NARRATOR: She was born
in France, though she is an American symbol. Like the immigrants
she welcomes, she was shunned by
the rich and powerful. She was underfunded,
unappreciated, and nearly undone by neglect. Through it all, she has been
an inspiration to millions. Now, a story of
hopes and dreams. The Statue of Liberty
on Modern Marvels. [theme music] When the American
colonies revolted in 1776, the world recognized the
rising tide of freedom. Its intoxicating spirit
traveled around the globe, inspiring similar revolutions,
especially in France, where popular uprisings demanded
the end of aristocratic rule. And so when the fragile American
union exploded into civil war in 1861, the world
held its breath. Over a four year period,
the American landscape was bathed in blood as over half
a million men were slaughtered on the fields of battle,
more than four times the US casualties in the Vietnam
and Korean wars combined. Could a government of the people
survive this brutal conflict which included the murder
of its most beloved leader? That America survived
this historic crucible became an inspiration around the
world, and was felt most keenly in France, where artists
and intellectuals admired the American fortitude. It was during an 1865 dinner
in the Paris home of professor douard de Laboulaye that
the idea was first suggested. Create a monument
to honor America on its 100th anniversary
as the cradle of liberty. It would be designed by
one of the dinner guests, Fr d ric Augusste Bartholdi,
to express the admiration of the French people. At the same time, it would serve
as a public slap in the face to Napoleon III, the
reigning French monarch who had no taste for the
intellectual liberty of his own countrymen. Bartholdi was an old hand
at creating such monuments. The arc of his career suggested
that this female representation of liberty would be a
triumphant crescendo. As an artist, he reflected
the unique sensibilities of his age. The period in which she was
created, in the second half of the last century, was an
enormously gigantic period of bravado and symbolism in
the architecture of cities, in literature, in art. It was a period of
great bursting out. NARRATOR: Bartholdi's early
sketches captured the work's ultimate attitude
and pose, but it was the image of his mother's
stern face which supplied the enigmatic expression. The final work would be
called "the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the
World," and its size would mirror the mammoth
proportions of the new world itself. It would stretch
over 305 feet high. The figure would be
composed of 450,000 pounds of hammered copper
plates, enough metal to press 30 million pennies. The nose would be 4
and 1/2 feet long, each eye 2 and 1/2 feet wide,
the face more than 17 feet from chin to brow. Over 300 metal plates were
needed to complete the figure, designed to interlock in an
artistic technique called "repousse." Monsieur Serge Pascal is one
of the few remaining artisans who still perform the technique. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: The sculptor is
going to work with a mass. He's going to create his
work from a block of stone. Whereas we give a flat
sheet a definite shape that looks like something. NARRATOR: It was his
company that recently worked with American crews
to restore the statue. It begins by using a
plumb bob pointing system to form giant plaster
replicas of the model design. Then a wooden frame,
a negative form, is built around the plaster. Into this frame, the
copper sheets are formed. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: In the
repoussage technique, we start out with a
flat sheet of metal. It has to be shaped. It has to be what we
call "round embossing." We had to introduce heat up
to like 40 degrees Fahrenheit to be able to get the
forms to bend properly. Hundreds of different
hammers, but each hammer had a certain amount of
bounce to it, a certain amount of pressure that
it could perform, a certain amount of pebbling
effect that it would perform. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: We have inherited,
if you will, this technique from our parents, who with
others helped make the Statue of Liberty in France. It's both a tradition in the
family as well as in the trade. NARRATOR: Because the
final structure is hollow, keeping the statue's
shell stable is an equally difficult
engineering task. Up to this time, the statues
of this size were all solid. And that was the original
concept for this. The original architect engineer
that was working with Bartholdi was Viollet-Le-Duc. And he had a plan for filling
the interior with boxes of sand to give it stability, so
the wind wouldn't tip it over and so forth. NARRATOR: In a divine
act of providence, Le-Duc suddenly died, and so
did the notion of stuffing the statue with sand. Instead, Gustav Eiffel,
