Episode 50 - The Statue of Liberty

0:00 Hi everyone, I'm Emily and I'm Vince and this is the lighthouse Lowdown Very good intro 50th episode edition It's very exciting the big five. Oh, I kind of I've said this before but when I started this I wanted us to get to 15 and that was my goal See look at us. So we're doing something special for this episode. I wanted it to be special We don't have a history of we because I suspect That this is going to be very long. Okay, nice or at least there's a possibility for it to be pretty long Because I took lots of notes. Okay, which is funny because it's like 95% history lesson 5% lighthouse. We love history. We also love lighthouses. Yeah, they're in there. It's just not a Lighthouse history is fun, too a major a major boom So today we're talking about excuse my pronunciation their liberty a clone lemon or Liberty enlightening the world also best known as that you have liberty lady My lady my lady liberty. So you're speaking French. Yeah, France. I'll say I don't know how to say that there's lots of French names in here and There's like an English pronunciation, which is just sad and the French pronunciation and the guy it's like a video

1:35 you can watch that it's like he did a series of Prominent French people in history how to pronounce their names and he's French and so he'll say it and he's like I know it's really hard for People who don't speak French to say this. So here's the English pronunciation. I'm like, oh boy We have a crutch so most people know what the Statue of Liberty is I'm assuming internationally Because you know, we know very I mean we know what the Eiffel Tower is So I would think people know what the lady I think so liberty is it's one of our international symbols Yeah, but I'll break it down so that for the people that don't know they can hear about Statue of Liberty So it's an enormous copper Neo classical sculpture in New York City on Liberty Island in the New York Harbor. It's a figure of Libertas which I could not find the pronunciation for so That one's Latin and it's the Roman goddess of Liberty or freedom. Oh, so she's supposed to be a depiction of a Greek god, I think I did not know that yeah in her right hand she holds a torch and in the left is a tablet that says July 4th 1776 which was in Roman numerals, which was when the US declared independence And at her feet are a broken shackle and chains that she's walking out of which signifies the abolition of slavery after the American Civil War and the idea for her was actually born At the very end of the American Civil War by a French abolitionist who supported the Union during the Civil War I did not know it was related to the Civil War at all directly related

3:09 Which is very interesting abolition of slavery. Yeah, so from the back you can see that her other foot is pushing off So it's like she's stepping out of the chains of slavery cool Very cool on her head is a crown with seven spikes which signifies the Sun the seven seas and the seven continents Which is why she's called liberty enlightening the world and not just liberty and lightning, you know the Americas or whatever That's awesome. There's a gift from the French to the United States It was and that's basically as far as it goes in like American history classes They just say like I was a gift from the French but there's so much cool history and like how it came to be that I'm gonna cover it. Oh Cover it awesome. I was gonna ask a bunch of questions, but I'll hold my tongue Okay, so where did you come from?

3:54 She was a gift from the French people which is important to specify that the government was not involved in Anything that happened with the Statue of Liberty really like there was some commute I mean obviously there was communication had to be like I Think the French government funded the shipment of the Statue of Liberty, but everything was funded by the people French people and US people because The French funded the building of the statue and the US funded the building of the pedestal Which is like half the height of the entire statue Nice. I'm getting ahead of myself. So the idea for the Statue of Liberty was born in 1865 at the end of the Civil War a French historian and abolitionist Edward de la Balay Yeah, if anybody watches a national treasure, he's in there. Is that the second one?

4:46 It must be I don't know. Oh, no, maybe it's the first one. I just remember them saying well, yeah He gets all excited talking to the French police Okay, this is off topic drone type just a little bit but there is a third National treasure like kind of in the works. No, no, no, come on. It's good. Nick Cage is gonna be in it Okay, it's the same producer and everything. All right. I have Doubts. Okay. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up, but I hope it's great Okay, so anyway la Balay Suggested a monument to commemorate a hundred years of independence that would be in 1876 the Perseverance Whoa the Perseverance of American democracy and the abolition of slavery So it's supposed to kind of just be like an all-in-one gift to the American people. Yeah, the conversation inspired Frederick Augusta damn it Bartoldi Bartoldi. Oh Man, I'm glad this is not my episode. I'm yeah Bartoldi Bartoldi Bartoldi Bartoldi who was a French artist French sculptor Although he didn't start work on it right away due to having other projects in the work. And this is this very interesting He in the late 1860s. So around the same time that this was suggested by his friend lovely he approached the Ruler of Egypt, I guess with a plan to build Egypt carrying the light to Asia which was going to be a huge

6:18 lighthouse what hang on boom This was his plan for it. So you can clearly see like the Statue of Liberty Kind of like yeah form came from by looking at a picture of what his plans were for this lighthouse. That's awesome Yeah So it was going to be a depiction of an ancient Egyptian female peasant Robed and holding a torch aloft at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal in Port Said Oh, yeah, because it had just opened and so it was like this big deal He wanted to make this statue in this lighthouse to go at the front But it would have been too expensive for Egypt to have foot the bill. Yeah Wait, what?

6:59 The Suez Canal is the one that got blocked by a cargo ship not long ago. Oh, no way. I'm pretty sure Yeah, that was two years ago. Exactly I'm pretty sure it was two years ago time really is getting weird doesn't exist But anyway, so obviously you can see how we got our Statue of Liberty from his earlier plans. It's kind of crazy Cool painting too. Just to show a mock-up. Yeah, I wonder if he did it because I mean he was an artist So let me just throw this together real quick. Yeah, just show you what I'm thinking. You have watercolors So anyway in 1871 Bartoldi sailed to the US I Guarantee I'm saying that wrong and I'm gonna say his name so many times during this episode So I want to apologize in advance to everybody, especially the French people who gifted us this amazing statue But he sailed to the US to pitch the idea for his sculpture because it wasn't a government thing He had to go and actually convince people to donate and like be on board Yeah for having this this big statue when he arrived on the boat coming into the harbor He saw Bedloe's Island and knew that it would be the perfect place and I have a map Although I don't think I'm close enough for it to be super helpful But if you look oh, yeah, you can see it. It's underneath this New Jersey That's Bedloe's Island, which is where we currently have the Statue of Liberty and see how like there's this dotted line around it Yeah, it's technically in New Jersey, but it's owned by New York They like worked out the details so that they could still keep the island whenever like lines were getting redrawn

8:33 That's crazy. Isn't that cool? I did not know that so what was there before when it was was it Bedloe's Island? It was already owned by the government because it was a defensive position for coming into the harbor So that was the good thing is that he got there wanted this island and President Grant assured him that they'd be able to use it Because they already owned it So he had some say and you know where they were going to put it. Of course he needed a like government Agreement for where he was going to put this colossal statue Yeah So Bartoldi Crossed the United States twice by rail Spreading the idea everywhere he went for eventual funding and support this guy just got on a train and just crossed the entire United States twice Just to get the word out there I just I never considered that the actual sculptor would go out and just be like hey fund my statue Like this was a starving artist sort of thing. Yeah, well, that's yeah, that's quite an adventure And especially because now we know him. He's like it's a big name He did great things like all kinds of cool stuff But before anything he was just a guy trying to get his name out there and get his art out there and Did it in the biggest way possible?

