CONSTRUCTION DETAILS:

In 1876, French artisans and craftsmen began constructing the Statue in France under Bartholdi's direction. The arm holding the torch was completed in 1876 and shown at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The head and shoulders were completed in 1878 and displayed at the Paris Universal Exposition. The entire Statue was completed and assembled in Paris between 1881 and 1884. Also in 1884, construction on the pedestal began in the United States.

Bartholdi had made various plaster study models of the figure. From one of these, which was 1.25 meters (4 feet) high, he prepared a 2.85-meter (9.3-foot) reproduction. This last version was next cut into sections, each of Bartholdi supervised construction, in the workshops of Gaget, Gauthier, et Companie at 25 Rue de Chazelles in Paris. The preliminaries to construction included choice of the material, which had to be light, easily worked, and able to resist the maritime climatic conditions to which the Statue would be exposed. Bronze was too heavy. Copper, relatively light and easily worked, was chosen. Another key decision was to utilize an interior skeleton of iron that would support the thin copper sheets of which the Statue's exterior would be composed. Such a "hollow" design would permit maximum ease of access to the interior of the head and the torch which was then reproduced four times its size in plaster. The preparation of each final section of the last model involved thousands of measurements. When each portion had been enlarged, carpenters prepared wooden molds around it. Copper sheets were then hand-hammered into the molds. More than 300 large sheets of copper were required, and all were subjected to this process, known as repousse (a technique then in vogue for construction of the exterior walls of the upper floors of French buildings).

As work proceeded, completed parts of the Statue were exhibited to spur public support for the project: the hand and torch in Philadelphia at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 and later in New York City, and the head at the Paris Exposition of 1878.

The ingenious load-bearing metal framework on which the copper sheets were to be mounted was designed by Alexandra Gustave Eiffel, who would undertake the construction of his namesake Tower shortly after the completion of his work on Liberty. Eiffel, who was noted for the light and airy, almost spidery, character of his bridge designs, thrust a similar structure vertically to support the Statue. (Viollet-leDuc, Bartholdi's mentor, who had originally undertaken the design of the base and interior framework, died in 1879. After his death Eiffel was retained.) The execution of the preparatory work just described occupied several years. Finally, in the spring of 1883, workers began to hang and hand-rivet the copper sheets on Eiffel's frame, which had been erected outside the Paris workshops.

This step was taken because it had been decided that the Statue would first be erected in Paris, presented to American representatives, and then dismantled and shipped to the United States.

Statue of Liberty was first completed in Paris between 1883 and 1884 before being disassembled and shipped to the United States. Photo from United States

World Heritage Nomination Document.