BY LARRY ANTHONY
Officially named “Liberty Enlightening the World,” the statue has welcomed millions of immigrants as their ships arrived in New York City Harbor. It stands on a pedestal inside an old star fort on Bedloe’s Island (now called Liberty Island). It rises to 305′ tall.
Finally erected in 1886, it was a gift to the USA by the people of France to commemorate the 100-year centennial and the friendship between the two countries.
It seems to have been conceived by Edouard Laboulaye, a French abolitionist and political activist, in collaboration with French sculptor/designer Frederic Bartholdi. The design was patterned after a Greek goddess of liberty. The skin of the statue is .094″ malleable copper sheeting, which acquired a greenish patina that was noticeable by 1900.
The New Colossus
“Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning
to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The above is an excerpt of the poem written by Emma Lazarus. She was deeply moved by the plight of the Russian Jews she met in her work as an aide on Ward’s Island.
In 1883, Senator William Evarts and author Constance Cary Harrison asked Miss Lazarus to write a sonnet for the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund. The poem became very popular for a while and then was forgotten.
Years later, a friend of Miss Lazarus found the sonnet in a book in a bookstore, and in 1903, it was put on a plaque and can be seen at the Statue Museum at the base of the statue.
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) was of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish descent. She was born “to a wealthy sugar refining family whose roots extended to the very early days of New York City…”
The statue’s internal structure was designed by Maurice Koechlin, the chief engineer of Gustave Eiffel’s engineering company that designed the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France (1889).
This writer has never been to New York City. I normally sketch on location, but in this case, I downloaded several photos of the statue and traced one, referring to the others to clarify some details.
Thanks to Wikipedia.org and the National Park Service website! -Larry