9:44 So at that time like I just told you it's a depiction of libertas Liberty? Yeah What? Libertas is it just means liberty? It's the the Roman goddess. Oh the goddess. Yeah Right probably with the word liberty coming out Yeah, right probably where the word liberty comes from nice. Yeah, I think it's just liberty in latin But she was already depicted a ton in the united states So it wasn't like this weird figure that he just pulled out of nowhere. It was like it was on Oh, I actually have pictures I also did not fully set in my slideshow pictures, please pictures Boom. Wow. So the first picture is what's on top of the u.s. Capitol building and It's a depi it's called um statue of freedom, which is also libertas And there's like a whole bunch of history and drama surrounding this because a lot of people thought she was a native american When they put it up there tassels. Yeah, and Her headdress or you know, like her helmet was different and they had to change it because yeah, there's like all kinds of Stuff that happened with the building of the statue which I didn't get too deep into because i'm talking about a different statue Sure, but the u.s coins also for like centuries had a depiction of libertas on the back So I included a couple of those from the 1700s 18s and 1900s super cool. Isn't that neat? So she was everywhere. It wasn't like um Just a random figure. Yeah, it was it was widely Um accepted in the united states as like a depiction of what we were aiming for

11:17 Yeah in 1875 so 10 years a decade after he suggested this Label a suggested the french people financed the building of the statue because they had tried to get government funding and it wasn't happening Which also happened in the u.s They tried to get a hundred thousand dollars and was vetoed and they tried to get fifty thousand dollars vetoed And then they decided it was just gonna have to be crowdfunded which is the first time it was kind of like That crowdfunding happened a huge project. Yeah He also suggested the u.s fund the pedestal and the site for where the statue was going to be so it wasn't like all on the french people which some people had a problem with but It wasn't like it wasn't like half and half. They still paid way more than we did It was like two-thirds, but to receive a gift you have to pedestal. Yeah true Gotcha, I don't know. I would have thought it was cool If you're getting a 300 foot statue, I'd be like, you know, okay today With the the stuff they're like, hey you want to pay a tax to okay?

12:18 true, you know what I mean like um Like all of the sports stuff going on right now in Kansas City Kansas City sports is asking for tax money To build a new stadium that no one no one I don't want it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, let's not We don't need it. I don't think it's not it's it's super not necessary, but people want it so that We don't get left or something like the chiefs don't leave but it's It's abnormal for sports to leave their hometowns like that's my politics But but the point is if they were saying hey, let's build a yeah Multi-million dollar pedestal to put a multi-million dollar and you can pay for it from the french. I'd be like Didn't we already do this one time?

13:00 Can you just polish that one it all went over but it was at first it was very very difficult to get funding and right It was just getting vetoed everywhere. So Bartoldi began sculpting designs in 1870 So it was like five years after the suggestion So he was on board right away and he actively oversaw sculpting between 1875 and 1884 That's how long it took to finish the statue. It was nine years. It was done by hammering 31 tons of copper I like what tons of copper sheets onto iron framework, which was done by Gustav Eiffel So the guy who built the Eiffel Tower heard that name responsible for the internals of the Statue of Liberty big iron guy pretty cool. Yeah, one of the earliest examples of curtain wall construction You know what that is? Nope. Okay, the outer layer is not load-bearing and so it's like attached but kind of floating Like there was like room between it so that In the high winds of the harbor it could shift without um, like putting pressure on the statue. That's cool. Isn't that cool?

14:02 Yeah, they also used asbestos Between the iron and copper to prevent galvanic corrosion. Yeah, which We'll find out later didn't work So then it became extremely hard to deal with it Yeah, and there was tons of corrosion, but i'll talk about there's a restoration a humongous restoration They did later that i'll cover. Okay. So as each piece was completed like Statue of Liberty was built in pieces like her head and her arm her hand like everything was separated And as each piece was completed they were displayed at like international Conventions and like they had it in manhattan for a couple of years like her um torch bearing arm. Yeah That's cool. Here's a picture. I think this was in display in france And you can just go and take a look at it and in all the old pictures You can tell that it's still copper colored, which I think is so funny because now she's green But they're always dark like very dark which I'll talk about that later as well. It's super cool. Yeah Says colossal hand and torch liberty. Yeah, the guy's like as I build these I need somewhere to put them Yeah, i'll just send them around the world Yeah, and it would gain funding people see it and they're like, oh I can donate to make this happen. Like that's so cool. So in france To get the money bartoldi Appealed to the rich and powerful to donate as well as sold tickets for people to watch the sculpting work Which I think I would definitely pay to see people hammering away Yeah to like build stuff and then they would like to buy them and then they would like to buy them

15:33 Like build stuff and he also did auctions and sold Small models of what the statue would look like and it's like a six inch one was a dollar And a 12 inch one was five dollars. So that'd be so cool At the time one dollar was like thirty three dollars. So it's cool. Yeah, cool. It is an artist-made piece. Mm-hmm Or maybe it was mass produced or something but like a mold of what it's going to look like I bet you they're worth a couple more dollars today they have one they have one of the um models that he made in The liberty museum which is on the island that she's on. So talk about that, too It's gonna be such a long episode i'm so sorry, it's all good. Yeah, why am I apologizing i'm Gifting you with all this knowledge. I'm along for the ride So that's how he got money in france the u.s Stalled immediately because they couldn't get any funding at all. So then the publisher Of the new york world newspaper joseph pullitzer. Oh, i've heard of that name. Mm-hmm pullitzer prize pullitzer prize My god friday afternoon sipping my coffee sipping on that starbucks Hmm hot coffee was a good move. Oh, yeah, I guess I wouldn't have considered getting a hot coffee, but i'm fully on board It's a move. So the publisher started to oh my gosh started a donation drive to get a hundred thousand dollars $20,000, okay, which at the time 2.4 million dollars. So just like hey, let's just like a little momentum. So he started a donation drive

