The Statue of Liberty was designed in the 1870's by a famous sculptor from France. A sculptor is a person who builds statues from materials such as marble, clay, or copper. Mr. Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor desired to build a statue, which would represent the idea of American liberty and independence. He desired to raise the funds for the project by receiving gifts from the French people. He wanted the statue to be a symbol of the friendship between France and America.
Mr. Bartholdi believed that a trip to American would give him the impressions, which could help him form a picture in his mind for his sculpture. During his visit to America, he contacted some of our country's leaders and talked to them about his project. Most leaders supported Mr. Auguste Bartholdi's idea. Even President Grant, who once led the Union armies during the Civil War, met with Mr. Bartholdi to have a friendly talk about the construction of the statue.
People were happy to show Mr. Bartholdi interesting places in America. He saw how different American architecture, or construction, was from the architecture of France. Mr. Auguste Bartholdi saw the beautiful Washington Monument, which was still unfinished at the time. He visited cities and saw forest, plains and mountains. He saw canals. Railroad cars, and busy roads. After Mr. Bartholdi had stored up all his impressions of America, he went home to work on his sculpture project.
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Can a sculptor take an idea, such as liberty, and mold it into a statue? Sculptors have taken many ideas and turned them into forms. A sculptor has often shown his impression of courage through a sculpture of a dying soldier. Anyone who has seen a statue of an eagle with its wings spread wide has been left with an impression of strength and power. What form was a clear symbol of liberty? No sculptor had ever before attempted to mold the idea of liberty into a sculptured form.
Finally, Mr. Auguste Batholdi had the impression clearly fixed in his mind. Liberty was to be represented by a woman in a robe with a spiked crown on her head and broken chains lying at her feet.
For a model for the sculpture Mr. Bartholdi chose his mother. His mother was a tall strong woman who had shown courage through numbers of hardships, which she faced after the death of her husband. With no husband she had been forced to take care of her family and work out her problems alone. He recognized, in his mother, many of the characteristics he wanted for his statue. He thought of the many times throughout his boyhood that her presence had been a shelter of peace and safety. He had always been able to go to her with his troubles and cares and receive strength and help for the occasion. She was his mother, but also his friend. For Mr. Bartholdi, America was like his mother. America's presence in the world offered hope for the hungry, poor, and unemployed millions of people who were struggling along in life throughout the world. The complete and proper name for the statue is Liberty Enlightening the World.
Liberty Enlightening the World was to be a strong woman in a robe, which fell in loose folds. In her left arm, she would hold a document, which had the date of the Declaration of Independence on it. Her right arm would hold a torch high in the air. The light from the torch that was to picture America as she enlightened the world with her newly discovered understanding of independence and liberty for all. On the head of the statue would be a crown with large spikes. The spikes, which rested upon the crown of the statue, would look like sunrays pointing in all directions. The chains at her feet would be broken as a symbol of freedom from rule of any other country.
Now that the impression of liberty was clearly stamped on the mind of the sculptor, he began the task of finding a way to mold the idea into a form. A small, exact model of the statue was modeled. The first form was only four feet (120 centimeters) high.
To help with the tremendous engineering task of building the large statue, Mr. Bartholdi contracted and employed a French engineer named Mr. Gustave Eiffel, Me Eiffel's job was to erect and iron and steel framework for the statue. Mr. Gustave Eiffel later became famous for his designs of the great Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.
When Mr. Bartholdi contacted Mr. Eiffel about helping him with his tremendous project, Mr. Eiffel had many suggestions to make. He suggested that the inside framework be erected of iron and that steel supports be connected to the frame. The iron and the steel structure would have to be built strong enough to bear its own weight and resist the forces of winds, which might blow across Liberty Island.
The statue was so tremendous in size that it was necessary to work on the statue in sections. Visitors to the workshop were surprised by the seeming lack of order in the way the men employed were going about their project. The crowned head was on one side of the workshop, an arm on another, and materials were scattered around the room. Those looking on expected a statue to rise as a whole form the toes upward. The sculptor was often among the workers so that he could supervise the construction. Mr. Bartholdi determined which of the four pieces would be worked on and when. Those employed by him simply carried out his plans.
Mr. Bartholdi's presence was necessary in the workshop, as the construction of the statue was hard to understand.
Over 300 copper sheets, 3/32 of an inch (3 millimeters) thick, were molded into the form of the statue by hammering them over the wooden frame. Copper is a reddish-orange metal. Copper is very bright and shiny when it is new. When the statue was first erected on Liberty Island, the sun'' rays, which bounced from the copper, were tremendously bright and almost blinding. However, salt water blowing in from the ocean and changing conditions in New York's climate have turned the monument a greenish color.
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