Original subtitles

A 225 -ton symbol of freedom visited by more than

175 million.

The Statue of Liberty is so iconic. People don't think of the metal and the

sweat that went into creating it.

Her story begins 150 years ago in an unlikely place with an unknown

artist. Hell -bent on creating the tallest statue of all time.

It's something he has to do with his life.

It's a puzzle that takes 20 years to solve. It was an engineering project,

like a building than a work of art.

How does she get her shape?

Excuse me, Mr. Eiffel?

The inside of the Statue of Liberty looks like the Eiffel Tower.

Her signature color. When it was first built, it looked like a penny.

What other secrets does she hold?

His face is near identical to the face of the Statue of Liberty.

And how does it nearly end?

Stop!

In disaster.

We need to really understand what kind of audacity it took for Bartoldi to keep

trying to make the statue.

This is the surprising story of Liberty Rising.

It's 1865.

In the United States, the Civil War has left 750 ,000 soldiers dead.

The conflict really pivots on the question whether the United States can

be a democratic republic and still have an institution like human bondage.

The answer to the question is a resounding no.

Six days after it ends, President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated.

News that reverberates around the world.

Especially in France, famous French author Edouard René de Laboulaye is

particularly outspoken about his love of democracy, donating to United States

anti -slavery efforts and singing America's praises in his books.

Laboulaye and his friends were fanboys of the American experiment.

There was nothing more important to him than individual liberty, and the United

States had it. France did not.

Seventy -five years after its own revolution, France is now a

The very person they elect as president, the nephew of the emperor Napoleon,

overthrows the republic to establish himself as the new emperor, calling

himself... Napoleon III.

Those who believed in the original values of the French Revolution are

thumb of Napoleon III. And they see in the defeat of the

Confederacy the capacity to revive their values of freedom.

Laboulaye has regular dinner parties where he and his guests plot to

French democracy.

This time, he's invited an up -and -coming artist.

Here he is.

Friends, meet Auguste Bartoldi.

Frederic Auguste Bartoldi is a 31 -year -old sculptor trying to make his mark in

the art world.

There are times when a dinner really changes the course of history, and this

dinner party was one of those times.

There is a whole assembly of great men there, you know, to talk over all the

ideas of the time. And they're thinking, we need to send something over to the

United States that will show how much we respect Abraham Lincoln and the ending

of slavery there.

We'll build them a monument, something that shows we have a bond with the

American people.

And you're going to build it.

Bartoldi is an unlikely choice.

So far, he's shown little sign of greatness.

He starts his career in the 1850s, trying his hand at painting.

Bartoldi was a mediocre painter.

He was always a visual artist, but perhaps not the best in class.

In 1855, Martoldi's mother uses family connections to get him a job using a

different skill, building the statue of a French war hero for a government

exhibit. But he's in over his head.

By the time he's done with this thing, it's about 25 feet, including the

pedestal. It can barely fit out of the studio with a one -inch clearance

the doorway.

When it was delivered to the venue, everyone's like, we...

Don't have that big of a door. We have a problem. We're going to have to leave

this at the entrance.

Oh, that is the most prominent place at this exhibition.

For Bartoldi, this is the lesson that if you build something a little bit too

big, everyone will notice it.

Ten years later, Laboulaye's proposal is too late.

Bartoldi already has another big job in his sights.

Egypt is creating the Suez Canal, the greatest technological wonder of the

The Suez Canal cuts the distance between Asia and Europe in more than half.

Imagine connecting east and west for the first time in that way.

Over 40 years before the Panama Canal, Bartoldi is pitching the idea of a

monumental statue for the waterway's entrance.

This is a time of enormous growth intellectually and commercially across

world, and it is a rediscovery also of ancient ideas, and that included

statues. At the time, the ancient Greek Colossus of Rhodes is considered the

tallest statue in history, at 108 feet, or about 10 stories.

By the 19th century, few structures of any kind reached that height.

Bartholdi is an...

Extremely ambitious person, but it's not for money. He's coming from sort of

Mason culture that you didn't have any kind of afterlife you were going to go

to. Therefore, you have a lot of people who have this idea of creating some

wonder, something that will outlast them and be their gift of immortality.

