* STATUE * OF * LIBERTY *
Worldwide symbol of America's promise, the Statue
of Liberty was a Centennial gift of the French people to the
people of the United States in 1876. Sculpted by Bartholdi, and utilizing
revolutionary "curtain wall" technology, the bronze lady lifts
her torch in the middle of New York Harbor, where she has welcomed generations
of immigrants and their descendants. The lady with a lamp stands 151 feet and one inch tall, atop an equally
tall stone pedestal, rising from within an old star-shaped fort on Liberty
Island. On the pedestal are inscribed the famous words of Emma Lazarus,
beginning "Give me your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning
to breathe free . . ." This poem was composed especially to assist
the prolonged fund-raising effort which financed Miss Liberty's installation
in the New World.
The statue's interior structure was engineered by Gustav Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower, and can be viewed from within. Circular staircases formerly took visitors up to the statue's spiky diadem or up inside the arm to the level of the torch. Superbly restored for her own centennial, the Statue is part of the U.S. National Park Service's Ellis Island immigration museum. Both Ellis Island and Liberty Island are accessible by public ferry from the Battery, at the southern tip of Manhattan. Following recent renovation and security installations after the 9-11 catastrophe, Miss Liberty is again open to the public on a limited basis, and Ellis Island "fullwise."
Photo copyright © 1995 by Larry Neilson