The Real Reason they Built the Statue of Liberty | How it Became Manhattan

My name is Daniel Steiner and I'm excited to give you a deeper look into one of my favorite cities

I'm going to tell you the stories behind the iconic landmarks and the places that make New York, New York

Whether or not you plan to visit, you live here, or you just want to do some armchair

travel, I'm going to give you a deeper understanding of the largest city in the United States

Right now I'm in Battery Park and I'm about to get on a ferry that's going to take me

me over to Liberty Island, which is the island where the Statue of Liberty is

The Statue of Liberty is almost synonymous with New York, but its story isn't nearly

as well known. Visiting Liberty Island is something that not a lot of native New Yorkers do, and not

because it's difficult, but probably because they see the statue from a distance all the

time. But really, nothing beats an up-close view. In this lesson, I want to show you how the Statue

of Liberty became a symbol of the United States. It's the story of the United States' influx

playing out during a time when this country was still defining what liberty even meant

It's also the story of two French men who loved the United States. Once you understand this story, you'll never see this statue the same

This is Columbia, also known as Lady Liberty, the mythical character that has long been used as the symbol of the United States

Columbia has appeared throughout American history in art, on American coins, atop the Capitol building, and in political cartoons

Today, she even shows up on the Columbia Pictures logo. Columbia was also used in symbolism for the idea of manifest destiny

which was the belief that white people were destined to expand west and take over large swaths of land

often using violence against Native people living here. During the first 100 years of the country's history

everyone could agree that Colombia was a symbol of liberty. But what's liberty even mean

It was a time when women couldn't vote. Was this liberty? This was a time when millions of people were owned as property to forcibly work on plantations

Was this liberty? This question eventually led the young country into a bloody civil war

That war established that enslaving people was indeed not liberty. It was in this context that the idea of a statue in one of the most visible ports in the United States was conceived

but not by anyone in the country, but instead by a Frenchman. If you've heard anything about the history of the Statue of Liberty, it's probably that it was a gift from the French

And indeed it was. The driving force behind this statue was a French politician and American historian

Edouard de Laboulaye. He was the one who initially proposed the idea of creating a commemorative gift that would recognize the importance of the liberation of the slaves in America Laboulaye felt that a symbol like this would support emancipation and strengthen the democracy in France He was inspired by the statue of Colossus that spanned the port on the island

of Rhodes in Greece. He wanted his statue to be called Liberty Enlightening the World

Laboulaye was like a huge fan of the United States. He said his mission was to prove that

France had always been faithful to America and to liberty. To turn his idea into a reality

he partnered with a French sculptor equally as dedicated to the project, Frédéric Auguste Bartoli. The French sculptor was really big into statues. He had been dreaming

of building the largest statue in the world long before this. He had even proposed a statue at the

Suez C of a lighthouse called Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia. That project never happened

because the Egyptian government didn't like the price tag. You can see that it bears very close

resemblance to the Statue of Liberty. As the two Frenchmen collaborated, they came up with a few

ideas of what this New York City anti-slavery statue could be. The first design of the Statue

of Liberty looked a bit different than the final version we know today. You can see Lady Liberty's

right foot stepping forward into a brighter future, but here she's holding broken shackles

in her left hand with the chains left behind her. Original Lady Liberty renditions also had her

wearing a pileus, a cap from ancient Rome given to freed slaves. But remember, this is the U.S

right after a divisive war over the issue of slavery, and there wasn't a lot of consensus

around creating such a pro-emancipation symbol in the United States' most visible waterway

The Frenchmen needed widespread support because they needed funding, so they kept morphing the design

and soon it started to look less like an anti-slavery symbol. In the end, the final design ended up like this

The overt anti-slavery symbol of the broken shackles in her left hand didn't make the final design

but if you look closely at her feet, you can still see a few links of shackle chains that did

The controversial anti-slavery hat also didn't make it. Instead, Lady Liberty was donned with a crown

the seven rays of which form a halo around her head to symbolize the sun, the seven seas, and the seven continents

In her right hand, she's holding a tablet with Roman numerals depicting the date of the United States' independence, July 4th, 1776

Original intent of this statue being a symbol of emancipation had been watered down

but this didn't deter the Frenchman from pushing the project forward. By the late 1800s, the excitement around the project was mounting and fundraising was going well

So it was time to build the statue. But building a statue this big is not a simple task

There was so much to figure out. What material would they make it out of? What if a huge storm hit it

How would they ship it to the U.S.? So what Bartoli did is he turned to a prominent civil engineer of the time, Gustav Eiffel

And his last name might be a little bit familiar. But he hadn't yet built a tower that would bear his name

Eiffel was a civil engineer that had been building large structures and bridges in France

It wasn't until the year after the Statue of Liberty was completed that he started the

construction of the Eiffel Tower So Eiffel got to work on the interior structure of the Statue of Liberty while Bartoli crafted the copper exterior They did all this in a workshop in Paris with a plan to ship everything to New York

