The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886.
France gave the statue to the United States to commemorate the alliance between the two countries during the American Revolution and to celebrate shared ideals of liberty. Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed the statue, while Alexandre Gustave Eiffel helped engineer its internal support structure.
The dedication ceremony took place on October 28, 1886, on what was then called Bedloe’s Island. President Grover Cleveland presided, and Bartholdi’s copper statue had been assembled after its parts traveled from France in crates.
The statue represents Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom. Its tablet bears the date July 4, 1776, connecting the monument to American independence. The famous poem “The New Colossus” was written by Emma Lazarus in 1883, but it was added to the pedestal in 1903, not at the original dedication.