17:06 So in the newspaper, he said no matter how much you donate even if it's just like a penny Your name will be in the newspaper so there's this huge incentive for anybody and everybody to end up in the newspaper and you can like add a note about yourself like um I wish I'd taken a note of an example, but it was like young lonely old lady like donates two dollars like you could just Say whatever you wanted to say about yourself and he would print it. So obviously that gained a lot of traction, especially with like school children like lots of Young children just gave whatever they had like just a couple of pennies or whatever because it would be so cool for your name to be in a newspaper It's the gilfundme the original because that was like the only form of of media was just to see the newspaper So like to have your name in there would be so cool, especially in a big city, New York. Yeah, so you attracted 120,000 um people who contributed and most gave less than a dollar which is like I said 33 dollars what Thirty three dollars. I mean I would pay more than that. I think So that was a big move pollitzer. Yeah, so he pretty much single-handedly Was like the orchestrator of raising the money for the pedestal of the statue and he also did auctions of artwork and poetry And included a sonnet which has lines on a plaque on the statue. Oh cool I should have also made note of that but I have so many notes. It's unbelievable. It's called the new colossus

18:36 and um heard of that he had a poet write Some poetry to donate so that they could auction it off. Yeah, i've heard all these things but it's been almost 20 years You think you heard it in school? Oh, yeah, I've heard those words I feel like I didn't hear anything about this in school. History was like awesome when I was in school. I loved history. Yeah, but then Um real life came crashing down. We had to become engineers. Yeah, gross. Had to Oh Another cool thing is that I don't know if it was with his own money or with like leftover money or something But after the completion of fundraising he commissioned a giant stained glass piece of the statue Which is now at Columbia University that you can go and like see. Let's see it. That is cool. Isn't that so pretty?

19:23 Two earths. I wonder How big we're talking And how much was it to commission? I don't know pretty cool though. Yeah, very cool. Incredible. That was Fundraising the Statue of Liberty. It's crazy, but it did the trick and the sculpture was shipped to the u.s In crates and assembled in what was called Bedloz Island at the time right now. It's different in the end It cost France two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which is five point nine million dollars today Nothing in the u.s. A hundred thousand which is two point four And the Statue of Liberty was entirely crowd funded besides. I think transportation Wow, so the u.s. Did a big celebration a big unveiling of the Statue of Liberty And it was the first ticker tape parade, which i've heard of because it's in france Apparently they went by the stock market and they threw ticker tape as confetti and nowadays It's confetti. Oh, yeah, they make confetti now. Yeah, so that was a ticker tape parade. I was like, I don't I don't know What year was the unveiling in the u.s. 1887 The the whole like because then they had a ceremony by president cleveland on october 28th 1886 And oh, I have a cool picture, too This was a an etching which was a depiction of what it looked like when they unveiled it. They had a fireworks and There was like the a big parade of boats and everything that came to go and see it. So that is cool. Yeah, it was pretty cool And it's so funny seeing this engraving and just like New york was not a big city Of skyscrapers at that it was the late 1800s. It was all just like looked like a normal

20:59 Yeah, I don't know when all that started. You know, there's the famous photos of I think it's new york where they started building the high-rise. Yeah skyscrapers. They had the iron workers people were dying every single day like awful But I think that was early 1900s. So after this but yeah I think it had to have been yeah, because it's In like old photos of it even there's no buildings in the background because it's so high up that nothing Comes close to it. There's a movie Sorry, there's a movie I was looking at watching. I've already seen it's called hill doggo. I tell you this no, it's about a Cowboy if you will a western man who participates in a great horse race It's really it's like 2004 2005. It came out But it's set in the 1890s, I think and there's a scene a cut scene where they're in new york city and Getting on a boat to go To europe and uh the Statue of Liberty is new in the oh, they're like looking at it That's pretty cool. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, I touched very briefly on that as well, but This so this commemorative moment is when It began its history as a lighthouse And it's not a success story. Oh, no, so Okay, I have so many questions. No, no, go ahead. It was designed to be a lighthouse. No, that's the problem Yeah, it was not designed to be a lighthouse He made plans for another statue that looked very similar to be a lighthouse, but this one was not going to be so but the egypt

22:30 Egyptian the egypt one was supposed to be a lighthouse. Yeah, it was kind of a okay Yeah, so it kind of was a Yeah, so it kind of crossed over but he obviously did not like put forth any plans that would make this lighthouse I don't really know what happened that they randomly decided to make it an age navigation You know that tall thing it's tall. It has a light like let's make it a lighthouse Trees for navigation they used to point at bays and say you have a tall elm over there Yeah, you know that tall tree or they would like put sticks just like a tall stick So like okay, it's a day mark but like at night it was supposedly just pitch black like you can see it I'll go into the details, but november 16th 1886 so less than a month after the ceremony. Yeah President cleveland declared the statue quote Be at once placed under the care and superintendents of the lighthouse board and that it be from henceforth made Under the care and superintendents of the lighthouse board and that it be from henceforth maintained by said board as a beacon end quote ah like What do you mean?

23:38 Here take this you can't just say that it's okay. It's a lighthouse. It's like this. You don't know So funny, so between then and its ceremony lighting the sculpture had been just like an absolute part of my language part of my french shit show Because it wasn't made to light up like he didn't consider like how is this thing to be lit and it wasn't his problem He built the statue and then I was like, okay if you want to light it up, you can light it up but floodlights Were was like not a thing yet. Yeah, and so they kind of Started floodlight like it's funny because in this etching it's shown all lit up, but that just wasn't a thing Well, yeah, they probably fireworks lit it up. Yeah electricity was also a new thing and so it was You got this giant statue. How new out on an island Uh Electric lights first appeared in 1880 on broadway The first were brand new. Yeah, we're talking brand spanking new. That's Yeah, you had that six years later light bulbs that we want floodlights Being able to cover. Yeah, that was 300 feet on an island in the middle of water. Not possible With that technology With that technology the requirements were crazy But it was first attempted to be lit The evening after its dedication And it was so faint that the world said it looked quote more like a glow worm than a beacon. Oh Absolutely tragic shame Bartoli never outlined how he meant to light the torch or the statue

25:12 Like I said, he didn't plan on it So it was just a major struggle of getting it all tied together and there were lots of ideas thrown around about what it was Going to look like what they wanted it to look like that. It's outlined really well in lighthouse friends dot com So if anyone wanted to go there and wikipedia also has tons of information on it I know wikipedia is not like a reputable source, but was there electricity on the island? No, they had to lay uh Wires or whatever, you know, um under tables. Yeah along the bottom of the harbor and that was new technology Yeah, that's crazy. It was just funny that they were just like oh crap like how are we gonna like this? Run a cord out here Solar panels. No, do you know and he's like no leds. No batteries. No. Yeah so there are all kinds of ideas like beams straight up from the torch into the clouds or like beams on her face coming from the torch like All kinds of cool ideas, but there was no way to execute them and there was also no money Which is the other thing like nobody?

