Probably, there was no tourist in New York who did not want to climb the observation deck of the Statue of Liberty, towering on Liberty Island (until 1956 - Bedlow Island). But hardly anyone knows that the person who invented this monument originally proposed to install it in the Egyptian Port Said.
In August 1834, a boy was born in the Alsatian city of Colmar, who was named Frederick. His parents, the Bartholdi couple, were wealthy people, so they gave their son a good primary education. After the death of his father, the family moved to Paris, where the young man studied architecture at the National School of Fine Arts.
An ambitious project
Bartholdi was an adventurous man. He traveled around Egypt for a long time, then worked as an architect in Colmar. However, this bored him, and during the Franco-Prussian war, he went to the army, where he became Garibaldi's adjutant. After the war, he went to the United States, where he created his first sculptures, such as the statue of General Lafayette in New York.
Even during his African voyage, Bartholdi had the idea to put a grandiose lighthouse in the form of a statue of a woman holding a torch in her raised hand at the entrance to the newly built Suez Canal. The author of the channel project, Ferdinand de Lesseps, liked the idea, but the founders of the joint-stock company reacted to it coolly. Perhaps the project of the monument would have been shelved if the writer and politician Edouard de Laboulay had not become interested in it. True, he was indifferent to the project of the lighthouse, but he appreciated the gigantic structure as a monumental symbol of democracy.
Indeed, in France, which had traveled a difficult path from monarchy to republic, such a project aroused patriotic feelings. But not with the government. And then de Laboulay remembered that the New World was preparing to celebrate the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and the United States was the ideal place to place the monument. But money was needed to create the sculpture, and a Franco-American alliance was created to finance the project, with de Laboulaye as president.
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Through thorns
But with the first steps, the enthusiasts faced financial difficulties. The French were sluggish about the construction of the monument on foreign territory, the zealous Americans wanted to understand what the monument would be like. And then Bartholdi went to the United States, taking with him a model of the statue and a hand with a life-size torch. However, the sculptor suffered a fiasco - his project was greeted with ridicule. But Bartholdi did not give up. Since France managed to collect the required amount, Frederic began to create a statue called "Freedom Illuminating the World." She imagined the figure of a woman holding a torch in her right hand, and a book in her left.
According to one version, her face became a copy of the face of his mother, and his mistress, the widow of the famous merchant Isaac Singer, posed for the figure. The statue was made from thin sheets of copper, minted in wooden molds, which were then installed on a steel frame. And now the work is completed.
It took 125 tons of steel to make the frame, and 31 tons to copper. In the US, however, funding stalled. And then the owner of the World newspaper Joseph Pulitzer turned to the Americans. The situation was saved not by financial tycoons, but by ordinary people who transferred little money through the editorial office of the Pulitzer newspaper: some - a dollar, some - 50 cents.
Moreover, this campaign was launched not only in New York, but throughout the country. Finally, the required amount was collected. A pedestal was laid on Bedlow Island, which, according to the project, was to be 27 meters high. Meanwhile, in Paris, the previously assembled statue, which was admired by the townspeople, was dismantled and packed in boxes, which were delivered to New York by ship.
And on October 26, 1886, the assembled statue, which has now become the symbol of the United States, was officially opened with a huge crowd of people. The monumental monument, 93 meters high (from the ground to the top of the torch), consists of the female figure herself and a concrete pedestal. The woman holds a torch in her right hand, and in her left she squeezes a tablet on which the date of the adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence is carved in Roman numerals and English letters.
Inside, a staircase of 356 steps was installed, which led to an observation deck located at the head of the monument, framed by seven rays according to the number of continents and seas in the view of Western geographers. A 360-degree view was provided by 25 windows.
After this triumph, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi sculpted a few more sculptures, alas, not so widely known. The sculptor died of tuberculosis on October 4, 1904 and was buried in the Parisian cemetery of Montparnasse.
Sergey Uranov