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The Statue of Liberty

“The New Colossus” famously references the Statue of Liberty, a historic landmark that stands on Liberty Island in the Upper New York Bay. Based on Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty, the copper-clad statue depicts a robed woman raising a torch with her right hand and clutching a tablet in the crook of her left arm. The Statue of Liberty was originally conceived to mark the centennial of U.S. Independence and the perseverance of American democracy. Curiously, it was a Frenchman who proposed the statue, and the two nations agreed to collaborate on the ambitious construction. The French would finance, design, and build the statue itself, while the Americans would provide the site and finance the construction of a pedestal. Yet fundraising proved challenging, particularly on the American side. To boost this effort, a fundraising auction was organized, and Emma Lazarus agreed to compose a poem for the auction. The result was “The New Colossus,” which enjoyed wide circulation at the time of the statue’s dedication in 1886 and was later cast on a bronze plaque and mounted at the statue’s base. Lazarus’s poem altered the statue’s symbolism, forever linking it to America’s history of immigration.

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