Who sculpted the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor?

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Bartholdi was a French sculptor who conceived the colossal statue as a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States. The statue’s full name is Liberty Enlightening the World. Its copper exterior depicts a robed figure holding a torch in her raised right hand and a tablet in her left.

Gustave Eiffel, better known for the Eiffel Tower, helped design the statue’s internal iron framework, but he was not its sculptor. The statue was built in sections in France, disassembled, shipped across the Atlantic, and reassembled on Bedloe’s Island, now called Liberty Island.

President Grover Cleveland dedicated the monument on October 28, 1886. The tablet bears the date July 4, 1776, linking the monument to American independence. The statue’s famous poem, “The New Colossus,” was written by Emma Lazarus and added to the pedestal in 1903.