On October 28, 1886, rain poured down on New York Harbor, but nobody seemed to mind. Boats packed the water. Bands played. A parade of more than a million New Yorkers marched through Manhattan. On a small island in the harbor, a 305-foot copper woman stood draped in a giant French flag. President Grover Cleveland stepped up to the platform. The flag was pulled off her face, and the Statue of Liberty looked out over America for the first time.
The statue had been a gift from France to celebrate one hundred years of American independence. A French sculptor named Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed her, modeling her face partly on his own mother. The internal iron framework that holds her up was engineered by Gustave Eiffel - the same man who would build the famous Eiffel Tower a few years later. The statue was built in France, taken apart into 350 pieces, packed into 214 crates, and shipped across the Atlantic. Americans had to raise money to build the pedestal, and a newspaper editor named Joseph Pulitzer asked ordinary people to chip in. More than 120,000 readers sent dimes and pennies until enough was collected.
The poem on the pedestal was added later. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,' wrote Emma Lazarus in 1883. As the great age of immigration began, the statue became the first sight millions of newcomers saw as their ships entered New York Harbor. She still stands today, her torch held high, welcoming visitors from a small island that used to be called Bedloe's and is now named Liberty Island in her honor.