Bartoli began making the statue in pieces. So what he did was build the hand that held the torch and sent that to New York City

It sat in Madison Square Park for six years while he gathered as much money as he could

to build this project. Next Bartoli completed the head and displayed it at the 1878 Paris International Exhibition

The designers chose to make the exterior layer out of copper, because any other material would have been too heavy to ship to the U.S

The outer skin is only as thick as about two U.S. pennies, and was even the same color for the first 20 or so years, before oxidation turned into the green color we see today

Using this lightweight copper, along with the ingenious internal structure, allowed them to create and assemble the entire thing in Paris, and then break it down and ship it across the Atlantic

This was cutting-edge engineering work, and in a way the statue gave Eiffel practice that he would eventually apply it to the Eiffel Tower

The internal structure that holds up the tower in Paris is a similar interior as the copper statue in New York

The statue also contained the stairs that would allow visitors to access the crown and walk out onto the torch

It was an engineering masterpiece. Once it was done, the statue was disassembled and shipped from France to New York

When it finally got to New York, the U.S. wasn't done building the pedestal for the statue to go on

so the pieces sat in crates for about a year before it was ready to be constructed

It took only about six months to reassemble it back together in its permanent home

where it became the tallest structure in New York City at that time. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886, and the city did not hold back on its celebrations

They shut down the Brooklyn Bridge to traffic so the pedestrians could come out and watch the dedication from there

The President of the United States came into town, along with pretty much everybody else

There was one notable exception, though, of who wasn't here, and that was Laboulay, the father of the Statue of Liberty himself

He had died about three years before and was never able to see the statue completed. But the artist, Bertolli, was here for it

The day didn't go without a hitch, though. It was a little less than exciting when they lit it up with electricity

and the light on the flame was hardly visible. Okay, so here's a pretty funny story from the day of the dedication

Bertolli was the one to unveil this statue to the entire city. So there was the French flag that was draped over the statue's face

and he was waiting in the crown to pull a rope to release that flag

so he was depending on a person on the ground who was going to give him a signal when the speeches

were over and someone was giving a speech and they just took a long pause in the middle of their

speech so Bartoli got the signal that the speech was over and he pulled the rope and released the

flag prematurely and everyone in the bay started firing off their cannons and playing their music

and celebrating and completely drowned out the rest of this poor guy's speech not everybody felt

the same about the Statue of Liberty. There were suffragists who protested the dedication

because at the time women were not allowed to vote and black journalists also expressed ambivalence toward the statue because of Jim Crow laws still existing in the U So there really wasn liberty for all at the time Even though the statue was originally

conceived as an anti-slavery symbol, it would take decades before the U.S. really started to embrace

any semblance of racial equality. Instead, the symbolism of the statue morphed into focusing

more on immigrants arriving to the U.S. Six years after the statue was dedicated, the island right

next door, called Ellis Island, became the entry point for millions of immigrants, mostly from

Europe coming into the U.S., looking for a new life. A few years later, a new mantra was inscribed

on the statue that reflected its new identity as a symbol of welcoming immigrants. Give me your tired

your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Okay, I've spent a while on this island, and I'm going to head back now

Okay, so just like that, I'm back in Manhattan in Battery Park on the very southern end of

the island. And if you want to see the Statue of Liberty but you don't want to pay for it like I just

did, then you can just come to this park and look over the water and see the statue in

the bay. You can also take the Staten Island Ferry, which costs exactly zero dollars, and it gives

you a pretty good view of not only the Statue of Liberty but of the skyline here in Manhattan

I would recommend doing one of the ferries because it gives you the same view that many of the immigrants coming to the U.S. would have had

If you do visit this statue, you can even go inside and look out the crown of Lady Liberty if you schedule way in advance, which you can do online

People used to be able to go out on the torch and walk on its deck. But to me, that seems terrifying, and they stopped allowing that in 1916

The Statue of Liberty is a story of two Frenchmen who wanted to celebrate the progress of the United States toward a more free society

But it's also a story of how the U.S. wasn't actually ready and willing to embrace such a vision of liberty

The statue's design and the watering down of the anti-slavery symbolism reflects that reticence

And yet the statue does represent how this young nation was in search of some greater, more enlightened version of liberty

That debate and struggle hasn't stopped. From continued debates of racial equality to immigration to wealth inequality

Meanwhile, Lady Liberty sits on her island watching as we debate what liberty really means

Okay, so now that I'm back here at Battery Park, this is not far from the starting point

of our next lesson, where we're going to talk about how a wall became Wall Street and how

this became the financial district. New York City is dominating. Not only in its physical size, but in its position in pop culture and its influence on the rest

of the United States and much of the rest of the world. Welcome to our course about how it became Manhattan