Statue of liberty

                  STATUE OF LIBERTY.


The Statue of Liberty stands in the New York Harbor and has greeted many immigrants into Ellis Island. At the time, Lady Liberty was letting them know that their journey to find freedom, democracy, and a better way of life, was officially over. The Statue of Liberty is very important to many Americans because of what it represents.

The Statue of Liberty is a figure of Libertas, a robed Roman liberty goddess. She holds a torch above her head with her right hand, and in her left hand carries a tabula ansata. In (July 4, 1776), the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

 A broken chain lies at her feet as she walks forward. The statue became an icon of īfreedom and of the United States, and a national park tourism destination. It is a welcoming sight to immigrants arriving from abroad.

Bartholdi was inspired by a French law professor and politician, Édouard René de Laboulaye, who is said to have commented in 1865 that any monument raised to U.S. independence would properly be a joint project of the French and U.S. peoples. Because of the post-war instability in France, work on the statue did not commence until the early 1870s.


In 1875, Laboulaye proposed that the French finance the statue and the U.S. provide the site and build the pedestal. Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were exhibited for publicity at international expositions.




The torch-bearing arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Madison Square Park in Manhattan from 1876 to 1882. Fundraising proved difficult, especially for the Americans, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened by lack of funds. Publisher Joseph Pulitzer, of the New York World, started a drive for donations to finish the project and attracted more than 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar. The statue was built in France, shipped overseas in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then called Bedloe's Island. The statue's completion was marked by New York's first ticker-tape parade and a dedication ceremony8 presided over by President Grover Cleveland.
The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933 it has been maintained by the National Park Service. Public access to the balcony around the torch has been barred since 1916.

Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty
Date: 09 march 2019






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