10/28/2026
Statue of Liberty Dedication Day celebrates the Statue of Liberty, and commemorates the day on which it was dedicated in 1886. The idea for the statue was proposed by French historian Edouard de Laboulaye in 1865. France decided to build and give the statue to the United States to commemorate the centennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the alliance between the two countries during the Revolutionary War, and the friendship that continued afterwards. An agreement was made that the statue would be paid for by the people of France, and the pedestal on which it would stand would be paid for by Americans. The project was delayed because of lack of funds from both countries, especially the United States, but the money was eventually raised. French artist Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi designed the statue, and its support system was engineered by Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel—who shortly afterwards became famous for his work on the Eiffel Tower.
In June 1885 the statue arrived in New York City in 214 packing crates, and was reconstructed on Bedloe's Island—which was renamed Liberty Island in 1956. On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. A red barge transported to the island those who wanted to see the event. President Grover Cleveland officiated, and a speech was given by Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was a French diplomat, and head of the Franco-American Union, a group that had been created in 1875 to facilitate the completion of the project. There was music and a gun salvo, and Bartholdi, the mastermind of the statue, was perched in the statue's torch, and pulled a rope that removed the French flag from in front of Lady Liberty's face, revealing it to the crowd. That evening the torch was lit for the first time.