Description
The Statue of Liberty is the colossal copper woman holding a torch over New York Harbor, on Liberty Island in Upper New York Bay: a gift from the people of France, dedicated in 1886, and long a symbol of welcome for the immigrants who arrived by sea.
The only way there is the official ferry run by Statue City Cruises, from the Battery in Lower Manhattan or from Liberty State Park in Jersey City; private boats cannot dock. The same ferry also stops at Ellis Island.
The statue itself is 46 meters tall, and 93 meters from the ground to the tip of the torch. Seen up close, the details stand out: the tablet in her left hand, inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI, the date of the Declaration of Independence, and the torch, its flame covered in 24-karat gold.
Look down at her feet for the broken chain and shackle, a reference to the abolition of slavery after the Civil War. It is half-hidden by the robes and hard to see from the ground, so many visitors walk past it.
With a pedestal ticket, visitors enter the base and go up to the pedestal's observation level, just under the statue's feet, with views over the harbor. The pedestal, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, stands inside the star-shaped walls of Fort Wood, an old army fort.
The climb to the crown is the high point, on a narrow staircase inside the statue. Only a limited number of people go up each day, with a separate ticket that can be booked months in advance. The torch has been closed to the public since 1916.
The Statue of Liberty Museum, open to everyone on the island, tells how the statue was conceived and built. Its star is the original torch, carried by Liberty from 1886 to 1984, along with historic photographs, early sketches and a theater with an aerial view of the statue.
France paid for the statue, designed by the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi on an iron framework by Gustave Eiffel; the Americans had to build the pedestal. Money ran short until the publisher Joseph Pulitzer launched a drive in his newspaper, printing every donor's name: 120,000 people gave, most of them less than a dollar.
The statue arrived from France in crates in 1885. When it was assembled it was a shiny reddish brown, the color of new copper; within twenty years the air and the sea had turned it the green it is today.
At the dedication, a French flag covered the face, to be dropped at the end of a speech. Bartholdi mistook a pause for the end and let it fall early, and the cheering cut the speech short.
Don't miss
• The broken chain at her feet.
• The pedestal.
• The climb to the crown.
• The original torch in the museum.
Did you know?
• Before the statue was finished, its torch-bearing arm stood in Madison Square Park in Manhattan for six years, to win support for the project.
• The parade for the dedication gave New York its first ticker-tape parade, when traders at the New York Stock Exchange threw tape from their windows.
• Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus", with the lines "Give me your tired, your poor", is on a bronze plaque in the museum.
The only way there is the official ferry run by Statue City Cruises, from the Battery in Lower Manhattan or from Liberty State Park in Jersey City; private boats cannot dock. The same ferry also stops at Ellis Island.
The statue itself is 46 meters tall, and 93 meters from the ground to the tip of the torch. Seen up close, the details stand out: the tablet in her left hand, inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI, the date of the Declaration of Independence, and the torch, its flame covered in 24-karat gold.
Look down at her feet for the broken chain and shackle, a reference to the abolition of slavery after the Civil War. It is half-hidden by the robes and hard to see from the ground, so many visitors walk past it.
With a pedestal ticket, visitors enter the base and go up to the pedestal's observation level, just under the statue's feet, with views over the harbor. The pedestal, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, stands inside the star-shaped walls of Fort Wood, an old army fort.
The climb to the crown is the high point, on a narrow staircase inside the statue. Only a limited number of people go up each day, with a separate ticket that can be booked months in advance. The torch has been closed to the public since 1916.
The Statue of Liberty Museum, open to everyone on the island, tells how the statue was conceived and built. Its star is the original torch, carried by Liberty from 1886 to 1984, along with historic photographs, early sketches and a theater with an aerial view of the statue.
France paid for the statue, designed by the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi on an iron framework by Gustave Eiffel; the Americans had to build the pedestal. Money ran short until the publisher Joseph Pulitzer launched a drive in his newspaper, printing every donor's name: 120,000 people gave, most of them less than a dollar.
The statue arrived from France in crates in 1885. When it was assembled it was a shiny reddish brown, the color of new copper; within twenty years the air and the sea had turned it the green it is today.
At the dedication, a French flag covered the face, to be dropped at the end of a speech. Bartholdi mistook a pause for the end and let it fall early, and the cheering cut the speech short.
Don't miss
• The broken chain at her feet.
• The pedestal.
• The climb to the crown.
• The original torch in the museum.
Did you know?
• Before the statue was finished, its torch-bearing arm stood in Madison Square Park in Manhattan for six years, to win support for the project.
• The parade for the dedication gave New York its first ticker-tape parade, when traders at the New York Stock Exchange threw tape from their windows.
• Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus", with the lines "Give me your tired, your poor", is on a bronze plaque in the museum.