Bartholdi, Frédéric

The First Iron Lady

Still lifting her lamp beside the golden door — if not nowadays quite so eager to receive your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, wretched refuse and tempest-tossed homeless — the Statue of Liberty is coming up to the 100th anniversary of her dedication. On her star-fort island site off the tip of Manhattan, the finishing touches were put to her in 1886. But in order to ensure that her kit of parts fitted together, she had already been fully assembled on a try-out basis in Paris two years previously, so really, as of now, she is 100 years old if she’s a day.