You’ve seen the postcards. You know the minty-green silhouette that defines the New York City skyline. But honestly, if you saw a time-lapse of Lady Liberty from the 1880s, you might not even recognize her. Looking at old photos of Statue of Liberty is a trip because they reveal a giant, gleaming copper penny standing in the harbor, not the oxidized icon we have today.
It’s easy to forget she was a gift. A massive, logistical nightmare of a gift from France that almost didn't happen because of money.
When you dig into the archives, like the Library of Congress or the collection at the Statue of Liberty National Monument, the images tell a story of grit. There’s no crane. No high-tech scaffolding. Just thousands of rivets and a lot of manual labor.
The copper years and the color change nobody expected
When the statue was dedicated in 1886, she was the color of a brand-new Dutch oven. Pure, shiny copper.
Most people assume the green "patina" was intentional. It wasn't. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor, actually didn't account for the rapid oxidation caused by the salty, polluted air of New York Harbor. By the early 1900s, she started looking blotchy. By 1906, she was entirely green.
The public actually hated it at first. There were literal government proposals to paint her! Imagine that for a second. A painted Statue of Liberty. Thankfully, the Army Signal Corps—who were in charge of her at the time—realized the patina was actually a protective layer. It stopped the metal from rotting away.
Building a giant in a Parisian backyard
One of the coolest old photos of Statue of Liberty you’ll ever see isn't even in America. It’s in the 17th arrondissement of Paris.
Bartholdi built her in sections at the Gaget, Gauthier & Co. workshop. There are these incredible black-and-white shots of her head just sitting in a courtyard, surrounded by tiny-looking Frenchmen in top hats. It looks like a scene out of a surrealist movie.
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- They used a technique called repoussé. Basically, they hammered thin sheets of copper against wooden molds.
- The internal skeleton was designed by none other than Gustave Eiffel. Yeah, the Eiffel Tower guy.
- Because the statue had to flex in the wind, Eiffel created a flexible iron pylon. It was a precursor to modern curtain-wall construction used in skyscrapers.
The arm that went on tour
Here is a weird fact: the torch and arm arrived in Philadelphia way before the rest of her.
To raise money for the pedestal, the arm was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. You could pay 50 cents to climb a ladder to the balcony of the torch. It was basically the 19th-century version of a Kickstarter reward. Later, it sat in Madison Square Park for several years.
If you look at photos from that era, you see this massive, disembodied limb just hanging out in the middle of Manhattan. It’s bizarre. It makes you realize how long this project actually took to finish. Ten years of fundraising, political bickering, and "is this actually going to work?" skepticism.
What the pedestal photos don't tell you
Joseph Pulitzer is the reason the statue stands.
The French paid for the statue. The Americans were supposed to pay for the base. We almost failed.
The wealthy elite in New York didn't want to fund it. They thought it was a "foreign" project. It wasn't until Pulitzer used his newspaper, The World, to guilt-trip the middle class that the money came in. He published the name of every single person who donated, even if it was just a penny.
When you look at the old photos of Statue of Liberty being assembled on Liberty Island (then Bedloe's Island), you see the massive stone pedestal. It was the largest concrete pour in the world at that time.
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Life inside the crown
Back in the day, the torch was open to the public.
There are old, grainy photos of tourists crammed into that tiny space. However, after the "Black Tom" explosion in 1916—an act of German sabotage during WWI—the torch was damaged and closed to the public forever. It hasn't been open for over a century.
The torch you see now? It’s a replacement from the 1980s. The original, leaky, rusted-out version is now in the museum on the island.
Restoration and the 1980s facelift
In the 1980s, the statue was in rough shape.
The iron arm was structurally unsound because it had been attached incorrectly from the start—Bartholdi had moved it a few inches for aesthetic reasons, ignoring Eiffel's engineering. This created a massive structural weakness.
During the 1984–1986 restoration, they replaced the entire internal skeleton. They swapped out the rusting iron ribs for stainless steel.
- The rivets: Thousands of them had to be replaced by hand.
- The gold leaf: The new torch was covered in 24k gold leaf so it would shine like the original was meant to.
- The internal skin: They had to use dry ice to blast away layers of old paint and coal tar without damaging the thin copper.
How to find the best archives of these images
If you’re a history nerd, don't just look at Google Images.
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The Library of Congress has the "Carol M. Highsmith Archive," which contains high-res scans of early construction. Also, look for the Albert Fearnhead collection. He was a photographer who captured some of the most intimate details of the 1980s restoration.
Why these photos matter now
They remind us that nothing is permanent. Not even a 150-foot copper goddess.
Seeing her in pieces, or seeing her as a dark, chocolatey-brown monument, strips away the myth. It makes the achievement feel human. It wasn't a miracle; it was a decade of guys with hammers and a lot of newspaper donations.
Next time you’re looking at old photos of Statue of Liberty, look at the scale of the people standing next to her toes. Each copper sheet is only about 2.4 millimeters thick. That’s roughly the thickness of two pennies. It’s basically a giant, hollow copper balloon held up by a bridge.
Take action: How to experience the history yourself
If you want to move beyond just looking at photos and actually see the history in person, here is what you need to do:
- Visit the Statue of Liberty Museum: Most people just go to the pedestal, but the museum on the island holds the original 1886 torch. It’s huge and much more impressive in person than in a photo.
- Check the NPS Digital Archives: The National Park Service has a "Digital Vault" that includes blueprints and rare maintenance photos that aren't usually on display.
- Look for "The New Colossus" original manuscript: Head to the American Jewish Historical Society in New York to see Emma Lazarus's original poem that gave the statue its "Mother of Exiles" identity.
- Take the Hard Hat Tour: If you can snag tickets, the Ellis Island Hard Hat Tour takes you into the abandoned hospital buildings nearby, which gives you a perspective of what the statue looked like to immigrants arriving in the early 1900s.
Focus on the structural details—the rivets, the seams, and the way the copper has warped over time. It’s the closest you’ll get to standing in that Parisian workshop in 1884.