This Day in American History: The Statue of Liberty's Cornerstone Is Laid
- ForAmerica
- 54 minutes ago
- 2 min read
On this day in 1884, thousands of soaked New Yorkers stood in pouring rain to watch a six-ton slab of granite lowered into place -- the first physical piece of what would become the most recognizable symbol of freedom on Earth.
France was covering the cost of the Statue of Liberty itself, sculpted by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi with an internal iron framework designed by Gustave Eiffel. But the deal always called for America to pay for the statue's pedestal -- and by 1884, fundraising had stalled badly, with various levels of government reluctant to commit public money. Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer would later rescue the effort with a public campaign that raised over $100,000 in small-dollar donations from ordinary Americans, but on August 5, 1884, that rescue was still two years away.
Despite the funding uncertainty and a driving rainstorm that kept many invited guests away, roughly 1,500 people packed onto Bedloe's Island that day for a formal cornerstone-laying ceremony led by William A. Brodie, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New York. A six-ton block of granite -- quarried in Guilford, Connecticut -- was lowered into the northeast corner of the pedestal's foundation, built inside the walls of the old Fort Wood. Underneath it, organizers sealed a copper box containing a copy of the Constitution, George Washington's Farewell Address, and bronze medals of American presidents through Chester A. Arthur.
Construction of the pedestal finally wrapped up in April 1886, more than a year after the statue herself had already arrived, disassembled in crates, aboard the French frigate Isère. Workers reassembled Liberty atop her finished pedestal over four months that summer, and on October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland formally dedicated her before a crowd of hundreds of thousands. The rainy cornerstone ceremony two years earlier was the quiet, unglamorous first step of a gift that would go on to greet more than 16 million immigrants sailing past her into New York Harbor.
Also on this day:
1861 -- Congress passes the nation's first federal income tax to help fund the Civil War.
1936 -- Jesse Owens wins his third gold medal of the Berlin Olympics, in the 200-meter dash.
1962 -- Actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her Los Angeles home at age 36.
2004 -- The Statue of Liberty reopens to visitors for the first time since the September 11 attacks.
A rainstorm, a six-ton stone, and ordinary Americans passing the hat two years later -- that's how a gift from France became an American icon.
Source: National Park Service, Library of Congress
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