the engineering genius of the Eiffel Tower fame,
proposed a radical new concept. His concept, which
was entirely new, was to build a
tower, an iron tower, and then frame up from
it and support the copper statue, which was very much
like a dressmaker's dummy. NARRATOR: The result was a
monument which inside and out captured the imagination. Its structural
support was as radical as the new social structures
defining the American ideal. Eiffel had mentioned that
it was a magnificent space, a cathedral kind
of space inside. NARRATOR: Bartholdi himself
chose the site for his statue in America, a
small patch of land in New York Harbor
called Bedloe Island. It was an overgrown
oyster bed named after an early Dutch settler
who purchased the property from the Mohican Tribal Nation. The United States had built
a fort on the island in 1800, and it served as the site
for a military hospital, communications center, and
ammo dump during the Civil War. Bartholdi's vision
to erect the statue here was a bold move and a
logistical challenge which would demand
substantial funding. So in 1874, he formed the Union
Franco-Americain Committee to raise the funds
through public lotteries. He had already decided to begin
work on the copper repousse before the money had
actually been donated, hoping that there would be
sufficient contributions to finish. Bartholdi's Paris workshop
was big, and loud, and packed with an army
of exacting artisans. Even ex-president
Ulysses S Grant dropped by to
watch the progress. But the work was
slow and underfunded. By 1876, the year the
statue was to be completed, only the right
arm and torch were in shape for a presentation. They were sent to Philadelphia
as part of the American Centennial Exposition. The hope was to build interest
and generate contributions towards the completion
of the gift. By this time, Bartholdi had
decided that France would supply the statue, and America
should construct the pedestal. Even though the
United States had yet to accept the colossal
gift and Bartholdi hadn't acquired the rights
to use Bedloe's Island. And there was a lot of pulling
and pushing saying, "no, we don't want it." And finally the US ambassador
had convinced the Congress to say, "no, you must take it,
because the French are gonna be upset." NARRATOR: Many people were
suspicious of the French gift celebrating the
American Revolution. Would the sculpture
portray Liberty as a bare-breasted revolutionary
as rendered in European art? The New York Times
suggested that the statue was a scam for Bartholdi
to make a personal fortune. And American millionaires
like JP Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt joined
Grover Cleveland in declaring that the
promotion of liberty would cause unrest
among America's lower class, the working poor. But with the enthusiastic
support of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the American
Committee was in 1877 to organize grassroots
funding after the government, the wealthy, and
their corporations turned their backs. Well, every trick
was used 100 years ago to try to raise money, from
selling toothpaste, which was the Statue of
Liberty toothpaste, to selling small replica. NARRATOR: Even before
she was fully assembled, the Statue of Liberty became
a celebrity spokesperson for all manner of
products in order to raise construction funds. She has been an advertising
icon ever since. the product endorsement
feeding frenzy took the new art of hucksterism
to dizzying heights, but it wasn't enough. Pulitzer realized
that the project had to tap into America's soul, and
he persuaded a young poetess, Emma Lazarus, to compose a
stirring verse to capture the public's imagination. The poem was called
"The New Colossus." It was inspired by the tragic
slaughter of Russian Jews during the pogroms of the era. "Give me your tired, your
poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free," she wrote, "the wretched refuse
of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless,
the tempest-tossed, to me." Meanwhile, Liberty was erected
on the streets of Paris, an exile herself, waiting for
the money and the permission to emigrate to
the United States. Though many French citizens
were determined that she not be given to a seemingly
ungrateful America, the finished statue was
presented to US ambassador Levi P Morton on July 4, 1884. One month later in
the United States, work began on construction of
the statue's gigantic pedestal, a 154-foot high behemoth, nearly
as tall as the statue itself. The foundation would be
recessed 53 feet into the earth to support the massive weight
and spread over more than 8,000 square feet at the base. It was the largest placement
of concrete, mass concrete, that had been done
up to that time. And it was still in a
state of development. NARRATOR: The cornerstone was
