France Gives The United States The Statue of Liberty
Today in history: July 4, 1884
On July 4, 1884, at a ceremony in Paris, the commemoration of the friendship between France and the U.S. occurred when the 225-ton Statue of Liberty, built in France, was formally presented to the U.S. ambassador, Ambassador Levi Morton.
French abolitionist and historian Édouard de Laboulaye thought of the idea for the statue in 1865 in honor of 100 years of U.S. independence, the liberation of slaves, and the establishment of American democracy.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a sculptor, designed drawings of an enormous woman in a robe holding a torch by 1870, potentially created for the opening of the Suez Canal. .
In the early 1870s, Bartholdi visited the U.S. to raise money for a French-American monument. It would be located on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor.
Work on the statue, originally titled “Liberty Enlightening the World,” began in 1875 in France.
The following year, to help with U.S. fundraising to build the statue’s enormous base, the completed left forearm and torch were on display in New York and Philadelphia.
The base of the hammered copper sheets was constructed, and when finished in 1884, the Statue of Liberty was slightly above 151 feet and weighed 225 tons. After the July 4 presentation, the statue was disassembled and shipped to New York City, where it would be reassembled.
Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, helped raise more than $100,000 in donations for the construction of the base in mid-1886. The base on Bedloe’s Island was completed in October 1886, and during that same month, in a ceremony led by President Grover Cleveland, the Statue of Liberty was formally dedicated to the U.S.
The inspection station on Ellis Island opened six years later, and from 1892 to 1954, more than 12 million immigrants arrived.
On the base, there is a plaque with a line from Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus,” originally written to raise money for the base:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”