A Gift of Friendship
The Colossal figure of a woman striding with uplifted flame across the entrance to the new World is a symbol of America to most people, but she was conceived as an expression of French republican ideals. The idea for such a monument was first discussed in 1865 at the Paris home of Edouard Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, legal scholar and authority on America. Republicans like Laboulaye chafed under the repressive regime of Napoleon 3 and looked with admiration to America, a thriving republic which had just servived a civil war and was becoming a prosperouse industrial nation. America had achieved a delicate balance between liberty and stability that for so long had eluded France. Laboulaye envisioned a monument thet would keep alive the republican ideal in France and strengthen friendship between two peoples who shared that ideal. Aware of how potent a symbol the human embodiement of liberty by Eugene Delacroix of Liberty Leading the People, Laboulaye discussed his idea with one of his dinner guests, sculptor Auguste Bartholdi. Bartholdi traveled to America in 1871 to propose the monument and choose a site.

A monument would be a sincere gift to America, but Laboulaye was also making a virtue of necessity. He knew that a strongsymbol of liberty was too inflammatory to be tolerated by the emperor within the boundaries of France. Bartholdi saw that New York Harbor, as a major entry point to America, had the right symbolic value.
While Bartholdi was in America, events in France helped to make the statue a reality. After Napoleon III was dethroned following the defeat of France by Prussia in 1871, monarchists and republicans contended for the nation's soul. Laboulaye and other republicanssaw the statue as the best way to establish the idea of a republican France again became a republic. Even then, liberty was precarious, and the republicans knew the concept would have to be burned into the national consciousness with a powerful image. Bartholdi, the man given the task, was an academic sculptor driven by two obsessions, liberty and immensity. Inspired by ancient colossi, especially in Egypt, he wanted his statue of Liberty to be overpowering. He also had in mind the Colossus of Rhodes when he envisioned the monument at the entrance to a harbor.
After creating Liberty in a 1.25-meter clay model , bartholdi began fabricating the statue in 1875. He enlarged the model in plaster several times until he had 3000 full-sized sections. The skin of the statue was formed by the repousse process, in which copper sheets 2.5 mm thick were hammered into shape against wooden forms matching the contours of the plaster sections. The engineering problems were solved brilliantly by Gustave Eiffel, already known for his daring bridge designs. A huge central wroughtiron pylon supported a secondary framework to which the statue's skin was attached with flexible iron bars. The skin thus ''floated'' on the pylon, strong enough to withstand high winds, yet resilient enough to expand and contract with changes in temperature. After its comletion in June 1884, the statue stood on Paris until it was dimantled and sent to America early in 1885.

Only one conditionwas placed on France's gift to America. The younger nation had to provide the statue's foundation and pedestal, designed by architect Richard M.Hunt. Public appeal for donations began in 1877, and in 1883 work began on the foundation, the lagest concrete mass of its time. The statue was finished by 1884, but donations were not as generous as expected, and the completion of Hunt's pedestal was in jeopardy. Those who could have offorded large contributions objected to the statue on aesthetic grounds, while the ordinary citizen regarded the statue as New York's problem, or a frivolity the rich should underwrite. Joseph Pulitzer, Hungarian immigrant and publisher of The World, took on the job of raising the money. Through his paper he blasted the rich for not donating and stressed the symbolic importance of the statue, soliciting contributions from the masses. The completed pedestal and statue were dedicated on October 28, 1886.