Bartoldi's design shows an ancient enslaved woman holding a lantern, a nod

Egypt's recent abolition of slavery.

The design that Bartholdi comes up with for the Suez Canal statue is a first

draft for the Statue of Liberty. There are many similarities between the two, a

female holding a torch, wearing a robe.

At 148 feet, more than 13 stories, it would dwarf the Greek Colossus to be

the tallest statue in recorded history.

Bartoli takes his unsolicited pitch to the mastermind of the canal, famous

French statesman Ferdinand de Lesseps.

It's a terrible idea as far as de Lesseps is concerned.

Why does de Lesseps want Bartoli to come in and somehow be the cherry on top of

his great project?

I'm late for a party.

He's filled with despair that this is not really going to happen, and he has

go back to the drawing board, literally.

This rejection alters the course of history, putting Bartoldi on the path of

project that will use over 50 million pounds of metal and concrete to create

figure that will greet over 175 million visitors across 130 years and

counting.

But for now, he's at square one.

Bertoldi thinks about the idea that Laboulaye had once put out there and

I'm going to America. I'm going to make this happen.

In June of 1871, Bartoli sets out for the United States on the trip that will

change his life.

Bartoli doesn't have a plan.

He doesn't have the money to do this. He doesn't even know where the ultimate

location is going to be.

And he doesn't care.

He just wants to put this marker down on the planet and leave it there for all

time.

In 1871, French artist Frédéric -Auguste Bartholdi arrives in New York City with

no money or design to pitch his idea of building the world's tallest statue.

He had never visited the country. He didn't know what it looked like. He

know where to place a statue of this size.

But before he even steps off the boat, Bartholdi spots the ideal location.

Today, we know it as Liberty Island.

But in 1871, it's called Bedloe's Island, a nondescript place New Yorkers

largely ignore.

It was a small island that held Fort Wood. It was a military fort that was no

longer in use, so it was abandoned.

Bedloe's Island is situated in such a place that as you come into New York

Harbor, it's very prominent.

To Bartoldi.

It's the perfect stage for his statue, a gift from France to the U .S.

But now he needs to convince the right people.

The only letters of introduction that he has are from Laboulaye and people that

he knew from the abolitionist struggle. So the idea that these connections could

ultimately lead to the approval of the statue, it almost seems preposterous.

But after just a few weeks, Edouard de Laboulaye's contacts lead him to a

beach cottage.

Mr. President, thank you for seeing me.

It's the summer home of President Ulysses S. Grant, two years into his

term. You know, one of the striking things when you look back at that part

the 19th century was how almost ridiculously accessible presidents could

could find the president of the United States out and about walking the city.

That would never happen today.

Bartoldi asks permission to place his 13 -story monument on Bedloe's Island and

shows the Suez Canal design as a sample of his work.

There are dreamers, and then there's Bartoldi.

No real idea of how it's going to be paid for.

Bartoldi impulsively makes a guarantee.

The French have the money to build the statue.

And he actually gets a commitment from the President of the United States, no

less. President Grant said, you provide the statue and I will see if Congress

will give you that island.

Bartoldi just assumes, hey, the President of the United States has said

Clearly, I got it made in the shade, right?

I think delusion was the key ingredient of this entire project. Delusion and a

stubbornness of will.

Back in France, Bartoli struggles with no money and no fresh design.

So he reworks the Suez idea.

The Suez Canal statue is the prototype of the Statue of Liberty.

I mean, there's no question.

But the veiled headdress isn't right for his new theme.

Bartoldi needs a different direction.

There's a depiction of France with a diadem crown, and that sticks with him.

You find it in his archives that he has a photograph of that. It's a classical

form that shows this kind of rays of light.

Bartoldi calls his creation Liberty Enlightening the World.

And amazingly, he decides to go even bigger. He puts her on a pedestal,

the statue over 300 feet in total, nearly three times as tall as the

Rhodes.

But Bartoldi still has a major money problem.

With the added pedestal, the statue is expected to cost well over $10 million

today's dollars.

So Bartoldi calls in Edouard de Laboulaye and Ferdinand de Letheps for

The plan is to split the financing.

