FUND RAISING
1875 -1885
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Statue of Liberty
FUND RAISING 1875 -1885 |
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Initiation 
Following its formation in November 1875, the Union Franco-Americaine, led by Eduard de Laboulaye, set out on its goal to deliver a gift of freindship and solidarity to the United States. The Union commissioned Frederic Bartholdi to design and exceute the monument, conceived as a "Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World". At the same time the committee went to work to raise the necessary funds. It circulated subscription lists throughout France, headed with the following address:
The monument was to be erected in common: the French to give the statue proper, and the Americans were to construct the pedestal. French Fund Raising 
At a banquet in the Hotel du Louvre on November 6th, 1875, representatives of French and American art, literature, politics and journalism celebrated the birth of the work. The first circular brought a positive response. The fund raising campaign included public entertainments, festivals, and exhibitions held all over the country. Rich and poor contributed - ordinary citizens, deputies, cabinet officers, and the popular old President of the Republic, Marie Edme Patrice Maurice MacMahon. The City of Paris itself gave $2000. The events and fund raising continued at a steady pace, though not fast enough to achieve the ambitious goal of having the statue finished by the US centnenial in 1876, Bartholdi's and Labouyale's original hope. But the right arm and torch were completed in time to be displayed in August 1876 at the Philadelphia Exposition, and it became a centerpiece of the show. 
At the Paris Universal Exposition of 1878, the completed head of Liberty was exhibited. Visitors marveled at the size of the artificial cranium, capable of holding forty visitors at a time. "La Liberte Eclairant le Monde," a hymn by the playwright, Emile Guiard, was set to music by Charles Gounod, composer of "Faust," and was sung at the Paris Opera. The refrain, translated, was: "The rays of my torch, piercing the darkness, bring lost ships to safe anchorage and carry my light to the oppressed." The cost of the statue, initally targeted at $100,000, grew to $250,000 by the end of 1879, and finally to about $350,000, as the scope and magnitude of the effort materialized. Additional funds were raised: Two hundred signed and numbered terra cotta models, entitled "Models of the Committee," were sold for 1,000 francs each in France and for $300 each in America - each signed by Bartholdi and registered. The buyer's name could be engraved in the clay before the statue was baked. These were almost exact copies of the original "study model" whose height was 1.25 meters (about 4 feet). With the sanction of the French Government, a lottery was organized for the benefit of the fund. Three hundred thousand tickets were sold for one franc each (worth about twenty cents in 1880). The prizes were attractive: a silver plate set worth 20,000 francs (about $4,000); jewelry fashioned from pearls and gems, worth 5,000 francs; plus two works by Bartholdi, a terra cotta copy of a statue honoring the military engineer the Marquis Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, and a painting called The Wave. The Union Franco-Americaine announced in June 1880 that the fund was complete. Contributions had been received from 5000 subscribers, including 181 cities and ten municipal chambers of commerce. There was no assistance from the French national government. On July 4, 1884, in Paris, the completed statue was presented to the United States. On Januay 1st, 1885, after having been visited by more than 300,000 persons, it was taken down, its pieces numbered, packed with great care, and transported to Rouen, where they were placed on board the state transport-ship Isere which sailed from Rouen on May 30th, and arrived safely in New York Harbor on June 17th, 1885. American Fund Raising Word of the proposal to construct the statue reached the United States as the Franco-American Union began its 1875 appeal. Americans were slow to begin construction of the pedestal, in some cases sceptical, and it was not until September 1876 that a committee was appointed by the famous Union League Club, in New York, with John Jay as its chairman, to secure funds for the pedestal. A similar committee was established in Philadelphia. Public apathy continued, cradled by controversy over the possibility that the colossal statue could not be completed, that the statue was strictly a New York City project, suspicions about implications of such an international gift, and disagreements as to its location. 
The American press continued to be critical of the project and its cost. There was specific criticism about the fact that the pedestal cost as much as the statue itself. The year 1876 came to a close with no material accomplishment, despite the arrival in August of the completed right arm and torch at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia of that year, at which donors, some of the nine million visitors to the Exposition, could pay a $.50 fee to climb a steel ladder leading to the balcony surrounding the torch, 32 feet above the ground. This popular experience demonstrated that Liberty would be the first statue into which one could climb. Following the Fair later that year, the same exhibit was transferred to the Fifth Avenue side of Madison Square in New York City. 
