The Statue of Liberty: Engineering, Mythology, and the Slight Disappointment of a Symbol

Last visit: december 2024

My rating: meh

Duration of visit: 1 hour + 30 minutes of ferry time

When you visit a city, there is always some monument, some landmark, some attraction that you are essentially obliged to see, even if it does not particularly interest you, if only to be able to answer the inevitable and persistent questions that await you when you return from your trip.

In New York City, for me that monument was the Statue of Liberty.

The statue is clearly visible from Lower Manhattan and undeniably contributes to defining both the skyline and the identity of the city. Yet I never felt a strong urge to go and see it up close. I would have been perfectly satisfied observing it from afar, somewhere in the background of the harbor while standing in Manhattan.

But the tyranny of the checklist eventually asserts its ferocious will.

And so, here we are: a post about the Statue of Liberty.

Seen from the ferry crossing the harbor of New York City, the statue has the peculiar quality of being at once utterly familiar and strangely abstract. Everyone already knows it. It has been reproduced millions of times in textbooks, films, and political cartoons. Yet when the green silhouette of the colossus slowly emerges from the mist of the harbor, it becomes clear that the monument is not merely a symbol of America, it is one of the most ambitious feats of nineteenth-century engineering and political messaging ever attempted.

And yet, after spending some time on Liberty Island, visiting the museum and examining the extraordinary technical ingenuity that made the statue possible, one is left with an oddly ambivalent conclusion: the story behind the monument is vastly more fascinating than the monument itself.

This review is part of my New York series. If you are planning a visit, you may also want to read my complete New York travel guide.

A Gift from France That Was Never Just a Gift

The origin of the Statue of Liberty lies in a mixture of political idealism, diplomatic symbolism, and nineteenth-century theatricality.

The idea was first proposed in 1865 by the French intellectual Édouard de Laboulaye. Laboulaye admired the American experiment in republican democracy and believed that a monumental statue celebrating liberty would simultaneously commemorate the abolition of slavery in the United States and reinforce the political alliance between France and America.

However, the proposal also carried a discreet domestic message. France in the 1860s was ruled by Napoleon III, and many French liberals hoped that the American model would inspire democratic reforms at home. The statue was therefore conceived as both a diplomatic gesture and a subtle ideological statement.

The project was entrusted to the Alsatian sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who had a lifelong fascination with colossal statuary. Bartholdi had previously imagined building gigantic monuments in Egypt near the Suez Canal, projects that never materialized but which shaped his aesthetic ambition for monumental scale.

From the outset, the statue was conceived not simply as a sculpture but as a spectacle: a monument so large that ships entering the harbor of New York would see it from miles away.

The official name of the statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World" reveals its philosophical ambition. The torch represents the light of liberty illuminating humanity, while the tablet held in the left hand bears the date July 4, 1776, the day of American independence.

Symbolism was not subtle in the nineteenth century.

Building a Colossus: Art Meets Industrial Engineering

Constructing a statue 46 meters tall, 93 meters including the pedestal, posed an unprecedented technical challenge.

Bartholdi understood early on that traditional stone sculpture would be impractical at this scale. The statue had to be both enormous and structurally flexible, capable of withstanding the powerful winds sweeping through New York Harbor.

The solution was an innovative hybrid between sculpture and industrial architecture.

The external surface consists of thin copper sheets, less than 2.5 millimeters thick, shaped using the repoussé technique, a method in which metal is hammered from the reverse side to create relief forms. These sheets were attached to a sophisticated internal skeleton of iron supports.

That skeleton was designed by none other than Gustave Eiffel, later famous for building the Eiffel Tower. Eiffel’s contribution was decisive. Instead of rigidly attaching the copper skin to the structure, he designed a flexible framework allowing the outer surface to move slightly with temperature changes and wind pressure. The statue could sway several centimeters in strong winds without structural damage.

For a nineteenth-century monument, this was a remarkable feat of engineering.

The entire statue was assembled in Paris between 1881 and 1884, allowing the sculptor to verify the proportions and structural integrity. It was then disassembled into 350 pieces, packed into 214 crates, and shipped across the Atlantic.

When the crates arrived in New York Harbor in 1885, they contained what was essentially a gigantic metallic puzzle.

The American Pedestal and the Fundraising Drama

If the French financed the statue itself, the United States was responsible for building the pedestal.

This proved unexpectedly difficult.

The pedestal was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, but raising the necessary funds became a national embarrassment. Wealthy donors showed little enthusiasm, and the project stalled for years.

The turning point came thanks to the publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who launched a fundraising campaign in his newspaper The New York World. Pulitzer promised to publish the name of every contributor, regardless of the size of the donation.

More than 120,000 citizens contributed small amounts, turning the pedestal into a monument financed largely by ordinary Americans.

The pedestal was completed in 1886, and on October 28, 1886, the statue was officially inaugurated by President Grover Cleveland.

The ceremony was accompanied by a naval parade, artillery salutes, and what is often considered the first ticker-tape parade in New York history.

The Statue of Liberty and the Myth of Immigration

Curiously, the Statue of Liberty was not originally intended as an immigration symbol.

When it was inaugurated in 1886, the statue had no direct connection with immigrants arriving in America. The famous association developed later, largely due to the opening of the nearby immigration station at Ellis Island in 1892.

Between 1892 and 1954, more than 12 million immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island. For many of them, the Statue of Liberty was the first sight of America.

During the same period, the poet Emma Lazarus wrote the sonnet “The New Colossus”, whose famous line “Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” helped transform the statue into a symbol of refuge and opportunity.

Ironically, this interpretation became dominant precisely during periods when the United States was simultaneously introducing restrictive immigration policies.

Like many great political symbols, the Statue of Liberty tells a story that is as much aspirational as historical.

Visiting Liberty Island Today

Today, visiting Liberty Island involves a ferry ride departing from either Battery Park in Manhattan or Liberty State Park in New Jersey.

The logistics are surprisingly efficient given the enormous number of visitors. Ferries depart frequently, and the crossing takes about fifteen minutes, offering excellent photographic views of Lower Manhattan and the harbor.

The real intellectual reward of the visit, however, lies not in the statue itself but in the Statue of Liberty Museum, opened in 2019.

The museum does an excellent job explaining the technological complexity of the monument. Among the highlights:

1. The original torch

The first torch used in the statue was removed in 1984 during restoration. Visitors can now examine it at close range, revealing details invisible from the outside: the glass panels, the copper frame, and the ingenious method used to illuminate the flame.

2. Replicas of the copper skin

The museum displays full-scale sections of the statue’s copper plates. Seeing them up close reveals how astonishingly thin the material is. What appears from afar to be a massive bronze sculpture is in fact little more than a delicate metallic shell.

3. The engineering framework

Models illustrate the structural system designed by Eiffel. These displays show how the internal iron pylon supports a web of secondary beams that hold the copper skin without rigidly fixing it.

It is a reminder that the Statue of Liberty is as much an engineering structure as a sculpture.

Climbing the Statue

Visitors can climb either to the pedestal or, with advance reservations, to the crown.

The crown ascent (which I avoided) involves climbing 162 narrow steps, winding through the statue’s internal framework. From the small windows in the crown, visitors enjoy views across the harbor toward Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The experience is historically interesting (one literally walks through the iron skeleton designed by Eiffel) but the confined space and small windows mean that the panorama, according to what I've read, is less spectacular than one might expect. Still, it offers a unique opportunity to appreciate the internal mechanics of the monument.

Liberty as Architecture, Not Sculpture

By the time one finishes the visit (museum, pedestal, crown, ferry ride back to Manhattan, or further on to Ellis Island) the intellectual reaction becomes increasingly clear.

The Statue of Liberty is an extraordinary symbol and an extraordinary engineering project.

But it is not, strictly speaking, a great work of art.

Bartholdi’s sculptural language belongs firmly to the academic tradition of nineteenth-century allegorical statuary. The drapery is conventional, the proportions slightly rigid, and the face lacks the expressive power found in truly great monumental sculpture.

In purely artistic terms, the statue resembles many other allegorical figures scattered across Europe during the same period, personifications of Liberty, Justice, or the Republic that populate countless public squares.

What distinguishes the Statue of Liberty is not its artistic originality but its scale and context.

The monument is essentially an industrial-age reinterpretation of the Colossus of Rhodes: a gigantic figure meant to dominate the landscape and impress approaching travelers.

In that sense, the statue belongs less to the history of sculpture than to the history of modern infrastructure.

A Monument That Became a Myth

And yet, despite its modest artistic qualities, the Statue of Liberty has become one of the most powerful symbols in the modern world.

It appears in films, political speeches, protest movements, and patriotic rituals. Its silhouette has been endlessly reproduced in cartoons, advertising, and political satire.

Few monuments have acquired such a dense accumulation of symbolic meanings.

Freedom. Democracy. Immigration. America itself.

These interpretations evolved gradually over decades. They were not necessarily the intentions of the original designers.

But that is the strange destiny of monuments: once released into the public imagination, they acquire meanings that their creators could never fully control. (According to Umberto Eco, this is also a characteristic of works of art, but I do not want to open too many threads here).

The Slightly Deflating Conclusion

After exploring the museum, studying the engineering drawings, and contemplating the colossal logistical effort required to construct the monument, one cannot help feeling a certain admiration.

The Statue of Liberty represents:

• a remarkable collaboration between France and the United States

• a triumph of nineteenth-century engineering

• a symbol that has accompanied millions of migrants arriving in America

• one of the most recognizable landmarks on the planet

And yet.

Standing at the base of the statue, one eventually realizes something slightly paradoxical.

Yes, the symbolism is powerful. Yes, the historical story is fascinating. Yes, the engineering achievement is extraordinary.

But in the end, the Statue of Liberty is less a masterpiece of art than a masterpiece of narrative.

It is a monument whose greatest strength lies not in the quality of its sculptural form but in the myth it represents.

A colossal symbol, an industrial triumph, a piece of political theater cast in copper.

And perhaps that is precisely what modern nations build best.

Film location

Obviously, the Statue of Liberty has been featured in countless films; among them, I would like to mention:

• Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942)

• The Planet of the Apes (1968)

• The Godfather Part II (1974)

• Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985)

• Ghostbusters II (1989)