France covers the statue, and America pays for the pedestal.

And the Americans agreed to that.

Not exactly.

But we've got a commitment from France.

Yes. if we can pay for it.

The Statue of Liberty would never be publicly funded.

While everyone was enamored with the idea, no one wanted to pay for it. The

Statue of Liberty is not practical and it is not functional.

Other projects were meant for the expansion of the modern world, for

of the economy and commerce. And the Statue of Liberty served no other

than... To be a statue.

The group launches a public fundraising campaign in France.

But in the next two years, they can only raise a quarter of the statue's

estimated cost.

And they're at another crossroads.

Until Bartoldi sees an opportunity across the ocean.

In one year, the U .S. will hold its first World's Fair in Philadelphia,

100 years as a nation.

Millions will attend this centennial exposition, and Bartoldi devises a

way to harness it.

So Bartoldi needed proof of concept, right? If he's going to convince the

Americans to get involved and to build this pedestal, he's going to actually

need to build a little bit of the Statue of Liberty.

You can't just build part of the statue.

People can't imagine the scale of what we're planning.

They need to see our vision.

Or part of it.

What if we don't raise the rest of the money?

We won't if we don't do this.

What part of the statue do you want to build?

It's a risky strategy.

If the full statue is never finished, the money they've raised is lost.

and there's no turning back.

You heard the man.

What part?

It's 1875.

Frederic Auguste Bartholdi is using what little money his French partners have

collected to build part of the Statue of Liberty, a desperate attempt to

demonstrate its potential at the United States' centennial celebration.

only five months away.

This would be the perfect time to showcase what his vision for the statue

probably get a lot more people behind it and their pocketbooks.

He's decided to construct the hand holding the torch.

I mean, it's the liberty enlightening the world, and so to have the torch says

it all. It's also beautiful, and it's also dramatic.

Bartoldi will hammer copper into the shapes of the flames.

He plans to gild them with gold.

and illuminate them with floodlights.

But he has an even bigger thrill in mind.

He was planning to use every fundraising apparatus that he could, and the way to

do that would be to sell tickets and let them go up into the torch and walk

around the flame.

Patrons will climb a 40 -foot ladder the width of a fire escape to a balcony

surrounding the flame.

But to build just part of the statue to scale,

Bartoldi must figure out how to construct the whole thing.

This project was something unlike any previous sculpture.

You couldn't just cast it out of bronze. You couldn't carve it out of a single

block of marble.

It had to be constructed. It was an engineering project, more like a

than a work of art.

You need someone who is more or less an architect in order to make it stand up,

not necessarily an artist like Bartholdi.

Good afternoon, Professor.

August Bartholdi.

I have been reading about your statue, which is why I'm here.

Eugene Viollet -Leduc is a former mentor of Bartholdi, and this is the guy who

knows his math.

He was charged with creating much of the statuary in Notre Dame.

He creates the gargoyles.

It will be impossible to assemble it as one solid piece.

If you'll only look at the plans.

Show me.

The statue was tall, about 13 stories.

and thin.

At the time, the only structures built that high, like some churches, have a

much wider base.

Bartoldi's Colossus will have to be on the cutting edge of a new construction

technique. A traditional building, you build the walls, and the walls hold up

the structure.

The Statue of Liberty, in effect, one of the first examples of what, in

architecture, they call a curtain wall.

You build a strong frame first, and then you hang the exterior wall from it. The

wall doesn't hold up the building. The building holds up the wall.

Biolay -Leduc needs to figure out materials for the inner frame and

exterior.

And he chooses what he knows, a wood frame for the inside of the statue,

with a layer of plaster, and for the exterior skin, copper.

It's the most lightweight plentiful metal available, and a striking color,

least at first.

But when it rusts, and its color of rust is called patina, it has that greenish

color, and that's just copper oxide.

This chemical process takes decades to complete.

So when it was first built, they called it the Copper Lady. You know, it looked

like a penny.

Violet Leduc has used copper and wood in statues less than 30 feet tall.

But this is five times that, requiring 4 ,000 square feet and 31 tons of

hammered copper pushed to its absolute limit.

I think this is crazy when you pause and think about it. You go out to that

harbor and look at it. That copper statue is about the thickness of maybe

pennies put together.

That's it.

The thickness of the copper in the Statue of Liberty is as thick as it

be. If it's any thicker, it would add an immense amount of weight.

But for the statue's engineers, the question is still, will the whole

be strong enough?

It has to face enormous strain and stress of weather and wind.

Bartoldi also has a design issue.

What will liberty hold in her left hand? If we look at early models of the

Statue of Liberty, Lady Liberty is actually clutching broken chains in her

It's inspired by the abolition of the formerly enslaved.

But Bartoli realizes that as the nation is moving further and further away from

the Civil War, The tone, the mood has shifted in the United States. He decides

instead to pick up on the centennial. And he has inscribed in the book that

Liberty is holding, July 4th, 1776.

Bartoli doesn't abandon the chains idea. He places them at Liberty's feet.

But it's a detail only visible from above.

If it had maintained its original meaning of abolition, it would become a

reminder of unfinished projects and ambitions that we still struggle with

this day.

By March 1876, with the U .S. Centennial Exposition two months away,

The wooden plaster of Liberty's 13 -foot hand is done.

The next step is a move to where they will apply the final copper skin.

Ready?

Wait.

Stop! Stop!

It's ruined.

And is useless.

This is not just an inconvenience. It is a disaster.

Stop!

It's March 1876, and the first piece built for the Statue of Liberty...

The hand that will bear the torch is ruined.

There's no time to rebuild it by the opening of the Centennial World's Fair

Philadelphia, just weeks away.

They still needed funding, and this was a way to focus light on their project.

And if they didn't make this target, most likely the project would be dead.

But there is one fallback. The Expo lasts six months.

If they start to rebuild now, they can race to try to make its final month.

As Bartoldi's men get back to work, around 10 million visitors attend the

American innovation takes center stage.

With the debut of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, the Remington

Even Heinz ketchup.

The Industrial Revolution is finally allowing them to, if you will, maximize

incredible wealth and resources of their country. They are an entire continent

full of possibility.

In October 1876, with just a few weeks left in the exposition, Bartoldi's team

achieves a miracle.

The hand and torch of Lady Liberty make their debut in Philadelphia.

Liberty enlightening the world. This is just one section of a much larger... Can

I climb it?

Of course.

50 cents.

50 cents apiece, which is about $15 today.

The crowds react to Bartoli's creation better than he could have hoped.

Clever move.

As you exited, where did you come out? Through the gift shop, where they would

sell you a photographic print, a souvenir of where you've been.

He also brilliantly had little miniatures, little depictions.

So yes, in fact, he invented the souvenir before the actual thing.

Not only does Bartoldi get an infusion of cash to keep building the statue in

France.

an American committee forms to fund the pedestal. The Americans are going to

cover the cost of the pedestal, and the French will cover the cost of the statue

itself. After the centennial, the hand and torch go on display at New York's

Madison Square Park to keep the project in the public eye and hopefully

donations flowing.

For the first time, Bartoldi's dream feels like a possibility.

Bartoldi now has enough money to build Lady Liberty's head, and he must

the exact shape and contour of the statue's most important feature.

There's this whole debate about who is the face of the statue, and there is a

kind of romance to say that it is the face of his mother. But if you actually

look at the images of his mother's face at the time, they don't resemble the

statue at all.

And when it was brought up to him, he didn't say, yes, that is my mother's

The statue's face could be modeled after another Bartoldi relative.

Bartoldi's brother, whom he loves dearly, is in an asylum because of

he's having with his mental health.

Bartoldi talked about wanting to do a liberty that seemed troubled or, you

understood the weight of what they were carrying.

In his files, there's a picture that he took of his brother Charles, and if you

study the face, the face is near identical to the face of the Statue of

Bartoldi sells tickets to watch the statue build in progress.

When the face is complete, he displays the head at the 1878 World's Fair in

Paris.

And Edouard de Laboulaye makes one final push to send their fundraising over the

top. The real crucial thing is he gets the French government to actually sign

off on a lottery. That's where things really move.

Nearly $5 million in today's dollars is raised in just months, finally enough to

build the full statue.

But in September 1879, the project hits a devastating setback.

When Bartoldi's master engineer, Viole Le Duc, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.

He's left without an engineer at this critical time when he has to erect the

largest statue in the world.

Not only is he a former mentor, a friend, he also knows how to run a big

Without this expertise, the statue may not happen.

Now, Bartoldi needs another savior.

Excuse me, Mr. Eiffel?

It's 1881.

The Statue of Liberty's engineer has died suddenly, shutting down the project

for months.

Frederic Auguste Bartholdi may have found a replacement.

His name is Gustave Eiffel. Most people think of Gustave.

And they, of course, jumped to the Eiffel Tower.

That's not going to happen until 1889.

He's known for building bridges, arguably the best bridge builder in all

Europe.

But the engineer has never built anything like this.

And he's already faced with a huge problem.

Eugene Viollet -Leduc's inner wooden structure.

Viollet -Leduc's untimely death was, of course, heartbreaking, but it also might

have... saved the Statue of Liberty because it's not at all clear that his

of building the frame out of wood would have really worked.

The frame will have to hold Liberty up amid brutal conditions.

So the Statue of Liberty with its arm out and wearing a toga, for lack of a

better term, a lot of air can push on this thing.

This giant copper structure is going to act like a sail in the wind.

Eventually the whole thing is going to come toppling over.

Eiffel must figure out how to make sure that never happens.

Meanwhile, back in the U .S., the American committee has raised enough

begin construction on the huge statue pedestal.

Charles P. Stone was the engineer chosen to create the pedestal on the United

States side.

As Stone prepares to construct the pedestal inside the walls of Fort Wood,

A system of underground bunkers presents a huge challenge.

They discovered, to their dismay, it's meant to stand firm against

artillery, and we are going to have a giant engineering challenge to get

this level of reinforcement just to build our own structure here.

How far down does it go?

Doesn't say.

Well, this is the spot we'll have to make do.

For a Statue of Liberty's size, it will require a concrete pour of 54 million

pounds, the largest ever attempted to this point.

In France, Gustave Eiffel finds the solution to building a stronger inner

in an unlikely structure.

Eiffel was making his name.

building iron truss bridges.

The iron truss bridge was a new technology.

Bridges are not statues unless you think about what the bridges do.

They undergo enormous strain.

They are pretty large.

If you took a bridge and turned it on its edge, then you might have a tower.

Eiffel is on the cusp of a groundbreaking innovation that will have

far beyond the Statue of Liberty.

In the next decade, for the first time, buildings begin to rise past 10 stories

and far beyond.

He comes up with a strategy which revolutionized basically the way we

which is make an iron scaffolding, and then the outer cladding is just purely

creped over that structure.

The approach will lead to a new class of building that will dominate the

following century, the skyscraper.

It's also the strategy he will use to build a 1 ,000 -foot iconic structure,

Eiffel Tower.

But it all starts with liberty.

If you don't know what the inside of the Statue of Liberty looks like, it looks

like the Eiffel Tower.

The plan is to build her completely to prove she's structurally sound, then

disassemble her to be shipped to America.

Over 50 craftsmen, using some 90 ,000 individual measurements, begin to piece

Liberty together until she's too big to fit inside.

Picture an orange -red Lady Liberty, because she's yet to have oxidized and

turned green, just rising up.

I imagine that there were more than a few people.

who walked down the street and, like, rubbed their eyes a little bit because

they saw this gigantic woman standing in the street. It's almost like a Godzilla

movie.

By November 1884, nearly a decade after Bartoldi started building the Hand and

Torch, the full Statue of Liberty is finally standing.

but she won't reach her final home without confronting the same problem

plagued her from the start.

It is without a doubt the most fraught and difficult aspect of making the

of Liberty happen.

Tell the man to stop working.

The U .S. team building the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty led by engineer

Charles P. Stone has hit major cost overruns, leaving them $100 ,000 short.

Stone and his efforts had to stop.

Construction halted because the Americans didn't have the money.

And Stone is running out of time.

Because in Paris, the Statue of Liberty is being disassembled into more than 350

pieces, packed in crates ranging from 150 pounds to four tons.

They'll travel in a special 70 -car freight train to a ship bound for New

Those are things that people don't normally think of.

The engineering of it goes all the way down to, how is it going to travel?

The 225 tons of parts will take 17 days to pack in the ship's cargo hold,

carefully placed not to shift in the ocean waves.

But they might arrive with no pedestal to stand on.

The press senses a juicy story.

So, I hear you're out of money.

We're just a little behind schedule. Nothing serious.

So... Joseph Pulitzer is a newspaper owner who has mastered the art of

people sensationalized stories that excite people's passions, for better and

worse. Most Americans know the name Joseph Pulitzer through the Pulitzer

which is one of the highest honors given to print journalists, which is a bit

ironic. Given the sort of journalism that Pulitzer himself practiced, no

headline was too tawdry or salacious.

Listen, Mr. Pulitzer, I appreciate your interest, but it's nothing we want to

publicize.

You misunderstand me, Mr. Stone.

I want to help.

When Joseph Pulitzer is in Paris, he sees the statue actually as it is coming

together, and he's inspired by that.

Pulitzer launches an all -out fundraising campaign in his newspapers

twist. He said, people of America, send in your dollars or your pennies even to

build this pedestal and I, in return, will print your name in the newspaper.

You'll be famous.

It was really America's first crowdsourcing Kickstarter campaign.

Pulitzer's campaign raises $102 ,000 in just a few months.

Nearly 3 million today.

Stone's men are soon working round the clock.

Come on!

You can do this!

But it's not fast enough.

200 crates carrying Liberty arrive on Bedloe's Island and sit there.

This is like leaving a jigsaw puzzle out in the rain and trying to put it

together later. The parts have misshapen, have been warped due to

the environment.

The boxes weren't labeled really well. The worst sort of Ikea bookshelf you can

imagine. For months, Stone's men struggled to make sense of weathered

confusing directions, all in French.

With a lot of Americans trying to interpret this system.

There were some panels left over, and they realized later it was that they had

put the arm on slightly wrong, so it was unstable from almost the beginning, and

it was because of a couple of missing copper panels.

The original arm will later be found to have structural issues.

The government closes off the 40 -foot climb to the torch, and it remains

today.

Back in France, Bartholdi hears horror stories about the assembly of his statue

and rushes to New York.

If anything's wrong, we'll fix it.

If things are as bad as they say, I'll take my name off liberty.

Oh, my God.

Auguste.

On October 28, 1886, the city of New York holds an official inauguration

celebration for the Statue of Liberty.

Lady Liberty is like no statue the world has ever known.

It's the tallest structure of any kind in New York.

Visible from 25 miles away.

Her shoe size, if she needed one.

would be 879.

And it was the biggest event that the city of New York had ever seen.

The parade was endless, bands and carriages.

Throngs of spectators board ferries to Bedloe's Island for the unveiling of

Liberty Enlightening the World.

The press is already referring to it as the Statue of Liberty, but many also

call it the Bartoli Statue.

It's like the work of the old Egyptian.

I hope it lasts as long.

Frederick Auguste Bartholdi will never again produce anything approaching the

scale of the Statue of Liberty.

But with it, his legacy is secure.

Really what we have is one person, this one artist who had this vision, and no

matter how many terrible things happened, he insisted on getting it

I really don't think Bartoldi could have foreseen how the Statue of Liberty

would affect people immigrating to the United States.

The poem, The New Colossus, with that iconic phrase, give me your tired, your

poor, that poem doesn't get affixed to the base of the pedestal until

1903.

But for so many people, for generations, the first they glimpsed of America, of

course, would have been arriving by sea.

And that initial welcome, that very first thing that sent a message about

kind of place you could risk everything to make as your home, would have been

this extraordinary statue.

So the Statue of Liberty has become the emblem of American identity.

And it's not just Americans. The idea of liberty and democracy and the light of

the world has transcended our national borders. It's become something more.

become human. It's become the idea, the perfect version of human conduct.

Repair and Synchronization by Easy Subtitles Synchronizer 1.0.0.0