 Statue of Liberty, New York City
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The Statue of Liberty is the common name for Liberty Enlightening the World, or in French, La liberté éclairant le monde. It is a large statue that was given by France to the United States by France in 1886. It stands at Liberty Island, New York in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The statue is clad in copper and was dedicated on October 28, 1886 to commemorate the centennial of the United States and acted as a gesture of friendship from France to America.
Statue of Liberty, New York City
Author: Urban, Iolaire (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)
The Statue of Liberty was sculpted by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower, engineered the internal structure while Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of material. The statue depicts a robed female figure with seven point spiked rays representing a halo, holding a stone tablet in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right. The words on the tablet reads "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), the date of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.
The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper a steel framework. The flame of the torch is coated in gold leaf. The Statue of Liberty stands on a rectangular stone pedestal which itself sits on an elevent-sided star-shaped foundation. The statue itself is 151 feet 1 inch (46.5 m) tall but together with the pedestal and foundation, the total height is 305 feet (93.4 metres).
The Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States. Until the arrival of the jet age, it was one of the first glimpses of the United States of America for millions of immigrants arriving there from Europe, drawing parallel to the Colossus of Rhodes. The statue is a central part of Statue of Liberty National Monument.
The Statue of Liberty was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1984.
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