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Home , Gustave Eiffel, New York Bay

An Uncertain Welcome

The

The Statue of Liberty in City was designed by sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi in collaboration with engineer Gustave . It was the dream of the two of them to create a piece of art to give as a gift from to the United States, and they knew exactly what they wanted to do. At more than 305 feet, the statue is an example of colossal statuary, a style that was popular at the end of the 1800s. Bartholdi and Eiffel knew that their mixture of art and engineering would be a technological wonder. Their creation was greeted with accolades and considered an artistic and technical masterpiece. The statue represents many different aspects of American culture. Lady Liberty, as she is affectionately known, stands first and foremost for each and every American, and represents American ideals of liberty, peace, human rights, abolition of slavery, democracy, and opportunity. With the exception of changes and repairs made during a restoration in 1986, the original Lady Liberty remains intact. Her design, purpose, and symbolic value have not changed since the late 1800s. The Statue of Liberty is owned by the U.S. government and administered by the National Park Service. She thus has the highest level of protection given to a national monument. The National Park Service’s management plan is designed to keep her authenticity alive by protecting her from weather, pollution, overuse, and threats to national security.

Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi

Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, was born in France in 1834. He studied art, sculpture, and architecture in school, but the biggest influence on his artistic endeavors was a trip throughout Europe and the Middle East in his early twenties. He visited the Sphynx and the Pyramids of Giza in , and he knew when he saw them that he wanted to create large-scale public monuments and colossal sculptures. His first attempt at creating one was in 1869, when the Egyptian government wanted to build a lighthouse for the , and Bartholdi wanted to design a colossal statue for it. Plans changed, and his design fell through. A year later, Bartholdi was given a second chance. Frenchman Édouard de Laboulaye proposed that a monument be built to represent freedom and democracy and that it be given to the United States. Bartholdi created a design, a robed woman holding a torch, and he called her “Liberty Enlightening the World.” As Bartholdi put his plans into action, he visited New York several times. He knew exactly where he wanted the statue to stand. Bedloe’s Island was at the gateway to the harbor, and it was a location that Bartholdi knew would be perfect for his colossus. During his trips to New York, Bartholdi also raised awareness for his project, and funds. He helped Laboulaye form the Franco-American Union, which raised money to fund the construction of the statue. Parts of the statue (her massive arm and torch) were first presented in America at the in Philadelphia in 1876. Other pieces were displayed in Madison Square Garden in in 1882. Bartholdi used these displays to continue to raise money—money needed to complete the statue’s construction. The construction was finished in 1884, and the Franco-American Union presented the statue to the U.S. ambassador. Bartholdi helped assemble the statue on Bedloe’s Island, his chosen spot, and was present at her inauguration in 1886. During the inauguration, Bartholdi released a French flag from the statue’s face to reveal the face of Lady Liberty.

1 Statue of Liberty Facts

• Total height (base of the pedestal to the tip of the torch): 305 feet, 6 inches • Statue height (from her heel to the top of her head): 111 feet, 6 inches • Total weight: 225 tons (450,000 pounds) • Number of steps (pedestal to statue’s head): 154 • Her crown has seven rays, one for each continent. Each ray is nine feet long and weighs about 150 pounds. • Her tablet is 23’ 7” tall by 13’ 7” wide. It is inscribed with the date JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776), the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. • Broken shackles sit at the statue’s feet, representing freedom from oppression and tyranny.

Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus was born in New York City in 1849. Her family was a wealthy Jewish family, and Emma was educated by private tutors. She was in her teens when she first started writing, and her father was the first to print her poetry. She was a talented German translator and a prolific poet. Her poetry even caught the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lazarus was proud of her Jewish heritage and wanted to express her feelings about the struggles of Jewish Americans in her writing. She traveled to England and France in 1882 and met poets Robert Browning and William Morris. She returned to America and shortly thereafter was invited to write a poem to help raise money for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Inspired by her family’s immigrant heritage and her own volunteer work with refugees, she wrote a sonnet commemorating immigrants and their hardships. This sonnet was named “.” The words in the sonnet rang true for the times, so true that they were engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903.

Ellis Island

Ellis Island has an area of approximately twenty-seven acres. It lies in the , southwest of New York City and just east of the shoreline. It was named after Samuel Ellis, a merchant who owned the land in the 1770s. Over time, the 3.3 acre island grew to 27.5 acres as ship ballast and landfill accumulated there. At the beginning of the 1800s, the island was sold to the national government, and it was used as a fort. Due to its proximity to both New York and New Jersey, the two jurisdictions fought over the island for years. Sovereignty of a small section of it was given to New York in 1834, but it wasn’t until 1998 that the U.S. Supreme Court officially awarded the rest of the island to New Jersey. Ellis Island was an immigration processing station from 1892 to 1954. Prior to 1890, the individual states regulated immigration rather than the federal government. Castle Garden in the Battery section of New York City served as the New York State immigration center from 1855 to 1890. With the increasing numbers of immigrants coming to the United States in the latter part of the century, and specifically into New York City, the immigration center at Castle Garden was not able to handle the large numbers.

2 There was also corruption in operations at the state level. The federal government intervened and decided Ellis Island would be a great location for a new immigration station. A structure was built, and it was opened on January 1, 1892. The first immigrant to pass through its doors was an Irish teenager named Annie Moore. Five years after its opening, a fire broke out and burned the building to the ground. It destroyed immigration records dating back to 1855. The U.S. Treasury quickly ordered another facility to be built, but this one would be constructed with fireproof material. The new building opened in 1900. By some estimates, an average of five to ten thousand immigrants a day came through Ellis Island between 1900 and 1914, the height of immigration to America. The largest movement of immigrants to America occurred in 1907. Approximately 1.25 million immigrants were processed at Ellis Island in just that one year. This huge number prompted the government to expand the facilities at the station. Hospital buildings, contagious disease wards, and kitchens were added to the property by 1915. The U.S. Army briefly took over the management of the facility during World War I, as the numbers of immigrants decreased during that time. After the war, the First Red Scare caused anti-immigration feelings to rise, and Ellis Island was used for a short time period to detain suspected alien radicals. In 1920, the immigrant processing station was reopened, and more than a quarter of a million immigrants were processed that year. The immigration process consisted of an interview and a health check. The two agencies responsible for processing immigrants were the U.S. Public Health Service and the Bureau of Immigration (later known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS—the INS became part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2003). The island was known as the “Island of Tears,” but in reality, most immigrants were treated very well. Only two percent of arriving immigrants were denied entry and sent back home; the main reason for rejection was disease.

Nativism and Ellis Island

In an effort to slow the rate of immigration and preserve the ethnic composition of the Old Immigrants, some politicians and other activists started anti-immigration propaganda. These nativists believed that the New Immigrants coming from southern and eastern Europe and Asia were inferior to those who had arrived earlier. Their voices were heard, and laws were passed, including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Contract Labor Law, and the Quota Laws. They also instituted literacy tests at Ellis Island. This caused a reduction in the number of immigrants passing through Ellis Island. In addition, the United States started building embassies in countries all over the world after World War I, and immigrants were then able to apply for visas and entry into the United States through these embassies, rather than through the processing station at Ellis Island. After 1924, the only people held at Ellis Island were those who arrived with insufficient or problematic paperwork or who had been pushed out of their home countries by war. During World War II, some enemy seamen were detained there. And later, the U.S. Coast Guard trained servicemen there. Ellis Island officially closed in 1954 and became part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument In 1965.

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