26:14 funded Anything other than getting the statue put together crazy. There are Details I wasn't going to cover all of them because they did all kinds of stuff like they cut portholes in the torch and like put colored Sheets of glass so that it was like I don't know. It was all kinds of all kinds of weird stuff But check out our links for details. You can find all kinds of stuff there Cool. So November 1st was the first day that the statue was reliably lit But the american electrical manufacturing company who donated a lot of the equipment to light up the lighthouse Only agreed to keep the lights on for one week. So it was like, uh, yeah They're like here. We'll donate all this stuff, but we're not gonna fund The electricity that lights the lighthouse. You're gonna have to figure out funding like we'll fund it for a week but after that you're gonna have to figure it out so So congress so far had not been able to secure funding So after bartoldy came and approved the lighting situation, she was turned off for two weeks So she was lit for a week and then down again for two weeks And during this time the lighthouse board worked behind the scenes to secure funding and a team And so then the president naturally rolled over responsibility to the lighthouse board. Let's go lighthouse establishment. Let's go November 22nd 1886 the statue of liberty became an operational lighthouse And the long story short is that it just she just sucked at it There's no question about it. She was not made to be a lighthouse

27:44 So she failed as a lighthouse the lighthouse board were totally against having this lighthouse Or the statue of liberty as a lighthouse Because they didn't think it made any sense as an aid to navigation. They didn't need a lighthouse there They never planned on putting one there. Yeah. Well, I mean they're already stretched thin and then you have Oh, yeah, we built this artistic piece and uh, it's pretty tall. So oh, it's a lighthouse. Yeah, you take care of it. Oh Oh no, you know hot potato. Yeah So they tried a lot of different methods to increase the effectiveness of at least the outer lights like the flood lights Because when they first turned them on it was like illuminating Certain parts of the statue and then the rest of her was just in shadow So it was like oh no, like what is happening and bartley came back in 1893 with suggestions for how it could help But nothing really worked at illuminating the statue how they wanted it to But as a lighthouse, I mean there there's there's details. She had a fresnel lens. So like hell, yeah The focal plane was at 305 feet above sea level. Yeah, so I remember in the tallest I think the first episode Other than the lighthouse of alexandria Yeah, hang on. Let me check. Isn't Hatteras like 260 280. No, not that tall. Uh, 230 to Two-something i'm guessing two I'm guessing Focal plane of 192 180 feet

29:15 Tallest in the u.s. Okay. I wasn't close. I thought it was 200 something. It was two something. Yeah, but anyway Yeah, the statue of liberty was the tallest lighthouse ever besides the lighthouse of alexandria, which was Somewhere between 338 and 387 feet dang so Crazy, which is so crazy because there's Almost no evidence that it ever existed because its pieces were used to build something else alexandria. Yeah Yeah, I need to cover that one as well. So did uh So did uh, the lady liberty fail as a lighthouse because too tall didn't have the lighting technology Wasn't needed. I mean as an aid to navigation. There was no gusto to making it work because it wasn't necessary. It was just kind of like Okay, the lights aren't working Who knows a lot about lights in a structure like this because like the upkeep of No, as a lighthouse was not problematic. They weren't upset that it was this huge statue It was like we have tons of experience working with tall structures and it was just that they were peeved that they were given This thing that they didn't consider to be actually useful in navigating. So they're just like why do we have this?

30:27 But anyway, her light was fixed white had nine arc lights inside a small fresnel lens So I don't know exactly which order it was but it was a fresnel lens And it should have been seen 24 and a quarter miles out to sea But it just didn't like it if you think about it The torch is not glass So you're not like you'd be seeing it through these tiny port holes that they cut it just didn't make sense There was a keeper. Can you imagine? The keeper of the statue of liberty be crazy a lot of climbing going on. I think it was a lighthouse for 16 years. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, and he was the keeper the whole time There's no other head keeper and originally they had four assistant keepers And then it dwindled to two and then to one and then it was cut So his name was albert e littlefield They all lived so all of these assistant keepers and the head keeper lived with their families on the island in a three-story building and Albert was a machinist for the lighthouse board for five years before serving at the statue of liberty as a keeper And then because of his background in electrical stuff, he was paid a thousand dollars a year When normally it was like four hundred dollars a year dude is pulling money. Yeah, because he had expertise special machinist fabricator man After the statue of liberty was cut he returned to being an electrical engineer slash machinist Until he retired in 1919. Do you know who you worked for or there was a lighthouse board?

31:58 Oh electrical engineer and machinist for the lighthouse board That's cool. Yeah, I bet he has a fun story. Yeah, I mean more than what we just said. There's tons of files About him after death. I don't know what happened like a ghost He wrote letters He fell in love with lady. It was like all kinds of legal stuff happening Oh, I don't know if like and it was always in it seems like his son's name So maybe there was some kind of I don't know. There was some kind of drama going on after life that overtook his legacy in 1901 president roosevelt ordered the discontinuation of the lighthouse and it was extinguished in march 1902 and handed over to the war department Because originally the island was cut into three pieces part of it was the war department Part of it was lighthouse board and part of it was something else. I can't remember some other Department of it was still used as a defensive position. Yeah for a little bit. Yeah So at least the lighthouse board part was handed back over to the war department So that that's like i'm gonna keep going but that's the history of it as a lighthouse. That's 16 years is a pretty good run, but we're not even like we're barely into the 1900s And there's still like so much to talk about the statue of liberties. Yeah So i'm going to keep going for anyone that loves history past the lighthouse mumbo jumbo you're gonna get it By the time it was extinguished the statue was already being talked about in the press for its creeping green patina

33:31 So what we know today is the statue of liberty was Alarming people that they were starting to see this patina show up on all the copper I have a picture that i'll show you of this like really old Sepia photo of yeah, what it looked like before and you can tell in this picture that it's still copper So the statue itself was pretty dark because Pretty much immediately after its unveiling it stopped being metallic and shiny because patina like oxidation And so it became like a dull copper. So it was kind of hard to see her details So the patina was actually kind of a blessing So it started in 1901 and it was a little bit of a Patina was actually kind of a blessing so it started in 1901 and it started to turn green and fully covered by 1906. So Okay, it was very fast like relatively fast process of Turning it's right on the water. Yeah, it's inevitable But congress thought it was evidence of corrosion And so they appropriated almost sixty three thousand dollars Which is over two million dollars to paint over it and do restoration work. No. Yeah, they were painting it no, because Everyone had a lot to say about that because people thought that the green was nice they liked it because Black the original was so dark that the the light like allowed you to see shadows and stuff So the the army corps of engineers protested as did the public And after their investigation the engineers concluded that it protected the skin the patina actually wasn't being problematic

35:05 But it was like a good thing and quote softened the outlines of the statue and made it beautiful. Well, they probably I was thinking about copper They probably used copper because it was malleable so they could form it not because they wanted a golden shiny You know it I don't know but i'm i'm guessing it wasn't like Copper that you see when you strip a wire where it's shiny and it's brand new and they had to have known I mean they used copper for ages like they had to have known that it was going to oxidize copper working metal working though in the 1800s is still Not perfect. I mean even there's the whole thing. I won't go too far, but oh the If you look up the metal the steel that was used in the titanic which was built what 1913?