a six ton slab of Connecticut granite set in place on a rainy
afternoon ceremony on August 5, 1884. Yet, the celebration
was short lived. Less than three weeks later, the
project had exhausted its funds and work stopped. So the statue was
accepted, was built and ready to be shipped,
and there was no pedestal, because there was no money to
really pay for this pedestal. NARRATOR: Once again, Joseph
Pulitzer attacked what he called the American disgrace
by rallying the support of the American people,
offering children, the poor, and the humble an opportunity
to donate their pennies and nickels to the
effort and in exchange see their names printed on the
front page of his newspaper. The effort was a resounding
success, raising $102,000, and helping the liberty design
become stylish and fashionable. Cornelius Vanderbilt's daughter
even dressed as liberty for a festive social affair. The party cost more than the
building of the statue itself, and her upper crust
party guests refused to contribute to the
celebration of the common man. June 17, 1885, the
Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor,
more than 300 pieces distributed in 214 numbered crates. It would take over four weeks
before the crates were even unloaded. But there was no hurry. Construction of the pedestal
had yet to be completed. For 10 months, Liberty's
assorted body parts littered Bedloe's
Island until the work of bonding the enormous copper
plates to the iron armature could begin. A spiraling staircase was
attached to the center's structural beam, which
allowed workmen access to the elevated points at
which pieces would be secured to the frame. Today, this same staircase
is used by visitors who climb to the
top of the monument, through the hollow
cathedral of Liberty's form. But the giant jigsaw puzzle
didn't always fit as planned. Liberty's crown, seven rays of
light representing the seven continents, was positioned
too close to her right arm, allowing a dagger
like ray of light to actually pierce
her copper flesh. That was what we refer
to as a birth defect. That occurred while it
was being constructed. NARRATOR: It was
the artist himself who was responsible for the flaw
back at the studio in Paris. Bartholdi just kept asking
for a modification, which is after all, the least
that a sculpture doing a work of this size
would be expected to ask. NARRATOR: The modification
was to raise Liberty's arm and torch a few degrees higher
than the original design. But this change compromised the
statue's structural strength. Because it was moved, it
became much less stiff, much less strong, and took a lot
of ingenuity to make it work. NARRATOR: The defect often
blamed on the American workers who assembled the statue
remained uncorrected for the next 100 years. [parade music playing] Finally, on October 28,
1886, the Statue of Liberty was complete. 10 years and 116 days after the
original American centennial delivery date, after 21 years
of planning, fundraising, and sculpting,
Liberty stood tall. Across a fog shrouded harbor,
nearly a million people struggled to view the
unveiling ceremonies. Liberty appeared as a
silhouette through the mist, a tri-colored French
flag covered her face. President Grover Cleveland,
who once opposed the statue, welcomed a crowd of
dignitaries on the island. Ironically, American
women were not allowed to participate in
the festivities honoring a feminine representation
of liberty. "We cannot guarantee their
safety among a crowd of men," officials claimed. Enraged members of the New
York State Women's Suffragette Association chartered a boat
and stormed the ceremony anyway, chanting their displeasure
through megaphones to disrupt the proceedings. The pandemonium they
triggered cut short the long winded speeches when
Liberty's veil was dropped prematurely. The following day, professional
orator Chauncey Depew recreated his aborted
speech for posterity on a new technological miracle,
a clay cylinder recording device. Here is his actual voice
captured over a century ago. CHAUNCEY DEPEW:
The spirit voices of Washington and Lafayette join
in this grand acclaim of France and the United States, through
liberty enlightening the world. NARRATOR: At long last, Liberty
had made her home in America, looking out to sea and
beckoning many more immigrants towards the golden
door of the new world. And with their arrival,
the nation's attention would shift to another small
island in the harbor, Ellis Island. RECORDED VOICES: Camara, Lehut,
Einstein, Garibaldi, McCormick, Neilson. All must take a line. [speaking german] 40% of the American
population can trace somebody back in his family
through Ellis Island. And I really think that that's
what America is all about. In 1890, New York City was
digging the subway system, so they were able to take the
