Lady Liberty

The Statue of Liberty, also known as Lady Liberty, was a gift from France to the people of the United States to recognize the friendship during the American Revolution. Now she has become a symbol of freedom.

The statues sculptor was Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi; he modeled Lady Liberty's face after his mother, Charlotte. He also had many symbolic features in the statue, including twenty-five windows in the crown to represent gemstones found on the earth and the heaven's rays shining over the world. The seven spikes on the statue's crown represent the seven seas and continents of the world. And, the tablet she holds in her left hand reads "July 4th, 1776", the date of American independence.

The statue was so large that Bartholdi got Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, who designed the Eiffel Tower, to help him fix structural problems, and to design the huge iron pylon and other work that allows the statue's copper to move independently yet remain upright.

When it was complete, the French ship Isere transported the Statue of Liberty's 300 copper pieces, which were packed in 214 crates, to America. However, the ship almost sank in stormy seas; it arrived in New York on June 17, 1885. But, the Statue's was not assembled for a year until 1886 when the pedestal was completed on the12-acre Liberty Island.

In 1965, Ellis Island, where thousands of immigrants came through as they arrived in America, became part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Through a lot of restoration, its main building opened on September 10, 1990, as a national museum of immigration. Ellis Island is federal property with territory in both of the states of New York and New Jersey.

The Statue of Liberty is an important piece of American history. Many of our ancestors entered the United States at the port where the Statue stands. The Wall of Honor is the largest wall of names in the world. There are currently 700,000 names on the wall. The Statue might have been a gift to recognize friendship between the Americans and French, but it is a symbol of freedom to people all over the world.