35:50 Somewhere in there. We talked about it recently. Yeah, the titanic ship had a Ductile to brittle transition temperature and dbt that when it hit the iceberg the metal split rather than Oh, yeah deforming like anyways, uh, that's its own thing, but metal working was not perfected Yeah, maybe it's still not didn't have all the details Yeah, but so lady liberty was probably picked for malleability for copper not that they wanted to remain that color But I wonder if they thought about it. Oh, well, I was just thinking How strange that they didn't think that it would turn green or like wouldn't gift it and be like by the way because The like the arm itself we showed a picture. Yeah was shipped around and it was in manhattan for two years and it's like nobody Saw anything or like there was no It was it took nine years to build this the copper didn't have any sort. I don't know it looks like it corroded bottom to top as far as Uh being closer to the water. I would guess yeah, maybe just exposed metal. So it was fun that they They referred to it as like more beautiful. Yeah over time like a lot. I feel like nowadays if something happened It would be like no put it back to the way that it was before like this is a failure But they just loved the way that she had turned out just over time. Yeah, it's very unique Yeah, and they and they talked a lot about like referencing the statue as like this beautiful you know, it's just a statue but people especially like immigrants or people coming over from

37:21 Europe or whatever just saw it as this Amazing like in that the sonnet that I was talking about earlier. She describes her as the mother of exiles So it's like supposed to be a welcome to all the weary that are coming to america And you have to pass right by her coming into harbor so all these people just just shitty travel months of being on the sea in a ship and Having to leave everything behind. They don't know they don't speak our language. They don't know anybody they're just severing ties with Everything that they know show up in america and are welcomed by this like incredible depiction of liberty just like a freedom and I mean at that time Coming to america was like we had tons of land all the opportunities. It was just you could be anything You could learn everything. It's just It's like this really really powerful image to come in after all this hardship and just know that like you were about to start anew and it was like an exciting thing I've heard people talk about that. I mean in written history like How how much of a badass you'd have to be?

38:30 To pack your life into a suitcase or a couple and then go to a place you've never seen And you don't even use your currency like you don't have anything you show up and you tell them your name and they misspell it That's your name You know what I mean? Like yes, even bailey. My last name was part of that system that was misspelled I did want to say though So that's I mean just like today if they're like, oh we can move to mars like there's a new colony on mars It's gonna be great. That would be like I don't want to go there. Let's get rid of all of our stuff We'll just bring a suitcase and we'll be in this new place Yeah, I think I have a very privileged life and a lot of the immigrants probably did not no But it's hard is ellis island out here. Yes It's next it's nearby. It's like included in the same. I'll talk about it later It was like during the restoration they included both islands in like the restoration efforts So cool, I didn't talk too much about it, but there's um, it's like an onboarding. Yes I couldn't think of a name but doc. Yeah on ellis island. So It kind of solidified. It's like Originally bartoldi meant for this to be a symbol of enlightenment, you know, like this powerful symbol of like america being Intelligent for having all like the freedom and the liberties our freedom of speech and this bill of rights amazing. Yeah declaration, but it became this Beacon of welcome of anyone who was coming into america, which I prefer They had a quote from a greek immigrant who came in on a boat and saw the statue of liberty

40:06 And he said quote I saw the statue of liberty and I said to myself lady You're such a beautiful you open your arms and you get all the foreigners here Give me a chance to prove that I am worth it to do something to be someone in america And always that statue was on my mind think about the symbolism too It's this thing you're seeing probably on a boat, which is incredible And it's it's a gift from a western european Established people the french which are respected through most of history, right? We all are at some point, but the french are are well known for many good things They've given this to us. The people have given this to us if you know the whole story. Yeah, and then When given the gift the americans rose up and built a pedestal dedicated an island And put it in a foremost location Like new york. Yeah, it's just incredible so around that time whenever they Around that time whenever they gifted or at least had the idea and kind of started to execute the statue laboulet Referenced that this time was oppressive for the french. There was the the russian war there was a war with russia or something that they lost and People a lot of people say that this statue was actually like a huge middle finger From france to its government where the people funded this depiction of liberty and freedom Um because the government in france was so oppressive. It was like Like we're gonna fund this big thing like it's an fu I don't know history very well. Didn't we fight the french on world war one?

41:37 If i'm wrong someone out there is just gonna be so upset Let me look it up. No, no, no, we didn't we came we came to their aid. Yeah britain france We're the allies britain from french italians austria at the time in germany were the axis And I don't even know if they call them that actually in world war one. That's a world war two term, but Oh, no, see this is um, oh A war okay. So this is why I got confused It's called the franco Prussian war I should probably butchered that but it's not russia. That's why I got confused It's france and germany. Okay was the war that they lost and like had oppressive government Yada yada. Yeah, so World war one which was 1914 to 18 The allied powers were france uk russia italy and us And the central powers whatever they were called germany austria hungary the ottoman empire bulgaria and other minor central powers and russia was Allied no, yeah, russia was allied we were with the russians. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Sorry Sorry all of history, but i'm uneducated I know we really don't know I promise I can tell you about certain things I just can't tell you about world war one history. Yeah, my great-grandfathers fought in world war one all three of them. Oh they were uh My my grandpa's dad and brothers

43:07 um highly They were canadian they highly discouraged um Not fighting in the war And my grandpa complacency was in college world war two kicked off He was like I am not Going to world war two voluntarily and he was drafted And it's a whole long story, but yeah pretty wild Whole family relationship world war one and two wicked wicked surprised. I'm here. But here we are. Yeah So that's the statute of liberty For people I remember that it was a lighthouse because we mentioned it I think you did early on and like trivia first episode or something. Yeah, and then yeah trivia I'm pretty sure I did but super cool. Yeah, even though it sucked as a lighthouse It tried its best But the war department held control of the light through world war one when in 1916 german saboteurs Set off a huge explosion near the statue. I didn't know that there was a shipment of I don't know if it was missiles or explosives Or something being sent to russia from the u.s And they blew it up and so it cost 2.7 million dollars in today's money just to fix the island and the right arm Was damaged and so originally you could climb up the right arm Into the torch and see from up there But at this point it was closed for like fixing and reconstruction stuff and it was never opened again Really? Yeah, never once I mean never again today

44:39 It's been closed forever 1916 that's interesting. So Maybe you're gonna tell me but when you go and visit, what can you see? Well, i'm gonna let you know. Oh, oh, oh there's details It's actually quite nice. It's very inclusive. I'm excited to tell you about it so Around this time when they closed the right arm and fixed it from all the explosion the statue finally got adequate floodlights Wow, it only took like 30 years. Yeah just a few decades, but you know you you Gotta make do with what you got and electricity just needed some time to grow before Could really handle something of the stature, but let's see how I get I pronounce it Oh gosh gutson borglum I'm sorry if that's wrong. Um, but anyway, he later sculpted mount rushmore So we got lots of big names around the Statue of Liberty. He redesigned the torch replacing a lot of the copper of the torch with stained glass What listen?