landfill from the subways, bring it out to Ellis Island. So Ellis grew from 3
and 1/2 acres in size to 27 and 1/2 acres. NARRATOR: Like Liberty Island
where the statue stands, Ellis Island was a
forgotten patch of land. This mass immigration
that was coming was very financially beneficial
to the steamship companies. They would go over, say,
to a small village in Italy and put up posters
of a cornucopia, and the immigrants literally
believed that there was gold everywhere. In 1920, my father,
aged about 33, and my mother who was
about 30, and my sister who was five months old, and
myself embarked for America. The goldene Medina, the
land where the streets were paved with gold. We sailed out of Genoa in
the month of January 1920, and the ship was always stopping
on the way to pick up coal, and it took us 30
days to get here. LAWRENCE MEINWALD:
The ship was crowded. It wasn't clean. We were frightened. The smell of bodies
all over the place. It was difficult living aboard. And we were hungry. We were so hungry that
I remember vividly that my father and I
went up to the first deck and found the garbage
cans on that deck. And the garbage cans, we dug
down and brought up food. And we brought it
down for my mother, and my mother
would never eat it. These steamships would
pull into Manhattan, and two medical inspectors
from Ellis Island would board the steamships and
go to the cabin class people and the first class
people and give them a very quick medical examination
aboard the steamship. They felt that if these
people could afford the $65 for an expensive
ticket, they could obviously support themselves. The people that
traveled to Ellis are those that
traveled in steerage. NARRATOR: While the rich were
invited to walk right down the gangplank into
Manhattan, the poor were not allowed off the boat. And traveling below
deck in steerage, they never saw the
Statue of Liberty welcoming them to America. Instead, they were herded
onto crowded ferries and shipped to the imposing
brick and tile processing center on Ellis
Island, a collection of bureaucratic buildings where
their American experience would begin. They would enter Ellis
Island to the baggage room. They would have the opportunity
to check their bags, so they wouldn't have to carry
them while they were being processed. Well, if you were a Russian Jew
escaping the pogroms in Russia, a man in uniform would be
very frightening to you. If they were all the possessions
you owned in the world, you wouldn't want
to give them up. But there was actually an
even more important reason why the immigrants held
on to their baggage. They knew that they
were about to undergo a medical examination. And if they had something
wrong with them, they would not be allowed
into the United States. So supposing you
had a bad leg, you would want to walk and
carry your bag in front of your bad leg, and
to pretend that it was the weight of the bag
that was causing you to limp. From the baggage
room, the immigrants climbed a very steep
and narrow staircase, and they didn't realize it,
but as they were climbing, their medical
examination had begun. There were two doctors standing
at the top of the stairs with a piece of chalk. And as the immigrants
climbed the stairs, the doctors were watching
to see who had a limp. And if you were lame, you
got an L on your lapel. If you were huffing
and puffing, you might have a heart condition. You'd get an H. NARRATOR: Back problems. Conjunctivitis. Goiter. Hernia. Pregnant. Scalp infection. Senility. Suspected mental defect. The most dreaded
examination of all was a doctor referred
to as the eyeman, and he was looking for a
disease called trachoma. It was extremely contagious. It would lead to blindness. And if, you caught it, you would
not be allowed into the United States. And the inspector
would stand there with a basin of antiseptic and
an old fashioned button hook, and he would take the button
hook, dip it in the antiseptic, slip it into your eyelid,
and flip your eyelid back. He was looking for any
redness or inflammation. And that was a sign of trachoma. You'd get a TC on
your lapel, and you would be put in quarantine
until they found out what was wrong with you. LAWRENCE MEINWALD: My
father received a chalk mark on his lapel. And not realizing what it
meant, he didn't wipe it off like others did. It seems that while on ship,
he shaved with a straight razor and cut his face and
had a little scar, and so he was taken from
the line for investigation. And my mother was frantic,
begging and pleading, and even offered
her marriage band they should let him stay in the
line, but they took him out. NARRATOR: The main hall was
designed like cattle stockyards to maximize the
movement of human cargo. He had two minutes to ask
a series of 29 questions. What's your name? Where did you come from? Why did you come here? How much money do you have?
