06-17-2025 - On This Day in Insane History

On June 17, 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor aboard the French frigate Isère, disassembled into 350 individual pieces packed carefully in 214 crates. This colossal copper marvel, a gift from France to commemorate the centennial of American independence, was the brainchild of sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who had spent nearly a decade designing the monumental work.

The statue's journey was anything but straightforward. Fundraising proved challenging on both sides of the Atlantic, with newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer launching a crowdfunding campaign that ultimately raised over $100,000 from more than 120,000 donors, most contributing less than a dollar. Interestingly, the statue's face was reportedly modeled after Bartholdi's mother, Charlotte, giving Lady Liberty a decidedly maternal gaze.

When the crates arrived, New Yorkers were both excited and perplexed by the massive copper components. It would take several months of painstaking reassembly on Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island) before the 151-foot-tall symbol of freedom would stand complete, with her iconic torch held aloft—a testament to international friendship and the enduring ideals of liberty that would come to symbolize hope for millions of immigrants arriving in the United States in the decades to follow.