45:44 i'm a stained glass artist and That is an awful idea to replace something metal 300 feet something feet replace metal. I'll show you a picture of what it looked like before they replaced it again And don't look okay stained glass itself Don't don't don't don't you know? I'll show you a picture. You'll understand. But basically that's a huge failure of a decision. That's fragile. Come on gutson So in world war one the image of the statue was used a lot for drafting to push the idea that To support. Thank you french. We'll fight in the war with yes to support and secure liberty For the rest of the world, you know, like come on. Look what we have. Look at this relationship that we've fostered We need to go and help. Yeah, we need to go and help the war to end all wars, right?

46:36 Yeah, so like drafting images Often had the Statue of Liberty on them It's a great kind of yeah get some get some emotional symbol. Yeah I have no complaints with that. I think it's yeah, I don't see it and say let's go to war but you know at the time Maybe I see her more as like a soft like a gentle Like a hug. It doesn't like cannon next to her. Yeah. No, it's not like she's That reminds me. Have you seen there's like images of like a Statue of liberty in like a war helmet. No, it's awful. But it was another like promotional thing It's like oh gosh just no, I haven't seen it. I know what you're trying to do, but Give her back her crown. It's like, what was it ruby riveter? What was her name?

47:21 Oh, um, ru- Wasn't ruby. No Rosie. Oh Rosie the Riveter Moving on so Statue of Liberty was dedicated as a national monument in 1924 which that took a long time a national you're gonna use it as a depiction of the draft people into a war and it's not gonna be A national monument. I think that's crazy long application lots of paperwork It was handed over to the National Park Service in 1933, which is still what it's under today. Nice. They've done good National Park. Yeah, the rest of bed low island followed suit in 1937. So the entire island is national park land 100 years. Yeah, they immediately began transforming the space into a park and restored some of the areas Which is good because they were talking about it being just like a dump rotting wood stairs like only one Entry way was open for this to get into the statue and it was just like People talked about how they're surprised people didn't die going inside Like it was just like muggy and sick smelling like it was just like an awful. Yeah, I mean, there's no funding What are you supposed to do?

48:36 So anyway, it was really good those handed over to the National Park Service because they really didn't Amazing things to it, especially today. So World War II hit and it was no longer lit at night. So they just stopped Lighting it because there was like rolling blackouts for the war And it was only lit twice total during World War World War II on the new year in 1944 Very briefly just like happy new year. Okay Like take that back down And the second time was on D-Day when the light flashed dot dot dot dash, which is morse code V for victory Which is awesome. I mean an awful Event but super cool lighting scenario. My grandpa was there Storm the beach and he didn't even want to go 1956 just gonna flow right over that bedlose island was officially renamed to liberty island, which was bartledy's original Plan was to name it liberty island. So it just took You know a while 60 70 years. Yeah, they're like, yeah, let's rename it. You might as well as well. Who's bed low?

49:46 Anyway, I don't want to pay taxes on this thing So now i'm going to go into The restoration hit it. So they planned a centennial celebration in 1986. So 100 years of the statue Being built they wanted to have a big celebration. So they needed to make sure that it was structurally sound and See when it'd be fixed on it and holy cow. It needed some serious work Like yeah, I think it would have been cheaper to build a new statue. Oh So french and american engineers gave it a evaluation And this was um, like five years before the celebration So they planned on having a new one So in 1982 they finished their evaluation and concluded that it needed considerable restorations President reagan announced the statue of liberty dash ellis island centennial commission Which was going to be responsible for funding or you know collecting funds for the project And they raised 350 million dollars Wow I don't know if that's in That time's money or if that's in today's money, but like still that's insane 350 million. Hopefully today It's gotta be right. I mean wall street in the 80s was pretty lit But part of that was because american express card promised one cent of all credit card purchases would go towards the project And it's still on the american express card The statue of liberty is That's cool. Yep, you have one. Yeah, my wife and I are going to be doing that

51:20 And it's definitely pretty cool. Yep, you have one. Yeah, my work card my old one now. Oh I never even noticed that and it's the same color. Yeah, they're probably gonna milk that forever like we did it the statue was closed in 1984 so we have two years until it's centennial celebration and it was closed that entire time for construction efforts and restorations and everything and The reopening would be on fourth of july weekend, which would be called liberty weekend So let me pull up a picture. They built the world's largest freestanding scaffolding. Yeah. That is terrifying. If you think about, you're like 250 feet up in the air.

52:02 Just. That's pretty wild. I think I have a little bit of a fear of heights because I can't even imagine. I don't think I can climb the Statue of Liberty. Everybody fears heights to some degree. They stand on it, don't they? Like the scaffolding, the stairs. Yeah, there's like boards. I mean, at this point they have like modular, they're not boards anymore, but modular metal aluminum pieces that are like platforms. So you build stairs into it. I've been on some stair towers and stuff that are scaffolding, but not 300 feet tall. I'll be honest, the tallest one I remember was in a project where it was like 40 feet of stairs, all made out of scaffolding.

52:44 It was kind of. Sketch. It was my favorite. I could do it, but I didn't wanna hang out there. Okay, because I was like 60 feet up, but it was see-through grading. Like you just see down to the earth. I have never struggled so hard against my own brain than I did in that moment, where I genuinely struggled to take a step forward on this. The ground, like you can see. This is. I actually struggled. We can cut this if you want, but this was my internship with the Louis Dreyfus Company. They had these huge, they were seven stories. So 70 feet in the air at least. And they're grain silos.

53:26 And on top you could go between. And below you was like where the semi trucks drove. So, and it was only, I swear it was two and a half feet wide. It was like two people couldn't walk next to each other. And it was just a single handrail. And I just, I like walked across it maybe 10 times over the summer. Never once like stopped and looked down. No. Because I just knew it was going to be so sketchy. Oh gosh, yeah. It was high. I really thought I was going to faint. That was like around a distillation column. So you know those get very, very tall. Gassy. Gassy. I may have been gassy from fear. So anyway, I just wanted to point out the scaffolding. It's insane. Yeah, it's incredible.