Where did you get it? Let me see it. Who paid for your passage? Do you have any friends
here, any relatives? Very often, I think of
the enormity of the decision by the authorities. Had they decided
to send me back, I probably would have
been a bar of soap. NARRATOR: Many European Jews
denied admission eventually wound up on death
lists back home. Many rejected Asians
were sent back to hardship and persecution. There were a group, an entire
shipload of Italians coming through, that did not
have their papers. And their papers,
their official papers, were ultimately initialed
W.O.P. "Without papers." So the workers at Ellis
Island, just for shorthand, would say, oh, we
have three wops here, and there are five
wops over there. If a person was
a Christian, they would put a little crucifix
on the top of the page. And if they were Jewish,
they would put a circle. Well, the word for
that is "kikel." NARRATOR: The new world
was full of surprises. The first was food. The original
food concessionaire stole most of the money he was
given to feed the immigrants with, and he wound up
serving them stewed prunes over dark bread twice a day. He was fired. And as time went on, with
fewer immigrants coming, they were able to
serve ethnic meals. So they would have a German
meal at 1:00, an Italian meal at 2:00, and so on. But that led to the
problem of the Germans showing up at the Italian meal
of spaghetti and tomato sauce, and a lot of them would refuse
to eat it, saying it was just too frightening-looking. We stayed for 10
days in the big hall. And there were double and
triple bunk beds in there, very, very closed. And they were very, very
crowded, and very, very smelly, and very, very noisy. It was constant turmoil. And each morning, I would take
the two mattresses to the heap. And each night, I would bring
them back to put on the bed. And I only learned recently that
the purpose of the mattresses being taken away was
to fumigate them. NARRATOR: The massive
steam pressure tanks used to delouse mattresses
are still in storage at Ellis Island, grim artifacts of a time
when immigrants were considered as so many diseased
rodents, ready to invade polite American society. New immigrants often reminded
established immigrants of a dismal past they
longed to forget. These new arrivals were a
threat to the status quo and an embarrassment
to be hidden away in overcrowded ghettos. Here, people would
accept any job at any pay to make their
American dream come true. But as the nation grew,
the Ellis Island immigrants assimilated into
communities coast to coast. Their legacy is the solid
infrastructure of the country, upon which rests
the 20th century. Today, Ellis Island still
celebrates the contributions of those people whose
American dream began there with a museum and a program
to keep their stories alive. It was quite a day. NARRATOR: Here,
immigrants return to record their memories,
offering the future a unique look at the past. And I choke up now
as I remember it. NARRATOR: As twin
national monuments, the Statue of Liberty
and Ellis Island represent two points on the
path to the American dream-- where we've come from
and where we're going to. And the real spirit of liberty
lies in the delicate balance between these two
glorious notions. By 1900, the sea,
air, and elements had changed Liberty's complexion
from bright copper orange to pale green, a fitting way to
begin the 20th century, which was itself defined by change. The new century
was a kaleidoscope of images and ideas. And in the chaotic American
culture, the Statue of Liberty became a fashion favorite. Its image appeared on
all manner of trinkets. Even today, early renderings
are highly prized. It's very strange. As I collect different
statues, and you see the faces and the different
images and the quality, you wonder what the
craftsman had in mind. One of my favorites
of the collection is probably this one here. And this is-- it's just so fun
that they painted it all up. But inside, it said
"made in occupied Japan." They're all pretty wonderful. I could just go on
collecting and collecting. I kind of had to draw
the line at some point. This is actually a music box. [music playing] With Santa Claus going
around the statue. So if somebody can explain that
to me, you're welcome to try. NARRATOR: Perhaps we cherish
Liberty because we realize that she is vulnerable. As in 1916, when German
saboteurs at the height of World War I managed to blow
up a munitions storage facility in New Jersey, the first
reports claim dozens of deaths. The impact was
felt 90 miles away. Police were called to stop
looting in the streets of New York, and the statue lost nearly
100 bolts in her right arm as a result of the blast. Still, her torch was held
high, and when workmen surveyed the damage, they wondered if
something more than copper and iron was keeping the
statue standing tall and proud. It is the hope of
those who gave us this statue and the hope of the
American people in receiving it that the goddess of liberty
