On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France to the United States, was officially dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland. The dedication ceremony was a grand event attended by thousands of people, including many notable figures of the time.
The famous statue, designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, stands at 151 feet tall and weighs approximately 225 tons. It depicts a robed woman, representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, holding a torch in her raised right hand and a tablet in her left, inscribed with the date of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
The idea for the Statue of Liberty was first proposed by French politician Édouard René de Laboulaye in 1865 as a celebration of the Union victory in the American Civil War and a symbol of the friendship between France and the United States. The statue was constructed in France, shipped to the United States in 350 individual pieces, and reassembled on a pedestal on Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island) in New York Harbor.
The dedication ceremony featured a parade, music, speeches, and fireworks. The event was widely reported in newspapers across the country, and the statue quickly became an iconic symbol of the United States and a beacon of hope for immigrants arriving in the New World.
Fun fact: The statue's face is said to be modeled after the sculptor's mother, Charlotte Bartholdi, and the body is believed to be inspired by the sculptor's wife, Jeanne-Emilie Baheux de Puysieux.
This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
