The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty was laid on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor in 1884.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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!”

—The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus

The laying of the first cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty was the result of years of creative effort and intense fundraising in two countries. French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to design a statue as a gift from France to the United States for the U.S.’s 1876 Centennial celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The statue was to stand as a symbol of the friendship between France and the United States and of both nations’ commitment to liberty. By July of 1884, Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty was complete but remained in France because funds for building the pedestal, the responsibility of the United States, had not been raised. Despite major fundraising efforts, contributions from U.S. citizens to pay for the pedestal were slow in coming. For one fundraising event, an 1883 art auction, well known poet Emma Lazarus wrote The New Colossus, a poem that would eventually be engraved on a bronze plaque at the Statue’s base and would help to give the statue a new symbolic meaning—that of a beacon of liberty for immigrants. The unsuccessful fundraising effort was given a jolt of life in 1885, when newspaper publicist Joseph Pulitzer, himself a Hungarian immigrant, began a campaign in his newspaper The World in support of the efforts. Pulitzer used the editorial pages of his paper to shame both wealthy and middle-class Americans into donating to the pedestal fund. The campaign was highly successful and on June of 1885 the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor in 350 individual pieces. The statue was reassembled on its new pedestal over a period of four months and was dedicated in front of thousands on October 28, 1886—ten years after the Centennial she was designed to celebrate.

EDSITEment
In The Statue of Liberty: Bringing the ‘New Colossus’ to America (6–8) students learn about the effort to convince a skeptical American public to contribute to the effort to erect a pedestal and to bring the Statue of Liberty to New York. Students investigate primary historical documents, and then analyze the poem “The New Colossus,” written by nineteenth-century poet Emma Lazarus.

The Statue of Liberty: The Meaning and Use of a National Symbol (3–5) helps students explore the nature of national symbols. Students study the Statue of Liberty, complete research on a national symbol and then use their research to communicate a message of their own.

ReadWriteThink
Looking at Landmarks: Using a Picture Book to Guide Research (3–5) uses Ben's Dream, a picture book by Chris Van Allsburg, to highlight ten major landmarks of the world, including the Statue of Liberty.