and the goddess of peace were the same. NARRATOR: During the depression,
Liberty carried a double load, holding both her torch and
the nation's morale aloft. But a few short years
later, her light would be dimmed
by a second world warm this one more
bloody than the first, as mad men threatened
the future of mankind and Liberty held her breath. Like so many others,
she did her part. Her image reminded the
American people of what was at stake around the world. When victory was
finally declared, she joined the
exuberant celebrations as a guest of honor in
New York's Times Square. Ironically, the buoyant spirit
at the end of war disguised the fact that liberty as well
as the statue were fragile. Freedom demands
constant vigilance. And liberty denied is often the
catalyst for social eruption. In the second half
of the 20th century, many groups who felt alienated
from America's mainstream commandeered the statute to
make their desperate political statements. 1956, Hungarian patriots
occupy the torch and display their
flag of liberation. 1965, a Black
Liberation Organization is caught plotting to
blow up the statue. 1980, two protesters demanding
freedom for an imprisoned Black Panther leader
damaged the statue as they climbed the
Liberty's exterior plates. These events, plus the corroding
influence of acid rain, took their toll on the statue
showing just how fragile she actually was. Like Ellis Island,
the Statue of Liberty was quickly becoming a neglected
relic from America's past. Pieces of her ornate torch were
breaking off and washing ashore in New Jersey. So it was with a great
burst of patriotic zeal that America took a second look
at both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It started when President
Reagan asked Lee Iacocca to mount a private sector effort
to restore both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. First time I came here was
a cold November day in 1982 with Mr. Iacocca, and
the place was a wreck. I wondered what we'd
gotten ourselves into. We felt that the American
people would help us if we could figure out how
to ask them to help us. The years have been
hard on Ellis Island, and they've been
hard on the lady with the torch across
the harbor, too. Are we going to preserve
these monuments? Or will they become
just ruins of the past, like the pyramids
or the Colosseum? Are the values these monuments
symbolize still alive in America or are
they part of our past? The one guideline
was that no money would come from the government,
and we fulfilled that. We raised about $420 million. There's no way of actually
knowing how many people have given to us, but we
estimate about 20 million. Schoolchildren alone
gave us $6 million. NARRATOR: The
engineering challenges to fix the statue were enormous. And it was a race
against the clock to have her ready for
the 100th anniversary. The winter that we put
up the exterior scaffolding on the statue, it was a
very, very cold winter, a lot of winds, very cold. And these workers had a
race on to see who could get the right bars in place, so that
who could be the first to give her a kiss on the lips. NARRATOR: Inside the statue,
the metal had originally been covered with coats of coal
tar and paint, all of which had to be removed. We had removed the
original paint on the inside of the statue using
liquid nitrogen. It had around seven
layers of paint, and it would just
crackle and come apart. We thought we were gonna
spend months doing this, and we wound up doing it
in about a week and a half. But the coal tar was an
entirely different situation. We couldn't get that out. NARRATOR: The black sludge
couldn't be sandblasted off by conventional means. The skin only
being a penny thick, we couldn't afford to
have any copper loss. So we had to find something
that was strong enough to take out the coal tar
but not hurt the copper. We finally found something
very, very sophisticated-- bicarbonate of soda. That's what we used to
knock off the coal tar. NARRATOR: More than 40 tons of
bicarbonate of soda were used. Meanwhile, rusted
armatures were swelling against the thin copper skin. And so it started
ripping itself apart, and the weakest
link was the copper. And indeed, a number
of the connections were completely destroyed
through this period of rusting. This bar represents one of
the first handmade samples of the armature bars that are
part of the tertiary structure that holds the copper
in place on the statue. And of course, originally, it
was very easy to make these, because they had already
used a process that is called repousse. A literal translation
is "pushing from the reverse side," in
which they made the copper, bent the copper on forms
that were reverse forms. So then they just
bent these bars on the same forms and the
two matched very nicely. We, of course, had
another challenge. We didn't have the forms, but we
had to replace over 1,800 bars, no two of which were the same. NARRATOR: It was exhausting,
