratic and republican ideals on which the Statue of Liberty was inspired. For this reason Bartholdi tried to go unnoticed until 1874, when the Third Republic was proclaimed after the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War.

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Getting the $ 400,000 that Bartholdi estimated would be necessary to build the statue in France was not going to be easy. Work often stopped due to lack of funds. To overcome this problem, the so-called Franco-American Union was created in 1874, with the purpose of organizing the collection of funds for the construction of the monument. For this, all the media of the time, articles in the press, shows, banquets, taxes, lottery, etc., were used.

It was two years before the celebration of the American centenary and so many delays had made that no one, including Bartholdi, thought that the statue could be built for 1876. Despite this Bartholdi continued with his work and looked for an engineer to do the design of the internal structure of the statue. Gustave Eiffel, who at that time had not yet built the famous tower that bears his name, was hired to carry out this task. He would be in charge of creating an internal structure that would support the statue and design a skeleton that would allow the copper skin to remain vertically.

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Following the plans of Gustave Eiffel, the interior structure was made of iron coated with copper, and would be anchored to the pedestal by a huge central post, given that the weight of the statue would be 225 tons.

In June of 1884 the monument was finished. Bartholdi had erected it in a courtyard next to his studio in Paris. The original plan was to dismantle it as soon as it was completed and send it to the United States, where it would be installed on a pedestal on the Island of Bedloe.
But the works of the pedestal advanced very slowly or, directly, they did not advance. The fact was that, with the statue finished, the base was not yet built and there was no sign that it would be in a short time. But far from being solved, the problems grew. In September 1884 the works had ceased due to lack of funds and an additional $ 100,000 was still needed to complete it. Since money was not showing up anywhere, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and San Francisco began competing to bring the Statue of Liberty to their cities.

The collection of funds to carry out the construction of the base in the United States was under the responsibility of the Attorney General, William M. Evarts. But due to the lack of results in obtaining funding he had to leave his post and was assigned to such work Joseph Pulitzer, editor of the New York World newspaper. For more than five months, starting on March 16, 1885, Pulitzer asked his readers day after day to send what they could. No reader was too humble, no donation too small, every person who contributed would receive a mention in the newspaper. His call was answered and on August 11, 1885, $ 120,000 had been collected. Finally the statue would travel to New York.

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To transport it, it became necessary to disarm the statue. The dismantling began in January 1885. The statue, was sent to Rouen by train and went down the Seine River by ship, before its arrival at the port of Le Havre. The monument arrived in New York on June 17, 1886, aboard a French frigate called "Iserese" and received a triumphant welcome. To make possible the crossing of the Atlantic, the statue was dismantled in 350 pieces, divided into 214 boxes. After the arrival of the monument, it was reassembled in just four months. On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was inaugurated in New York, in the presence of President Grover Cleveland. The monument, which wanted to be a gift to celebrate the centennial of American independence, had arrived ten years late.