What does the Statue of Liberty represent?

The Statue of Liberty represents freedom and welcome to immigrants, and more broadly the friendship between the United States and France and the principles of liberty and republican government. The statue, formally titled Liberty Enlightening the World, was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (with internal iron framework engineered by Gustave Eiffel, the same engineer who later designed the Eiffel Tower), and was a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States. It commemorates the centennial of the Declaration of Independence (1776 to 1876) and the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Construction began in France in 1875 and was completed in 1884; the statue was disassembled into 350 pieces in 214 crates, shipped across the Atlantic on the French frigate Isère, and reassembled on a pedestal designed by American architect Richard Morris Hunt and built by American donations on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor. President Grover Cleveland dedicated the statue on October 28, 1886, in a ceremony attended by Bartholdi.

The statue stands 305 feet 1 inch from ground level to the tip of the torch (151 feet 1 inch for the statue alone, plus a 154-foot pedestal), is made of a copper sheet about 3/32 of an inch thick (the patina is now green from oxidation), and weighs 225 tons. The figure is a robed woman holding a torch in her raised right hand and a tablet inscribed July IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776) in her left, with broken chains at her feet representing the abolition of slavery and tyranny, and a crown of seven rays representing the seven seas and seven continents.

The statue's association with immigration was reinforced by the construction of Ellis Island as the federal immigration station in 1892, located adjacent to Liberty Island, through which more than 12 million immigrants entered the United States between 1892 and 1954. Emma Lazarus's 1883 sonnet The New Colossus, with its famous lines Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, was engraved on a bronze plaque and placed inside the pedestal in 1903 (currently displayed in the Statue of Liberty Museum).

Bedloe's Island was renamed Liberty Island by Congress on August 3, 1956. The statue was designated a National Monument on October 15, 1924 by President Calvin Coolidge and is now part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, managed by the National Park Service. It is one of the most visited national monuments, with about 4 million visitors a year.