54:06 So the first phase was using liquid nitrogen to remove years of paint layers on the inside of the sculpture. Okay. Then blasting baking soda on the walls after that to remove coal tar, which they used to plug holes and like any openings in the wall. I know. And then, so this is where the asbestos came into play. Bartholdi had used to prevent corrosion, which didn't happen. Didn't work, yeah. So workers needed to use, they needed to wear moon suits is what they were called in order to work inside the statue, which had its own circulating air supply. Like, I mean, they didn't know that asbestos was gonna be such a huge thing, but.

54:50 Sounds awful. Use something that was actually gonna work. Don't get. Well, asbestos was fantastic. Asbestos was an awesome material. As far as material science goes, it was like super cheap to make, super well insulating. You use it in a bunch of different like thicknesses. So they're always in ceilings, old ceilings. Ceiling tiles, like pipe insulation floor tiles, drywall. It was all over the place. Cause it was like a miracle that we discovered how to make asbestos. I don't know the history, but I think it was like 20, 30 years before they knew like, it's killing people. Yeah. And it's not even like questionable. You know how there's like everything they say causes cancer these days, but this was like, there is no refuting it that it is.

55:32 Mesothelioma. Wow. I think. Big word. I don't know. We'll just go with it. Yeah. So what'd they do about the asbestos? Oh, they had to wear moon suits. Yeah. So yeah, they could, they removed it all, but. Those guys had to be paid a lot. I know. I wonder if like people died. I didn't look up if anybody died on this. They were uncomfortable, I would say. Oh, that scaffolding. Why did they need it all the way over on the right? It seems like it's so far away from. I don't know. So they replaced all the iron armature, fixed large holes in the copper sheeting, which was like a total of 2% of the skin needed to be replaced, which is pretty hefty when it's 31 tons of copper.

56:16 The copper that they used to fill the holes was taken from the roof of Bell Labs, which was like a laboratory or something. Yeah, Bell Labs is famous. Yeah, it had a similar patina to the statue. And so they took it from that and in compensation, they gave them the old pieces of the Statue of Liberty that they could do like tests on. That's cool. Isn't that cool? Yeah. I thought that was so neat. They're just like, can we take your roof? They're like, yeah. I've got a business proposition for you. That's all right. This is where the torch comes in. The new one? Because it was stained glass for no reason at all, it's been leaking water since he first did it in 1916. So the whole thing had to be replaced, the entire torch.

56:59 So, but they made one from Bartoldi's original design. So it was exactly the same as it was when it was built. And they gilded it with 24 karat gold. I was gonna say, how is it still gold? Yeah. As he originally intended so that when it's sunny out, it reflects off the torch. So it's really bright. And then at night they use floodlights on it. So it's still, it lights up. That's really cool. It's really cool. 24 karat gold, just all over that thing. How does that work? Look at the carats of gold. Is it a thickness or a grade? I don't know. I'm not really into it. I feel like the higher quality, higher karat, the more yellow it is. So it must be like concentration of gold particles or gold element in the substance.

57:45 Can't tell you. Sounds right. Somebody let us know. But the old torch that has stained glass all over it is in the museum that's on the island now. So you can go and see the old ones. I am really surprised they didn't just knock it down. So, and it's so ugly. Oh, come on. I'm like, what is that? That is not what I pictured. I had this big- And it's big to crap. I had this wonderful idea of like a big ball of glass that would just, you know, just as a light. Yeah, like illuminate. No, it wasn't even pretty. It wasn't an improvement. It was just- That looks like a middle school project. They worked way too long on. Because they left the copper. They just cut squares into it and then put stained glass in the squares.

58:26 It's really awful. That would be a terrible. What if you were commissioned to do the stained glass and you're like, oh my God, what an honor. And then you see the idea and you're like, oh no. I'm just cutting squares of glass. Yeah, so obviously I have a picture up next to the new one and the new one just looks so much better. It's so clean and really pretty. I love that gold. There's the twin towers in the background. There's the guy crawling over the scaffolding. He's probably got fall arrest. Twin towers in the background of both photos. There are some things that happened in the Statue of Liberty after 9-11.

59:06 There's a lot of pictures of the Statue of Liberty with the burning buildings in the background. I just didn't think that was a thing that we had to show. It's not a, it didn't need to be. But anyway, to get back to the restoration, they found out that the right arm had not been placed correctly and had been swaying in the wind for almost 100 years. No way. Yes. What do you mean? And one of the rays of the crown was a few degrees off. So it touched the arm every time that it swayed in the wind. No way. Wore a hole into her torch bearing arm. No way. Because they had just built her on, they put her head on two feet off. Let me go back.

59:46 Can you go back? To what? No, a picture. I wanna see this. Or forward maybe. Her head's two feet off. Yeah, so one of those rays. To the left. To the right. It's just mind blowing that a statue of this stature, like we've got a literal colossal statue could be put together incorrectly. Yep. I work in construction and a lot of the guys that work for me do sheet metal work and I've seen some things. Metal will bend and you hit it. Yeah, so it just wore this hole in the arm and they didn't find out until at this moment.

1:00:27 100 years. They patched that because the National Park Service couldn't really afford to replace the whole arm so they were just like, just patch it. And then they moved the ray on the crown so that it was no longer bumping against the arm. So I have a picture pulled up of them just adjusting it. Crazy. So huge and you think about in this photo how high they are up off the ground. Like it just looks like, oh, I'm just up here. Like you're at the top of the Statue of Liberty. I don't think they have fall arrest systems. Maybe they don't exist yet. I don't think so either. For those who don't know, maybe you care, I don't know. Construction has come a long way in the last 20 years. Yeah, especially safety.

1:01:07 Well, in the last 200 years for sure, but 20 years in safety. Like there's a lot of construction companies that won't even allow ladders at all. Like you cannot have a ladder on the job site because so many injuries happened from people falling from ladders. So and heights, you know, slips, trips and falls. But that's crazy. Ooh. So that was the basics of the restoration efforts that happened, filled with nervous laughter because apparently at heights I'm sweating. I think I have a problem. So anyway, immediately, so this is what I was talking about. This is what I'm talking about, 9-11, which is like this short thing. But immediately following the events that happened, the statue was closed for eight years because they realized they could not evacuate people out of the Statue of Liberty if something were to happen.

1:01:57 It just kind of like, you know, the awareness boom of America where they were just like, oh, if something happens, how are we gonna handle it? Like it just made it so obvious that we hadn't considered. If terrible people were to do terrible things. In the worst case scenario. Yeah, what would you do? And the Statue of Liberty was one of those things where it had one way up and one way down. It was small, there was an elevator, but like. It'd be bad. Yeah. Also it's a symbol of America. So it's likely to be attacked. Right. Yeah, I'm sure that's what they were thinking. In those times. Following 9-11, one of the things that they talked about in the towers were the stairwells.

