Plate CXL · Wednesday, October 28, 2026

Liberty at 140: from copper penny to verdigris

On a foggy October 28, 1886, New York dedicated the statue France sent across the Atlantic in 350 pieces. She arrived the color of a new penny and spent roughly 17 years turning green. Here is her story, by the numbers, on her 140th birthday.

Dedicated Oct. 28, 1886Sculptor Frédéric-Auguste BartholdiIron frame Gustave Eiffel
I

The elevation drawing

National Park Service measurements. The statue alone is about as tall as her granite and concrete pedestal; stacked, they top 305 feet.

Elevation drawing: statue 151 feet 1 inch on a 154-foot pedestal, 305 feet 1 inch from ground to torch tip 305′ 1″ground to torch statue 151′ 1″
Proportions simplified. Base of statue to torch: 151 ft 1 in. Ground to top of pedestal: 154 ft.
Copper skin
3/32 inabout 2.4 mm, riveted over an iron frame
Copper used
179,200 lbof a 560,000 lb statue (NPS estimate)
Steps, ground to crown
377
Crown
25 windowsand 7 rays
Index finger
8 ftthe hand is 16 ft 5 in
Waist
35 ftacross
Sway in high wind
3 inthe torch moves a little more
Visitors a year
~3.8 million
II

Scrub the patina

Drag the slider through 161 years. The statue below takes on the color the record describes for that moment, from Bartholdi's workshop to her bright-copper debut to the green we know.

The statue, colored for the selected year
Bright copper

III

Dedication day, hour by hour

Thursday, October 28, 1886. Fog sat on the harbor for most of it.

  1. About 9 a.m.

    A land parade sets off with National Guard units heading down Fifth Avenue. Crowd estimates ran to around a million people. President Grover Cleveland and Bartholdi review it from a stand at Madison Square.

  2. Passing Wall Street

    As marchers pass the New York Stock Exchange, office workers toss ticker tape from the windows, an early version of what became the city's ticker-tape parade tradition.

  3. About 12:45 p.m.

    Cleveland's boat reaches Bedloe's Island through a harbor jammed with vessels. Very few women are allowed on the island; suffragists charter a boat and circle nearby to argue that a statue of Liberty as a woman should mean the vote for women.

  4. The unveiling

    Bartholdi is waiting inside the statue to reveal her face when Senator William Evarts finishes his speech. He mistakes a pause for his cue, pulls the cord early, and the celebration cuts Evarts off mid-speech.

  5. Cleveland accepts

    The president accepts the gift for the United States, describing it as a sign of kinship between two republics.

  6. Three weeks later

    On November 22, 1886, the torch is lit as an official aid to navigation, powered by a dynamo and arc lamps.

IV

Who paid, and who kept the light

France paid for the statue. Americans were supposed to pay for the pedestal, and nearly didn't.

The pedestal fund

120,000+
donors to Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper drive

With the statue on its way and the pedestal stalled for lack of money, Pulitzer used his paper, The World, to shame the wealthy and court everyone else. He promised to print every donor's name, no matter how small the gift.

The drive raised more than $100,000 and the pedestal, designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, was finished in April 1886. NPS puts the cost of statue and pedestal together at $300,000 to $600,000 at the time.

Sixteen years a lighthouse

1886–1902
Nov. 22, 1886 to March 1, 1902, per the Coast Guard

The Lighthouse Board ran the statue as a navigation light. A single dynamo drove fifteen arc lamps, nine of them in the torch, plus fourteen incandescent lamps inside.

The beam never worked well for ships. Officials called it useless for navigation, and in 1902 care of the statue passed to the War Department. The National Park Service took over in 1933.

V

Turning 140 in a big year

Her birthday lands in the year of America's 250th, and both countries have leaned in.

Every October 28

The National Park Service and the Ladies Auxiliary of the VFW mark the anniversary each year on Liberty Island, a tradition that includes the 50th in 1936, presided over by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A VR walk-through

The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan is running a 35-minute group VR experience on the statue's design and construction, from Oct. 25, 2026 to March 19, 2027, tied to the 140th and the 250th.

A French light show

For the Fourth of July, France planned a privately funded light show on Liberty Island for the 250th, approved by the Park Service after months of talks and set for national broadcast.

VI

Sources

  1. NPS: Statue statistics
  2. NPS: Statue of Liberty facts
  3. NPS: History continued
  4. NPS: Creating the Statue of Liberty
  5. NPS: Pulitzer in depth
  6. U.S. Coast Guard History: Statue of Liberty Light
  7. Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation: arrival in New York Harbor
  8. State of New Jersey: Statue of Liberty
  9. History.com: why the statue turned green
  10. WorldAtlas: why the statue got a new torch
  11. Untapped New York: the 1886 dedication
  12. Smithsonian: France's light show for the 250th
  13. Museum of Jewish Heritage: Statue for Liberty VR experience