Photographed from a rare vantage point, several of the Statue of Liberty’s 25 observation windows look out over New York Harbor in an undated picture. Visitor access to the Statue of Liberty’s crown reopens on the Fourth of July for the first time since 9/11.
Above the windows are three of the seven skyscraping rays said by some to represent the seven seas and continents of the world. — Photograph by Paul Chesley, NGS Image Collection
Now with safer, higher railings, a refurbished spiral staircase, pictured in 2004, leads visitors through the Statue of Liberty’s guts to its neck. From there a smaller staircase—which reopens on the Fourth of July, 2009—leads into the crown.
Due to evacuation concerns, crown access will be restricted to 240 visitors per day—a far cry from the pre-9/11 limit, noted National Park Service spokesperson Mindi Rambo.
“It used to be, you take a step and you wait, you take a step and you wait … your nose against the spine of the person in front of you.” —Photograph by Jennifer Szymaszek/AP
Dentally-challenged adolescents everywhere might be pleased to know that even the Statue of Liberty, it appears, wears headgear. As seen in 1984, strap-iron armature holds the statue’s copper skin in place.
Lady Liberty’s face, according to some historians, is modeled after that of the mother of the statue’s designer, French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
The statue was a gift to the U.S. from France to commemorate the friendship forged during the American Revolution. The colossus was formally dedicated on October 28, 1886. —Photograph courtesy Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress
Circa-1930 tourists peer out of the Statue of Liberty’s crown at a photographer on the torch, which has been closed to the public since a 1916 explosion on a nearby island. From the flame’s tip to the ground is 305 feet (93 meters).
Cradled in the statue’s left arm is a tablet bearing the date of U.S. independence in Roman numerals: July IV, MDCCLXXVI. Independence Day 2009 will see the reopening of the Statue of Liberty’s crown. —Photograph from Fox Photos/Getty Images
Before crowds ascend again on the Fourth of July, 2009, Statue of Liberty park ranger Lance Williams quietly takes in the view from the crown in May 2009.
To reach the crown, visitors lucky enough to get tickets will have to climb 354 stairs in groups of ten. —Photograph by Richard Drew/AP
The circa-1886 Statue of Liberty’s angular steel skeleton meets its elegantly undulating copper toga in this 1984 picture.
The statue’s exterior is made of copper about as thick as two pennies stacked together, according Park Service spokesperson Mindi Rambo. The copper sheets—about 300 total—are held together with iron bands.
The skeleton’s engineer, Gustave Eiffel, would in 1889 shock—and later seduce—Paris when his structural handiwork stood “naked” in the form of the Eiffel Tower.— Photograph courtesy Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress
Invisible to tourists, the Statue of Liberty’s 25-foot-long (7.6-meter-long) left foot, pictured in 1984, brushes against a little-known detail that nevertheless loomed large in sculptor Frederic Bartholdi’s design.
Broken chains beneath the statue’s toga symbolize freedom from oppression in general and the United States’ abolition of slavery—just 20 years prior to the statue’s dedication—in particular. — Photograph courtesy Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress
The Statue of Liberty underwent a major renovation for its 1986 centennial, with the most obvious change being the replacement of the torch.
The old flame (left), shown in 1984, featured amber-colored windows and was lighted from within. The openings of the old torch, now in an adjoining museum, allowed rain in and led to corrosion of the arm’s support structure, Park Service spokesperson Mindi Rambo said.
The new torch (right), pictured under construction in 1984, has a flame with an unbroken copper skin covered in 24-karat gold leaf and entirely lighted from the outside. — Photographs by Jet Lowe, courtesy Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress
A narrow, 40-foot-long (12-meter-long) ladder is the only way to the torch, the Statue of Liberty’s highest point.
The torch has been off-limits to visitors since the “Black Tom” explosion of July 30, 1916. Debris from the attack on U.S. ammunition supplies on nearby—and long since subsumed by landfill—Black Tom Island, New Jersey, pierced the statue.
Another attack—the terrorist assault on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001—prompted the full closure of Liberty Island, which was reopened a hundred days later. The Statue of Liberty would reopen in 2004, and the reopening of the crown will complete the process on the Fourth of July, 2009. — Photograph courtesy Historic American Engineering Record, Library of Congress
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