Building Liberty

The Statue of Liberty is one of the world’s greatest icons, appearing in countless movies, photographs, souvenirs and comics. 

It’s easy to feel like she has always been there, towering over New York Harbour.  Yet Liberty is a relatively modern construction, built by French ideas and manufacturing ingenuity.  

The story of her construction offers a lot to consider about innovation, determination and of course, freedom.

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Welcome to the Kinbrite Podcast, sharing human stories, creative power, and bright ideas to help you thrive. I'm Claire Cameron, founder and principal of Kinbrite, a creative consulting firm based in beautiful Niagara, Canada. We're on a mission to bring bright ideas, meaning, delight, and some sense of beauty into our working lives. Whether you have a conventional job, are building a business, or just trying to do the very hard work of life, and that alone is a lot. This show is for you. In this episode, we are climbing inside the Statue of Liberty, seeing what her story has to share about building ambitious ideas. Let's go. The Statue of Liberty is one of the world's greatest icons, so recognizable that it is used as a lost marker of all human civilization in sorry. Spoiler alert, Planet of the Apes. It has appeared in countless movies, photographs, souvenirs, and comics. Few things represent America so much as well. And it's easy to feel like she has always been there, towering over New York Harbor. Yet Liberty is a relatively modern construction, built by French ideas and manufacturing ingenuity. What is her story and what can it teach us today? How on earth did this ancient-looking colossus with cutting edge innards created and engineered in France come to be such an American icon? How was the damn thing built? And what does her story tell us about modernity, innovation, creativity, determination, nation-making, and storytelling? Liberty came to mind as so many ambitious plans to celebrate 250 years of American independence careened towards and then blew past deadlines this year. Half-baked projects were either executed badly or not at all, and lots of commemorative parades were stopped by record-breaking heat waves across the United States. In stark contrast to these last-minute pushes and cancellations, planning for the Statue of Liberty began 10 years before its intended date of completion for America's 100th anniversary of independence in 1876. It was not officially delivered until 10 years after that in 1886. This amazing icon took 20 years to conceive, develop, create, ship, assemble, and finish. She is a massive example of how to realize the potential of big ideas and the need for incredible patience in the process. Liberty is also a testament to how the intentions of a work and its meaning can shift and change over time. Liberty has come to mean lots of different things to lots of different people. And in an age that is so obsessed with digital life and artificial production, her massive physicality is a very timely reminder for how to harness the power of sheer gravity. She proves that we still live in three dimensions, and her staying power is evidence of tangible reality. Liberty was conceived by a Republican jurist Edouard de la Boulay and Alsatian sculptor Auguste Bartholdi, and started as a simple idea about an intangible concept, freedom, bound in physical dimensions. Bartholdi was an avid photographer, and the visual documents of his travels provided the raw material for his own artistic work. In travels around the world, he photographed ancient statues like the Colossi of Memnon in Thebes and also photographed new methods of iron and steel construction in viaducts and railway engineering. A trip to the Middle East inspired his first drawings that eventually became Liberty, positioned on a large stepped pyramid. The original design came to him in a dream about a massive statue intended for the mouth of the Suez Canal. After that project did not move forward, his attention shifted to New York. In Paris, a copper plumbing and smelting facility was designated as the place where Liber would be built. It took four years to complete the Parisian stage of Liberty's construction. Her iron skeleton was started by Violet Le Duc, who designed the iron spire of Notre Dame, and then it was completed by Gustave Eiffel. Yes, in English, that same Eiffel with the tower. Other local photographers meticulously documented every stage in Liberty's construction, which was truly incredible to behold, and included wooden structures, templates, life-size plaster models, and exterior copper sheets that were carefully hammered and shaped by hand. Long before Liberty's arrival on American soil, her story was already being told in images. This was a unique reality only made possible by the advent of photography and mass print publications. Liberty looked really good in newspapers and magazines. Photographs of her in pieces hovering over the modernizing