Skip to main content
Statue of Liberty
Society
Main Category
Sub Category
Era
Date Created
Location Country
us
Coordinates
40.689167, -74.044444
Address1
Statue of Liberty National Monument
Address2
New York Harbor
City
Brooklyn
State
Country
Zip

Sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi is credited with bringing the concept of the Statue of Liberty to fruition, deriving inspiration from the 19th-century penchance for grandiose monuments. He originally designed the statue for placement at the Suez Canal, but the project was never commissioned. After a promotional trip across America, Bartholdi's ideas finally took hold in 1874, and a Franco-American coalition was formed to fund the project, with the Americans building the base and the French the statue. Bartholdi delivered the statue in pieces: first the arm and torch, then the head, and finally the body.

French engineer Gustave Eiffel designed the intricate skeleton for the statue, an iron frame that supports the copper-sheathed exterior. American architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the pedestal.

Resource

  1. Mary J. Shapiro,  How They Built the Statue of Liberty , New York: Random House, 1985.
Through the aesthetic genius of Frederick Bartholdi and the engineering ingenuity of other French and American engineers, particularly Gustav Eiffel, Charles Stone and Charles C. Schneider, the Statue of Liberty was completed in 1886 and became the world's symbol of the United States as the land of the free.
Image Credit
Public Domain (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
Image Caption
Statue of Liberty

We hope you enjoyed this essay.

Please support America's only magazine of the history of engineering and innovation, and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to Invention & Technology.

Donate

Stay informed - subscribe to our newsletter.
The subscriber's email address.