handwrought repousse work, which 100 years after
the original construction was becoming a lost art. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: During the two
World Wars in 1914 to 1918 and in 1945, we lost many
skilled people trained in this technique. So today, it's a technique,
like a lot of the arts, which has lacked the craftsmen
due to war casualties. NARRATOR: French artisans were
the only workers in the world who still performed
repousse, and their numbers were dwindling. Yet, when they came to America
to help in the restoration, they weren't welcomed
with open arms. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: There was a
conflict as soon as we arrived. In France, when we do
sculpture, we can work freely. With, for example, with wood,
with plaster, with steel, without necessarily a
trade union or guild. In your country, there were
unions who didn't understand why parts of wood or plaster had
to be made for them by others. NARRATOR: Fortunately, it was a
conflict that was short lived. We have the Americans join
the French and come over. And when they came over here,
they taught our American metal workers how to do
this repousse work. So basically, the respect
that they had for one another and the respect that
the Americans had for the French
technique wound up being what made
them all workable. They became very close
friends in most cases. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: Today, 10 years
later, we take Americans into our studios, who come
to study for about two to three weeks, to whom we
explain the repousse process. NARRATOR: Reclaiming
the original look and attitude of the statue was a
primary goal of the restoration process, particularly
when the work focused on Liberty's flame. Bartholdi's original
design was for the flame to be a solid object
covered in gold and reflecting exterior light. But through the
years, crude attempts were made to carve out panels
and allow light to stream from the inside
through colored glass. Gutzon Borglum, the man
who carved Mount Rushmore, had made the greatest design
change and the greatest error. His awkward recrafting
of the flame kept the statue from
being watertight. Yeah, that was the source
of a lot of the water, with the salt air and
the water running down on the inside of the copper and
coming in contact with the iron armature that was the original
structure within the statue. NARRATOR: Today's new flame
is Bartholdi's old idea, a solid gilded crescendo,
simple and pure. Liberty is again
enlightening the world. On July 4, 1986,
the party began. It was called "Liberty
Weekend," and it was shared with a billion and
a half people around the world. We are the keepers of
the flame of liberty. I ask that you all join me in
this symbolic act of faith. This lighting of
Miss Liberty's torch. NARRATOR: As the celebration
exploded across the night sky, it sparked a new spirit
of awe and wonder at the meaning of liberty. world dreamt of freedom,eare the image of a lady with
a torch came to mind. Today, when people
long for liberty, the very same image
captures their imagination. Beijing, China, students
demonstrate for democracy, sculpting a statue to symbolize
their hopes and dreams. Here, the spirit of
liberty still resonates. Standing up against tyranny,
these students reminded us that all are created equal. Half a world away,
the national effort to restore Ellis Island
and the Statue of Liberty reflects the very same
ideal, lending a celebration of the great
American melting pot with a bittersweet recollection
of our immigrant past. The statue has always
been the symbol of America. And Ellis Island has always
been the story of America. So you see, both of them are
important in different ways. Any American that comes down and
sees Ellis Island or the Statue of Liberty should walk tall,
and they should walk proud. It's a great thing
that they accomplished. NARRATOR: It is
rare and inspiring that so much energy
and time and money has been committed by so
many common individuals to create a monument
that doesn't commemorate a great battle or
a popular leader. Instead, the statue of
liberty celebrates an idea, that elusive goal
of universal freedom which has never been
totally achieved. This is the vision to
which America runs, sometimes stumbling
and sometimes carrying other nations along with it. Liberty is not carved in the
marble hallways of the past. It is our dream of the future. America laughs, and
cries, and loves, and bleeds in the
quest for freedom. Here at the Statue of
Liberty and Ellis Island, that idea takes a solid form,
but always behind these symbols remains the quest, freedom
yet to be attained liberty preserved. SONG: O beautiful
for patriot dream that sees beyond the years,
thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears. America, America, God
shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good
with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea. [cawing] [theme music]