streets of Paris looked like something from a dream. She made for great print and was an inanimate celebrity. She grabbed attention and sold newspapers. The construction methods used in Liberty represented the very latest innovations in structural engineering. Ironically, to produce what looked like an ancient colossus, Bartholdi relied on a cutting-edge iron structure inside. She was innovative, draped in classical ideas, and hollow. The analogies for America as a political and social project could go on and on. Her sheer size was a talking point, too. Papers advertised the dimensions of one fingernail, 33 centimeters by 26 centimeters, and that the torch could accommodate 12 people. As pieces were completed, creative fundraising experiences assisted with revenue to support the work. One memorable dinner to raise money happened in Paris inside one of Liberty's legs. The length of time this project took and its ongoing need for cash flow was the subject of mockery in the press. Pieces of Liberty could be visited when the torch was in Philadelphia, or the head could be climbed for a fee. Souvenirs and badges were sold even before the full statue was erected in New York Harbor. The commercialization and marketing of Liberty as a tourism experience paved the way for future larger scale attractions, including Disneyland. Liberty was an icon worth visiting even when she started trickling over the Atlantic in pieces. Her arrival and installation heralded the arrival of the 20th century and America to the world. She could be assembled and disassembled and reassembled in pieces, like a modern and massive erector set. This was also a decidedly modern reality and anticipated modular construction well before the Bauhaus and international style took hold. She was made in pieces and disassembled in Paris to be reinstalled in New York using techniques from industrial architecture. Liberty's Torch traveled to Philadelphia for the Centennial Exposition in 1876 before a temporary installation at Madison Square. Her face was exhibited in Paris in 1878, and other bits made the rounds to generate excitement. Leading up to July 4th this year, the New York Times ran a photo essay with comments about Liberty's construction and its meaning as an icon of accomplishment. They called this structure a feat of creative engineering that combined real and ideal, starting with a concept that had meaning liberty, freedom, mass, and then figuring out how to make it stand. Liberty, the statue, shares so much in common with the democratic experiment, which itself is a modern thing composed of many parts. At its core, there is nothing solid or rational, only an idea and feeling, and around it a framework on which many pieces hang and join together. Behind the scenes of democracy there is nothing glamorous, just a unique and innovative structure on which all the world's hope for freedom hangs. No big deal. Liberty is modern on the inside. Though her shell echoes monumental structure from ancient forms, her construction was built as a massive curtain wall. Her surface is entirely decorative. All of the structure holding her up is on the inside, disguised behind her body. Weight is distributed across her rather than solely up and down. To some extent, she defies gravity. The immense work, determination, and innovation that poured into creating liberty has some parallels in Joshua Candle's 2013 book, America's Obsessives. His biographies of iconic Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, Steve Jobs, Estee Lauder, and Melville Dewey, find a uniquely American perfectionism, preoccupation with details, excess devotion to work, rigidity and stubbornness that comes along with the ability to achieve great things. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson still took time to note the weather, make lists and write in his diary while working on the Declaration of Independence. Facts and data comforted Jefferson and helped him to calm down in turbulent times. Henry Hines also loved numbers and was a master marketer, determined to show how his products aligned with every trend and opportunity. Hines was a very big hit at the same 1876 Centennial Exposition where Liberty's Torch appeared, and later at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition where hot dogs were also introduced. This kind of energy, to be so doggedly determined, is clearly not exclusive to Americans. Bertoldi proved that in his own dedication to his massive work over 20 years. Qualities like this can be held and expressed by anyone at any time. And perhaps that is the best beauty and brawn of true independence, that anyone can dare to bring brash big ideas into being, accomplishing ridiculous feats and doing it out loud for no reason but to celebrate liberty. Subscribe and follow the Kinbright Podcast for more episodes and insights. Follow us on Instagram at Kinbright Group and visit Kinbright.ca to receive our monthly newsletter. And never give up on finding your joy.