On June 19, 1885, the disassembled pieces of the Statue of Liberty arrived at their final home on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor. Packed into 214 massive wooden crates aboard the French transport ship Isère, the 350 individual copper and iron sheets were carefully transferred onto lighters. Because the massive stone pedestal designed by Richard Morris Hunt was far from finished due to a severe lack of funding, the pieces of Lady Liberty were carefully stacked in storage warehouses to await assembly.
The statue’s arrival sparked a massive wave of public excitement that accidentally solved its fundraising crisis. Newspaper titan Joseph Pulitzer used the momentum to launch a brilliant campaign in The New York World, promising to print the name of every single person who donated to the pedestal fund, no matter how small the amount. The response was overwhelming; over $100,000 was raised in a matter of months, driven mostly by children, immigrants, and working-class citizens donating mere pennies and nickels to secure their place in American history.
Image: New York – Transferring the cases containing the Bartholdi statue from the hold of the ISERE to lighters, for removal to Bedloe’s Island via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
