Free
Six years after the 1865 dinner party, Bartholdi began work on the statue. Two things had kept him from starting. First, France was under the tight grip of Napoleon III, who didn’t want to celebrate liberty.
Second, in 1870, France and Germany were fighting the Franco-Prussian War, and Bartholdi had enlisted.
After the war ended in 1871, Bartholdi went back to thinking about the monument. Laboulaye asked him to travel to the U.S. to see the country. He also wanted Bartholdi to find out what the American people thought about the idea of the statue.
On June 8, 1871, Bartholdi set sail for New York. Many of the people on board the ship were immigrants, looking to find a new life in America. As the ship approached New York, the passengers climbed on deck, eager for their first look at America. Bartholdi, too, couldn’t wait to see the country. As he looked ahead, he saw Bedloe’s Island guarding the entrance to New York Harbor. Bartholdi immediately knew he had found the perfect home for his statue.
After he landed in the U.S., Bartholdi met with many people. President Ulysses S. Grant was one of them. They helped him turn what he called Liberty Enlightening the World into the Statue of Liberty. Wherever he went, he took a sketch of the statue and asked people this question: Would Americans provide the pedestal and land for the statue if the French paid for the statue itself? ▶
▲ Bartholdi made six different clay models. As he worked, he made small changes to each of them. Finally, he was satisfied with a design that symbolized Libertas, the ancient Roman goddess of freedom.
Check It Out!
There were three big changes from the earliest model of the statue (above left) to the latest model (above right). What were they?
The torch has moved from the left hand to the right, the crown has spikes, and the left hand is holding a tablet.
This print shows New York Harbor around 1872. Bartholdi may have seen this view when sailing into New York. The small piece of land at the upper right center is Bedloe’s Island. During the War of 1812, Fort Wood had been built on it in the shape of an 11-pointed star. ▼
In 1875, Laboulaye made a formal request to President Grant to use Bedloe’s Island as the site of the monument. He also set up the French-American Union to raise money for the statue’s construction. At one fund-raising party in Paris, Bartholdi showed the final model to the guests. It was a scary moment: Would people like what they saw? The answer was “yes!” The guests contributed 40,000 francs, which was about 10 percent of the money needed to build the statue. By the end of 1875, Laboulaye and Bartholdi had raised half the money they needed, and Bartholdi could start work. ▶
◀ Bartholdi created this bronze casting of the statue’s head and crown in the early 1870s. That was before he decided to add the rays to the crown.
In his Paris studio, Bartholdi worked on many projects, including models for the Statue of Liberty. One of them can be seen in the center of this photograph. ▶
