Statue of Liberty marks enduring symbol of Franco-American friendship

Once Ellis Island opened in 1892, the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor stood over a processing station that handled nearly 12 million immigrants through 1954. The monument was a gift of friendship from France and was dedicated on October 28, 1886. The monument itself was designed by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi and engineered by Gustave Eiffel, with copper sheets wrapped around an iron and steel framework. It rises 305 feet in total, including a 151-foot statue, and President Grover Cleveland dedicated it after the long transatlantic effort that brought it from France to New York.

Joseph Pulitzer kept the pedestal project alive in 1884, raising more than $100,000 in six months through the New York World after the American committee ran short of money. Emma Lazarus’s 1883 poem, The New Colossus, donated to help finance the pedestal, later gave the statue its most durable line of interpretation, casting Liberty as a symbol of welcome for newcomers rather than only a civic monument. By 1924, immigration had already fallen sharply because of quota laws, the same year the Statue of Liberty was designated a National Monument. The National Park Service has cared for the statue since 1933.

Jesse Brackenbury, chief executive of The Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island Foundation, is now leading a $100 million campaign to revitalize the Ellis Island museum and reimagine the National Museum of Immigration. The effort includes expanding the Records Discovery Center so more families can trace arrival records, and the foundation's database now reaches beyond Ellis Island to other points of entry in Massachusetts, Florida, Hawaii and California.