The Statue of Liberty at 125 Years

Portrait of the Artist
In creating the statue, the sculptor Bartholdi had hoped to present the United States with a commemorative gift on its centennial in 1876. After years of conversations about the statue, Bartholdi took his first trip to the United States in 1871. He hoped to select a location where the Statue of Liberty would be built, and later wrote Laboulaye excitedly that his choice—Bedloe island—was federal territory, a "land common to all the states," as he described the heavily trafficked island in New York harbor.

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