Birthday Girl
In 1865, a young French sculptor named Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi went to
a banquet near the town of Versailles where he struck up a conversation with
Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent historian.
De Laboulaye, a great admirer of the United States, observed that
the country's centennial was approaching in 1876. He thought it would be a
good idea for France to present America with a gift to commemorate the occasion.
But what? Bartholdi proposed a giant statue of some kind... and thought
about it for the next six years
Coming to America
By 1871, Bartholdi had most of the details worked out in his mind: The American
monument would be a colossal statue of a woman called "Liberty Enlightening the World."
It would be paid for by the French people, and the pedastal it stood on would be financed and
built by Americans.
The idea excited him so much that he booked a passage on a ship and sailed to
New York to drum up support for it. As he entered New York Harbour, Bartholdi noticed a
small 12-acre piece of land near Ellis Island, called Bedloe's Island. He decided it was
the perfect spot for the statue.
Bartholdi spent the next five months travelling around the United States and getting
support for the statue. Then he went back to France, where the government of Emperor Napolean
III (Napolean Bonaparte's nephew) was openly hostile to the democratic and republican ideals
celebrated by the Statue of Liberty. They would have jailed him if he'd spoken of the project
openly. So Bartholdi kept a low profile until 1874, when the Third Republic was proclaimed
after Napolean's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.
Bartholdi went back to work. He founded a group called the Franco-American Union,
to help raise money for the statue. He also recruited Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, soon to become
famous for the Eiffel Tower, to design the steel and iron framework to hold the statue up.
A Woman in a Hurry
By now, the centennial was only two years away. It was obvious that the huge statue
couldn't be designed, financed, built, shipped and installed on Bedloe's Island in time for the
big celebration. But Bartholdi kept going anyway.
Raising the $400,000 he estimated... wasn't easy. Work stopped frequently when cash
ran out and Batholdi and his people missed deadline after deadline. Then in 1880, the Franco-American
Union came up with the idea of holding a "liberty" lottery to raise funds. That did the trick.
In the United States, things were harder. There was some enthusiasm, but not as much as
in France. It was, after all, a French statue and not everyone was sure the country
needed a French statue, even for free. The U.S. Congress did vote unanimously to accept the gift
from France... but it didn't provide any funding for the pedastal, and neither did the city of New
York. Neither did the state.
Lady's Man
In 1883, the U.S. Congress vpted down a fresh attempt to provide $100,000 toward the
cost of the pedastal; the vote so outraged Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World
that he launched a campaign in the pages of his newspaper to raise the money.
"The Bartholdi statue will soon be on its way to enlighten the world," he told his
readers, "more appropriate would be the gift of a statue of parsimony than a statue of liberty.
If this is the appreciation we show of a friendly nation's sentiment and generosity." After
two months of non-stop haranguing, he managed to raise exactly $135.75 of the $200,000 needed
to build the pedastal.
Nothing to Stand On
In June of 1884, work on the statue itself was finished. Bartholdi had
erected it in a courtyard next to his studio in Paris. The original plan had been
to dismantle it as soon as it was completed, pack it into shipping crates
and send it to the United States, where it would be installed atop the
pedastal on Bedloe's Island...
But the pedastal wasn't even close to being finished. So Bartholdi
left the statue standing in the courtyard.
In September of 1884 work on the pedastal ground to a halt when the
project ran out of money. An estimated $100,000 was still needed. When it
appeared that New York was coming up empty handed, Boston, Cleveland,
Philadelphia and San Francisco began to compete to have the Statue of
Liberty built in their cities.
If At First You Don't Succeed...
Furious, Joseph Pulitzer decided to try again. In the two years since
his first campaign, his newspaper's circulation had grown from a few
thousand readers to more than 100,000. He hoped that now his paper was big
enough to make a difference. For more than five months, beginning May 16, 1885,
Pulitzer beseeched his readers day after day to send in what they could.
No reader was too humble, no donation too small; every person who contributed
would receive a mention in the newspaper. "The statue is not a gift from the
millionaire of France to the millionaires of America," he told readers,
"but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America.
Take this appeal to yourself personally."
This time, the campaign began to get results. By March 27, 2,525 people
had contributed $2,359.67. Then on April 1, Pulitzer announced that the
ship containing the crated parts of the statue would leave France aboard the
French warship Isere on May 8th. The excitement began to build,
prompting a new wave of giving. By April 15th he'd raised $25,000 and a month
later anothe $25,000 - enough money to restart work on the pedastal.
At this point, the makers of Castoria laxative stepped forward to
help. They offered to chip in $25,000, "provided that for the period of one
year, you permit us to place across the top of the pedastal the word
'Castoria.'" they wrote. the offer of a laxatrive for Miss Liberty was
politely declined; Castoria kept its money.
On a Roll
By now the race to fund the pedastal had captivated the entire country,
and money really began pouring in. People sent in pennies, nickels and
dimes... and they began buying copies of the World each day to keep
track of the race; by the time the dust had settled, the World's circulation
had exploded to the point that it was the most widely read newspaper in all of
the Western hemisphere.
On June 19, the fundraising passed the $75,000 mark; on July 22, the
Isere arrived in New York Harbour and began unloading its cargo; bringing
the excitement - and the giving - to its peak.
Finally, on August 11, Pulitzer's goal was met. "ONE HUNDRED
THOUSAND DOLLARS! TRIUMPHANT COMPLETION OF THE WORLD'S FUND FOR THE
LIBERTY PEDASTAL." More than 120,000 people had contributed to the effort, for an
average donation of 83 cents per person.
Work on the pedastal now moved at a steady clip; by April 1886 it was
finished, and the pieces of the statue itself were put into place. The internal
steel and iron framework structure went up first; then the pieces of the
statue's outer skin were attached one by one. Finally, on October 28, 1886, at
a ceremony headed by President Grover Cleveland, the statue was opened to
the public... more than ten years after the orriginal July 4, 1876 deadline.
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