This October 28th, the Statue of Liberty will close to the public for a year as teams of structural "internists" (read: New Jersey-based Joseph A. Natoli Construction Corp., out of Pine Brook) set about bringing the lady up to code.  New staircases will be added and all the interior areas will be strengthened to a fire survivability rating of two hours.

"The Island will remain open," says Elizabeth Carmody of Statue Cruises.  "And the Park Service is going to have extra Rangers on the ground to enhance the experience."  Some 4 million people go to the island each year, but just 14% actually enter the statue.  Emergencies aside, "the real benefit for visitors is that the monument will be able to admit more visitors after the works are completed," said Jane Ahern, a spokesperson for the National Parks Service.

In a bit of bureaucratically inspired calendrical karma, Lady Liberty was dedicated 125 years earlier, on October 28th 1886.  As the final rivet was hammered home President Grover Cleveland stood on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor to do the honors.  "Liberty Enlightening the World," as she was formerly known, had arrived just over a year earlier in 200 packing cases.  It was not a gift of the French Government as many believe, but the brainchild of Edouard de Laboulaye, a French historian who thought the Franco-American alliance during the American Revolution was something worth commemorating.  It was the French people, through a public subscription, who raised the money (Bartholdi sculpted for free), and the American public paid for the pedestal.

In 1892, neighboring Ellis Island became the chief point of entry for immigrants to the United States, and Lady Liberty, torch held high as hope, welcomed some 12 million souls over the next 32 years.


The New Colossus (fragment) Emma Lazarus 1883

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.