Who proposed the idea of the Statue of Liberty?

Édouard de Laboulaye proposed the idea of the Statue of Liberty.

Laboulaye was a French legal scholar, political thinker, and prominent advocate of liberty and democracy. In 1865, he suggested that France should present the United States with a monument commemorating the countries’ friendship and America’s centennial of independence.

Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi later developed the proposal into the colossal figure known as Liberty Enlightening the World. Bartholdi designed the statue, while engineer Gustave Eiffel and his team created the iron framework that supports the copper exterior.

The names in this question are easy to confuse because Lafayette symbolized the earlier French-American alliance, Eiffel engineered the structure, and Bartholdi created the sculpture. Laboulaye was the originator of the gift concept. The completed statue was dedicated in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886.