A raison d’être
CDG
48˚ 51’ 32” N | 2˚ 17’ 40” E
CDGE10029*
Rising more than a 1,000 feet she is built from 18,038 wrought iron parts fastened with 2.5 million rivets. But facts and feats of engineering are secondary to her beauty. © Vast Compass, 2025.
A welcoming mother
In 1883 American poet Emma Lazarus donated a bespoke Petrarchan sonnet on behalf of the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition in advance of the arrival of the completed Statue of Liberty donated by France to commemorate its alliance with the U.S. during the American Revolution a little more than a century earlier. The fund was created to raise money for the pedestal’s construction, an essential first step for America to take before Gustave Eiffel’s iron framework, forged and pre-assembled in Paris, could rise over Bedloe’s Island. The final step would be attaching Lady Liberty’s hammered copper robes, diadem, and tablet where they would stand in perpetuity above the waves in New York City’s harbor.
Lazarus’ parents were Sephardic Jews of Portuguese descent, Emma being the middle of seven children. It’s no surprise the whole family advocated for Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe. That said, Lazarus was initially reluctant to write her poem, given she had never seen the statue being gifted to the United States by France. As we know, she eventually put pen to paper for a poem to be sold at auction during a fund-raising blitz. Her words forever changed the import of the statue itself.
Your sonnet gives its subject
a raison d’être which it wanted before
quite as much as it wants a pedestal.
—James Russell Lowell, Poet
Emma Lazarus
1849-1887
While Lazarus lived long enough to see the statue raised on its pedestal in 1886, she died in 1887 at age 38. Her poem eventually was cast in bronze and affixed to the Statue of Liberty’s base in 1903, ensuring that Libertas will forever be identified as a welcoming mother lighting the way for a world in need. Photo credit: benoitb, iStock.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
—Emma Lazarus
A well-traveled lady
Emma Lazarus’ stunning words aside, the Statue of Liberty project needed more than funds. Before its pedestal could be built, Lady Liberty needed promotion. Which is why pieces and parts of the newly conceived colossus were displayed on the Exposition Universelle grounds in Paris in 1878. Created first due to their utility as props to drive interest and excitement around the project, the head, and right hand holding the torch were also displayed in various combinations at Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exposition and in Madison Square Park in New York City.
Sections of Lady Liberty were used to promote the project which would see her installed at the entrance to New York City’s harbor. Left, her head (large enough to hold 40 people inside) makes an appearance at Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exposition held to celebrate America’s 100th birthday and to confirm the growing nation’s ideals. NEED CREDIT
The statue’s diadem features 7 rays representing the world’s 7 continents and 7 oceans, symbolically linking the statue to all people everywhere. On the right the head makes an appearance at Paris’ 1878 Exposition Universelle. NEED CREDIT
Frequent traveler
All of this assembling, disassembling, crating, and ocean crossing, then uncrating, photographing, orating, and editorializing explains why parts of Lady Liberty were so well-traveled by the time she finally landed for good in New York Harbor on June 17, 1885. Her head and diadem had already transited the Atlantic multiple times, as had the torch. And it was no small matter to transport a statue 151 feet and 1 inch high, and weighing 225 tons, with a bust size of 36 feet.
A day late and a dollar short
The Statue of Liberty is comprised of roughly 1,300 iron parts and 300 or so copper panels. Still, it took 210 crates to pack and ship her across the Atlantic a final time, 36 of them alone holding 300,000 copper rivets and iron bolts needed for her re-assembly. (It was up to American engineers to sort how to solve the problem of Galvanic corrosion while assembling these disparate metals on what was then known as Bedloe’s Island.)
Lazarus’ poem was just one fundraising effort to construct the pedestal. Others included lotteries and boxing matches, but fully monetizing the project took longer than expected so the statue wasn’t ready for its intended dedication on July 4, 1886. The U.S.’s Panic of 1884 didn’t help, nor did the Depression of 1882-1885. Across the Atlantic France’s stock market crashed in 1882. And rapidly globalizing financial systems brought fluctuations in capital flows and currency values, with one result being instability in international trade.
Financial turmoil and uncertainty
Eight years earlier in 1878 there had been growing interest in France to see Lady Liberty before her emigration to the U.S.A., but revenues as the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris were nonetheless disappointing: The expo lost a fair amount of money. Against a backdrop of financial crisis and monetary uncertainty, projects everywhere that were seen as ‘extras’ and ‘nice to haves’ were called into question. It seemed the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty was a proverbial ‘day late and a dollar short’. Not to spoil the ending, but funds did eventually come in and the plinth designed by Richard Morris Hunt proudly anchored Lady Liberty when she was officially dedicated on October 28, 1886.
Still, there was healthy skepticism when Paris proposed hosting yet another grand exposition in 1889, just a little more than a decade after the 1878 fair failed to break even. Could civic boosters conceive of a way to make another world’s fair succeed where others had failed?
If only there was a draw, something new, something modern, something tall...
...something je ne sais quoi.
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Emma Lazarus was a writer of international renown, counting Ralph Waldo Emerson among her circle of peers. She never married and likely died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 38. Her activism and advocacy for immigrants stands as a powerful example for us all.
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Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems: (American Poets Project #13)
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