The Statue of Liberty was the French gift dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886 as a symbol of friendship with the United States.
France gave the monument to the United States to commemorate the centennial of American independence and celebrate the two countries’ shared republican ideals. The statue was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, while its internal iron framework was engineered by Gustave Eiffel and his team.
The dedication ceremony took place on October 28, 1886, on Bedloe’s Island, now called Liberty Island. The copper statue depicts Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, holding a torch and a tablet inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI.
A common mix-up is crediting Eiffel with designing the statue itself; he designed its structural support, not the exterior sculpture. The famous poem “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus, was written in 1883, before it was mounted on the pedestal in 1903.