The Statue of Liberty: Building an Icon

in New York Harbor SS a statute that is synonymous with freedom and democracy, one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world and a symbol of hope for millions, but to truly appreciate this

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ic structure it is necessary to understand the financial and technical challenges it faced to become a reality This is the construction story behind one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 19th century, still the most visited

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in the United States, more than 130 years after its completion, the Statue of Liberty was a record-breaking construction project at the time when the giant company held titles such as the tallest iron structure ever built, the largest concrete pore ever made and the largest use of copper in a single structure, the Statue of Liberty was conceived to celebrate the centennial of American independence by a French intellectual and anti-slavery activist named Edward Deou. a

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in 1865 to honor both the centinary and America's friendship with France 5 years later, in 1870, French sculptor Frederick AUST boli began designing the statue, a robed female figure representing the Roman goddess Libertas.

After a visit to the US while Patelli met many prominent Americans, including USC President Z Grant, the project was announced in 1875, the statue was named Liberty Enlightening the World, a title it would hold until 1924, when it became a national monument and was officially renamed the Statue of Liberty, while France would finance the statue, the Americans would be responsible for providing a site and

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the massive stone on which the statue would stand to finance each element. Ambitious fundraising campaigns were launched on both sides of the Atlantic, while overall plans for the statue had not yet been finalized.

Bali began manufacturing the right arm. Carrying the torch to help garner public support for the project, the arm was shipped to the United States and displayed at the 1876 International Centennial Exposition, the first official World's Fair, for a fee of 50 cents, visitors could climb a balcony staircase with a money raiser going on. directly to fund the project when the exhibition closed, the arm was transported to New York, where it remained on display in Madison Square Park for 6 years before joining the rest of the statue in France in a similar manner. The head and shoulders were also built. and became one of the main attractions of the Paris World's Fair of 1878, during construction models of the statue were put up for sale, tickets were offered to see the construction, workshops were offered, and the French government authorized a lottery, By the end of 1879, some 250,000 francs had been raised to make his colossal statue a reality, Bartali sought the experience of the best professionals in France.

He first hired his mentor Eugene Fuk, the architect responsible for the restoration of the Notra Dam in Paris, who acted as chief engineer. V luk designed a brick pier inside the statue to which the skin was put. These sheets would be anchored and shaped using a method called repu in which the copper is heated and then struck with wooden hammers. The copper was hammered to less than a tenth of an inch or 2.4 mm thick, creating a considerably lightweight surface given its volume. When V Luke died unexpectedly in 1879, the innovative Gustaf Eiffel was brought in to replace him, while Eiffel retained V Luke's copper cladding, abandoned the brick internal pier, and opted to take a more modern approach.

He designed a central iron pylon 92 feet or 28 m high. Acting as the main support for the structure, a precursor to the famous it in Paris, originally assembled in France, the pylon serves as the statue's backbone supporting a secondary skeleton or armature that conforms to the exterior contours. This armor alone contains over a mile of iron bars each 2 inches wide, the 300 sections of copper sheet weighing a total of 80 tons were attached to the amature using half 000 copper saddles in U-shaped and about 300,000 copper rivets. Eiffel's innovative design makes the statue one of the first examples of curtain wall construction.

The exterior of the structure is not load-bearing and is instead supported by an interior frame with his experience in bridge construction and engineering to accommodate wind loads. Eiffel chose not to create a rigid structure; the flexibility of his design allows the statue to resist winds. New York Harbor and temperature changes that could force tension to build up in the skin and cause cracks in a strong wind. The statue can move up to 3 inches, while the arm can deflect up to 5 by combining the Eiffel and V Duke designs throughout. The statue was manufactured and then assembled in Paris between 1881 and 1884, then disassembled, packed into 214 boxes, and shipped to the United States aboard the French Navy air ship.

The prefabricated statue was received with great fanfare in New York Harbor on June 17. 1885, before the pedestals were completed on B's voyage to New York in 1871, marked a small island in the harbor as an ideal location for a statue of him. Fortunately, the island that housed a disused military base was already owned by the US federal government. With a resolution signed by President Grant, the island was selected as the site for the statue, its 11o-shaped fort star would become the basis for pedestals, while today it may seem hard to believe, getting funding for the project was actually extremely difficult; with only $150,000 raised, the project stalled, prompting Joseph Pulitzer, editor of the New York newspaper The World, launched a campaign to raise the remaining $100,000.

Pulit achieved its goal with a staggering 80% of the funds received in sums of less than $1. The neoclassical pedestal is about 89 feet or 27 m high. It was an impressive construction task in itself. Richard Morris Hunt, a founder of the American Institute of Architects, was chosen to design the structure, while General P Stone was appointed engineer. Chief Hunt's original concept would have seen the pedestal constructed of solid granite, but financial concerns forced him to do so. He revised his plans and instead embarked on the largest mass concrete pore made to date. The final design called for concrete walls up to 20 feet or 6 m thick faced with granite blocks to withstand the anticipated wind loads.

Four huge reinforcing beams formed in a square were placed. placed in the concrete 29 feet or 9 m above the pedestal, a second square of beams was placed 55 feet or 7.18 m higher, a few feet from the top of the pedestal with the two sets connected by beams of TI iron, then the statue was anchored. to these beams that made Liberty and a concrete base a single entity when the pedestal was completed in 1886, the statue was quickly mounted atop it, more than 20 years after it was first envisioned, on October 28, 1886, the Coober color statue was finally unveiled. It will take 30 more years to completely oxidize and become the distinctive green color we see today, realizing that this

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was an important undertaking involving the leading professionals of the time on both sides of the Atlantic, today the statistic Liberty stands proudly as the Gateway to America and enduring symbol of freedom and democracy and what human engineers are truly capable of.

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