Upon the call of William M. Evarts, S. D. Babcock, William, H. Appleton, John Jay, W. H. Wickham and Richard Butler, a meeting was held at the Century Club, in New York, in January 1877, and a permanent committee, consisting of Messrs. William M. Evarts, Chairman,
Henry F. Spaulding, Treasurer, J. V. Mumford Moore, Joseph W. Drexel, Parke Godwin, J. W. Pinchot, Frederick Potts, and Richard Butler, Secretary, was formed, calling itself "The American Committee of the Statue of Liberty". With a membership of 114 at first, it soon grew to include some 402 gentlemen, prominent in different professions and different parts of the country. A sub-committee of this general committee, consisting of William M. Evarts, the late ex-governor Morgan, Parke Godwin, Clark Bell, and J. W. Pinchot, was charged with the duty of procuring the necessary legislation, and obtained from Congress, on the recommendation of President Hayes, the passage of a resolution on 22 February, 1877, providing for the acceptance of the colossal statue, its future maintenance as a beacon. and the designation of either Governor's or Bedloe's Island, in New York Harbor, as its site. President Hayes authorized General Sherman to select the site. With encouragement from the committee, who were aware of Barlholdi's preference, Sherman designated Bedloe's Island. Mr. Richard M. Hunt was appointed Architect of the Pedestal by the committee. General Charles P. Stone, formerly of the United States Army, was appointed Engineer-in-Chief responsible for the task of managing the interior of the statue and designing a proper foundation. Calculating that the cost of constructing the pedestal and placing the statue upon it would be $125,000, an immediate appeal was made for that amount. Again, there was a lack of enthusiasm, made worse when the committee realized that the cost would be more than twice the original estimate. From 1877 to 1881 little progress was made. The majority of the press was hostile, and the people took the attitude that they should not be called upon to finance the construction of "New York's Lighthouse." 
In 1883, as completion of the statue was approaching in Paris, and the pedestal was obviously not progressing on schedule, Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant who fought in the Civil War, took ownership of the New York World newspaper and began a campaign to raise funds for the work. He endeavored to "nationalize" the project, pointing out that the statue was a gift to all the American people. Pulitzer shrewdly saw his chance to take advantage of three distinct opportunities: to raise funds for the statue, to increase his newspaper's circulation, and to blast the rich for their selfishness. In the pages of the World he taunted the rich (thereby increasing the paper's circulation among working-class people) and firmly planted the notion that the statue was a monument not just for New York City but, indeed, for all of America. Pulitzer offered to publish the name of every single contributor in the pages of the World, no matter how small the contribution. His initial editorial opened the challenge: "The World is the people's paper and it now appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money [for the statue's pedestal]." The statue, he said, was paid for by "the masses of the French people. Let us respond in like manner. Let us not wait for the millionaires to give this money. It is not a gift from the millionaires of France to the millionaires of America, but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America." The circulation of the World increased by almost 50,000 copies. African-American newspapers joined in the effort, encouraging their readers to contribute to a monument that would, in part, commemorate the end of slavery. Money started coming in: single-dollar donations from grandmothers, pennies from schoolchildren.  With initial funding, construction of the concrete base of the pedestal began on Bedloe's Island October 9th, 1883. Contracts were entered into with the lowest bidders for the removal of the buildings in the interior of the fort. By January 1884 the American Committee had collected $125,000, most of it from New York. This was enough to cover the cost of the concrete foundation and it was completed May 17th, 1884. Further appeals were made to the American people, to the New York Assembly, and to the Congress of the United States. After significant groundwork by the American Committee in 1884, President Grover Cleveland, a friend of Pulitzer's and recipient of his generous campaign financing, dealt a discouraging blow to the project when he vetoed $100,000 in federal funding for the Pedestal (though it did not seem to restrain him from taking credit for the monument when he accepted the statue during the Dedication ceremonies on October 28, 1886). New York state did approve a grant of $50,000, but the expenditure was vetoed by the governor. With rising costs and a lack of funds, work on the pedestal stopped in the fall of 1884 with only 15 feet of the structure completed, 8 of 46 courses of masonry. In March 1885, Treasurer Spaulding reported that $182,491 had been subscribed, but that $179,624 had been spent. He stated that, unless an additional $100,000 could be raised, the construction of the pedestal would have to be abandoned, leaving the US in the unforuntate position that it could not accept the generous gift of the people of France, despite the fact that the statue already had been presented to the American Minister in Paris and had been on display in that city. At this point, several other US cities offered to accept the statue and provide the pedestal. Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, and Cleveland offered to pay all the cost of the erection intheir cities. The Baltimore American printed a story that the money for the pedestal could easily be secured in Baltimore, were the statue erected there. Minneapolis and other cities displayed a similar interest. On March 16, 1885 the New York World renewed the fund raising crusade. In daily editorials, Pulitzer criticized both the rich who had failed to finance the pedestal construction and the middle class who were content to rely upon the wealthy to provide the funds. He called upon every citizen of the country to participate. His campaign of harsh criticism was successful in motivating the people of America to donate. Pulitzer assailed public and private indifference, apathy, selfishness, lack of patriotism, and a hundred other unworthy causes and urged benefit theatrical events, art exhibitions, auctions, prize fights, balls, and entertainments for the pedestal campaign fund. The press of many other cities rallied to the cause. School children responded and their contributions appreciably aided the fund. Contributions came from as far away as California, Colorado, Florida, and Louisiana. His efforts paid off, funds began to accrue from across the country. On May 11, work resumed on the structure. New enthusiasm was generated by the delivery of the statue in 214 wooden packing crates at Bedloe's Island on June 19. On August 11, 1885, less than 5 months after the drive had been recharged, and 2 months after the arrival of the statue in America, Pulitzer was able to announce success of the American fund raising campaign. The front page of the World proclaimed, "ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!" The goal was met thanks to Pulitzer and more than 120,000 individual contributions. The pedestal construction was finished in April 1886, the statue mounted and the Dedication Ceremonies were held on October 28, 1886. Total Cost and Value of the Statue of Liberty In the end, it was estimated that $390,000 was expended by the Amreican Committee before the statue was finally placed in position. The pedestal alone cost about $250,000, interior bracings and structure $25,000, and the erection of the staue $25,000. Thus the total cost of the statue, pedestal and erection was about $740,000. Liberty cost about $15.0 million in 2005 dollars. (Source: The pre-1975 data are the Consumer Price Index statistics from Historical Statistics of the United States (USGPO, 1975). All data since then are from the annual Statistical Abstracts of the United States. Special thanks to the nice people at westegg.com) The French-American Committee for the Restoration of the Statue of Liberty, established in 1981, in conjunction with the National Park Service, and the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation raised more than $86 million for the statue's restoration. The statue was re-dedicated on July 4, 1986 by President Ronald Reagan declaring, "We are the keepers of the flame of liberty; we hold it high for the world to see." Among the activities to raise funds for the Statue were entertainments similar to the one described on this program from the Casino Theater, Broadway and 39th Streets, New York, held on Tuesday Afternoon, April 7th, 1885. Many thanks to Frank Weinstein for providing the following information. 
CASINO THEATER Broadway and Thirty_ninth Street Rudolph Aronson, Manager Tuesday Afternoon, April 7th, 1885 at 1:00 o'clock ENTERTAINMENT IN AID OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY Pedestal Fund The following artists have kindly volunteered to assist Mme. THEO (Kind permission of Mr. Maurice Grau.) Miss LILLIAN RUSSELL Miss GEORGIA CAYVAN (Kind permission of Mr. A.M. Palmer) Mme TERESA CARRENO Mme. SELINA DOLARO, Miss BELLA COLE Mr. HENRY E. DIXEY, (kind permission of Mr. E.E. Rice) Mr. John A. MACKAY, Mr. ROB'T MANTELL (kind permission of the Lyceum Theater Company) Mr. RICH'D MANSFIELD, Mr. OVIDE MUSIN, Mr. HARRY S. HILLIARD (kind permission of Mr. Jas. C. Duff) Mr. GEO. S. KNIGHT, Mr. JOSEPH HAWORTH, and Mr. JULES LEVY in conjunction with RUDOLPH ARONSON'S CASINO ORCHESTRA, Which for this occassion will interpret only compositions of FRENCH COMPOSERS Statue of Liberty Homepage Statue of Liberty Facts Statue of Liberty Web Links Statue of Liberty Gallery Statue of Liberty News Questions from Visitors to this Site World's Greatest Statues This page maintained by Gary Feuerstein 
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STATUE OF LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD