The Beginning of the Statue of Liberty

The idea of a present as a token of Franco-American friendship and to mark the centenary of the independence of the country is due to the politician and historian Edward Lefebvre de Laboulaye, author of Paris in America and Contes Bleus. Bartholdi reportedly told the latter:

“I will fight for freedom, I appeal to free peoples. I try to glorify the Republic there. “

At that time, the United States was just out of the Civil War that lasted from 1861 to 1865, and the country was in the midst of reconstruction and the dawn of the Gilded Age. The Alsatian sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was engaged to design a statue that was to be completed in 1876, for the centenary of Independence. What he designed became the present day Statue of Liberty.

The French gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States in 1886, to commemorate the centenary of American independence and as a sign of friendship between the two nations. The inauguration of the statue was celebrated on 28 October 1886 in the presence of the President of the United States, Grover Cleveland. The statue is designed by the French sculptor born in Colmar named Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi and its internal structure was designed by engineer Gustave Eiffel. The choice of brass to be used in the construction was entrusted to the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who had the idea of using the technique of pushing. The statue is also a part of National Historic Landmarks since 15 October 1924 and the World Heritage List of UNESCO since 1984.