A Symbol Of America

By: Reese Yan

There's a statue of a woman with a crown on her head and a torch in her hand. She stands 151 feet tall ( about 35 eleven-year-olds stacked together). Can you guess who it is? It’s the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture that is made out of 69,000 pounds of copper.

The Statue of Liberty first started as an idea by Edouard de Laboulaye. In 1865, every country was allowed to elect its own government leader, but France was different. Just as the Civil War ended, thirteen American colonies rose up against the king of England, and so too the French people rebelled against their king. Even though the French Revolution began in 1789, unlike the American Revolution, the French revolution was a disaster. Instead of becoming a free country, France was ruled by a series of emperors. And that made Laboulaye want to make a statement in support of political freedom. However, it would put him in danger, so Laboulaye thought, “What if France gave America an amazing monument that celebrated liberty?” And that's how the Statue of Liberty came to be.

Laboulaye thought he first needed to find a sculptor. He found Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. Bartholdi liked to work on big pieces of art. Soon, they both decided that they were going to make a lighthouse in the shape of a woman. Bartholdi started to sketch an idea, but he had to visit America to get their approval first. As Bartholdi was visiting America, he found the perfect spot for his dream statue, New York Harbor. Although the idea was sudden, America still managed to approve. During the process of making the Statue of Liberty, it first started as a small model. The process of the statue was the torch, head, and then body. Furthermore, in order to continue the making of the statue, they needed money, so after the torch was ready, Bartholdi put it on display and charged people money in order to go onto the statue's torch. That held twelve to fifteen people at a time.

In addition, after all the pieces of the Statue of Liberty were all done, the statue got taken down, and then put into crates to be shipped to the U.S. Alongside the pieces being ready and shipped, the pedestal was also ready. Soon enough, the Statue of Liberty was put together on Liberty Island in New York. The torch was no longer a tourist destination; instead, you could go on the crown on top of her head.

Even though creating the Statue of Liberty was just an idea by Edouard de Laboulaye, he still managed to make his idea of a gift come true. And whenever soldiers came back from war, they would see the Statue of Liberty, and they say that when they see the Statue of Liberty, it seems as if the statue is welcoming soldiers back home from war. Therefore, many people still visit the Statue of Liberty yearly, remembering it as a symbol of America.