It was 130 years ago today, June 17, 1885 that the Statue of Liberty arrived in America as a gift from France. It took the French over a decade to assemble the pieces for shipment to America.
Origins of the Statue
of Liberty
Around 1865, as the American Civil War drew to a close, the
French historian Edouard de Laboulaye proposed that France
create a statue to give to the United
States in celebration of that nation’s
success in building a viable democracy. The sculptor Frederic Auguste
Bartholdi, known for largescale sculptures, earned the commission; the goal was
to design the sculpture in time for the centennial of the Declaration of
Independence in 1876.
In 1885, Bartholdi completed the statue, which was
disassembled, packed in more than 200 crates, and shipped to New
York , arriving that June aboard the French frigate Isere . Over the next four months, workers reassembled the
statue and mounted it on the pedestal; its height reached 305 feet (or 93
meters), including the pedestal. On October 28, 1886, President Grover
Cleveland officially dedicated the Statue of Liberty in front of thousands of
spectators.
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