If the work is not interrupted it will be entirely completed and ready for the statue Nov. 1.” Joseph Pulitzer’s ad in the New York World calling on all readers to crowd fund the statues pedestal.

Liberty’s French benefactors bankrolled the statue but left it to America to build and fund the pedestal. When early New York fundraisers failed, Boston and Philadelphia offered to pay the full ...

When Liberty Enlightening the World arrived in New York Harbor on June 17, 1885, the statue didn’t yet have a pedestal on which to stand.

The pedestal on which it stands was designed by Richard Morris Hunt. The statue was shipped in pieces to the U.S. and assembled at the site, with many of those assembling it being new immigrants.

The Statue of Liberty and her sonnet "The New Colossus" was written in 1883 by Emma Lazarus to help raise funds for construction of the towering sculpture's pedestal.

Lazarus wrote the sonnet in 1883, three years before the Statue of Liberty's dedication, and donated it to an auction raising funds for the pedestal upon which the statute would eventually stand ...

Attached to the Statue of Liberty is a bronze plaque inscribed with a poem familiar to many Americans. Written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 and hung inside the statue’s pedestal in 1903, it has long ...