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Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberte eclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberte), is a colossal statue given to the United States by France in 1886, standing at Liberty Island, in the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship between the two nations. The sculptor was Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower, engineered the internal structure. Eugene Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the Repousse technique.
The statue depicts a woman standing upright, dressed in a flowing robe and a seven point spiked crown representing the Seven Seas, holding a stone tablet close to her body in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right hand. The statue is made of pure copper on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf. It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal, itself on an irregular eleven-pointed star foundation. The statue is 151 feet (46 meters) and one inch tall, with the foundation adding another 154 feet (46.9 meters). The tablet contains the text "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776) commemorating the date of the United States Declaration of Independence. The interior of the pedestal contains a bronze plaque inscribed with the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus. (It has never been engraved on the exterior of the pedestal, despite such depictions in editorial cartoons).
Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States, and, in a more general sense, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. In terms of visual impact, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes. The statue is a central part of Statue of Liberty National Monument and is administered by the National Park Service.
The Statue of Liberty quickly became a popular icon, featured in scores of posters, pictures, motion pictures, and books. A 1911 O. Henry story relates a fanciful conversation between "Mrs. Liberty" and another statue; it figured in 1918 Liberty Loan posters. During the 1940s and 1950s, pulp Science Fiction magazines featured Lady Liberty surrounded by ruins or by the sediments of the ages. It has been in dozens of motion pictures. It is a setting in the 1942 Alfred Hitchcock movie Saboteur, which featured a climactic confrontation at the statue. Half submerged in the sand, the Statue provided the apocalyptic revelation at the end of Planet of the Apes. The statue became a character in the 1989 film, Ghostbusters 2, in which Statue of Liberty comes to life in and helps defeat the evil villain. It was the subject of a 1978 University of Wisconsin-Madison prank in which Lady Liberty appeared to be standing submerged in a local lake. It has appeared on New York and New Jersey license plates, and is the mascot for the WNBA's New York Liberty, and it was the subject of magician David Copperfield's largest vanishing act.
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