1:02:38 It's a whole long thing. You should go look into it on your own, but they couldn't evacuate well in the stairwells and have firefighters help. And mostly, one of the reasons was they're too narrow. And they had gotten a special exception to be built more narrow than code. Oh wow. Because of floor space. Yeah. I mean over these huge towers. Long, long story, go read on your own. I won't bore you. But the end of it, the city of New York was like, oh, well we've got to increase our width of our stairwells for safety. You've got to be able to have one person go up, one person go down. Yeah. And people will know that's how you go downstairs when you're evacuating. And I think it was in litigation for a while to make a new code standard for buildings.

1:03:22 And the cost impact to those couple of square feet on every floor on New York land, real estate, I think it was eventually just dropped. Oh no. Maybe if you build a new building, you have to have a wider stairwell. Yeah. I don't know. There's many other things that happen. If you build a new, like if anything built is new, then it has to conform to some standard. But that's so awful. But I just thought it was interesting because it's probably applying to the infrastructure here too. Yeah. So that was a huge thing. But they added new elevators and staircases and reduced the number of people that could be inside at one time. So I think total, you can have 10 people in there in the statue at a time. The pedestal is a different, a whole different thing.

1:04:04 But yeah, so like a total of I think 240 people can be there in a day. So like in one day, only a total of 240 people can climb the tower. Have you ever been to the St. Louis arch? No. Arch. Arch. Yeah. Well, it's the gateway to the West, I think is what they call it. But I don't know, I don't remember the history. But you go up in an elevator that's like, you sit in it and it's like a ball or a barrel shape. Ew, no, I don't like that. I think it fits four people, maybe six. But it's like, as you go up, the elevator has to correct because if you were to go up, you'd be like turned sideways.

1:04:44 Yeah. So it has to like. Oh, no, no, no. Oh no. At the top, I don't know how tall it is, but I went up there 10 years ago. You did, okay. At the top, there's these little windows you can look out and the whole thing is moving in the wind. It sways back and forth. I'd pass out. I had to build it that way because, you know, durability versus rigidity. It's just like the Statue of Liberty where the outside was all flexible. It's insane. Insane. No, no, I know. It was cool. A lot of people don't go up. I would never. So I've sidetracked you, but I just think it's so interesting. I've never been to New York at all. I'd like to go. Hey, we went to New York together. Well, that's true. I've never been to New York for more than a day.

1:05:28 How rude. We didn't see the Statue of Liberty though. No, it was part of my plan, but the ferry that takes you out there would have been too long. So Vince and I had an eight hour layover at JFK Airport. We had to pick and choose what we were gonna make happen in that time span. So it was Times Square and. Central Park. Central Park, yeah. And then we got some pizza. And pizza. So it was opened again after, so 2009, it was opened again. Originally, only about 20% of the island's visitors were allowed in the museum that was inside the pedestal. So originally the museum was in the pedestal and it was like a very exclusive club that if you wanted to go into the museum, it's like you either had to be a donor or.

1:06:10 Like going to the Statue of Liberty anyway was not like a. Tourist thing. Yeah, it was like a invitational sort of thing. Cool. Which, I mean, you could go, but I just don't think it was as common as it is today where people like really flock to go and check it out. In 2016, they built the new museum, which is on the island separate from the Statue of Liberty. I didn't pull up a picture of it, but they began construction in 2016, finished it in 2019. Which is so weird, yeah, because it's only five years ago. So weird to me that they're working on the Statue of Liberty today. Yeah. Like even the ancillary buildings. Like it's just like another national park where they're constantly doing work on it. Just, I'm like, the Statue of Liberty.

1:06:53 The lighthouse. The lighthouse? It's one of the worst ones ever. Dang it. She's amazing, but she's not a lighthouse. That's for sure. Not no more. It also wasn't until 2017 that the statue was like added to the National Register of Historic Places. 2017? That's less than a decade ago. What? I don't know. It was built in 1886. I just think that's crazy. National Register of Historic Places. People just don't like to do paperwork, I'm telling you. I can't feel like it can't be that hard. And who else is gonna qualify than the Statue of Liberty? You know there's a Statue of Liberty in my hometown, Hayes, Kansas? No. About six feet tall, it's right next to the library.

1:07:34 Oh, that's a shame. There's another one we saw in Las Vegas, Nevada. I didn't see it. Statue of Liberty, yes you did. No, we did not. We saw the Eiffel Tower. New York, New York. Saw the Eiffel Tower. There's a casino called New York, New York. We didn't go. Well, we were there. Are you kidding me? We didn't get to see. There's one in France too. Really? I think I knew that somehow. How did I know that? Oh, from Nicolas Cage. Heard it straight from the source. I feel bad for our listeners, but this is just what we do nonstop. Yeah, this is like a normal life. Just get a window into our lives. Just sit at a table and just put microphones on it. Okay, wow. I'll put a little bit about how you can visit in here because it's important. Because one day we'll be visiting.

1:08:16 And I said that I wouldn't be able to climb it, but I will. Whoa. I'm gonna make it happen. So you can only be reached by ferry. It's $25 for a ferry ticket to get there and back. But, so what I was saying is that this was pretty nice. Inclusive. You only pay 30 cents more for a ticket to get to the crown. So to climb, it's not an exclusive thing. We have to pay, twice as much, pay $100 for a ticket to climb the lighthouse. Oh my gosh. Yeah, you know what? To climb the lighthouse. Is there a stamp for the lighthouse password? Yes. Nice. There's a stamp for the Statue of Liberty. Everyone get a passport now, ushs.org.

1:08:56 I don't have mine still. I gotta go make sure. You gotta order it. I realized that I did have to pay for it. Sorry, I keep interrupting. So you were saying, 30 cents? It's only 30 cents more. But the problem is that it's, you make a reservation in advance and it's booked for months in advance. So you have to know when you're gonna go and what time you're gonna be there. And then buy the ferry ticket for that specific time with the stipulation, 30 cents addition at the bottom that it's a crown ticket. Nice. And you can also, there's the same thing for the pedestal as well. So 30 cents extra, you get to go on the pedestal. But it's 162 steps, so you gotta be ready to climb it once you get in there.

1:09:39 Yeah, I got a nice photo of what the island looks like. It's got a beautiful dock. Yeah, a couple of them. But isn't the pedestal cool, the star shape? Yes, it is really cool. It's always been that way, it's really cool. I like that idea. I was looking, is that Ellis Island over there? Yeah. And that is our 50th episode, special edition Statue of Liberty. Yes, she was a lighthouse. 16 years a lighthouse. Yeah, 16 solid sucky years. Not great years. She gave it the old college try. Super cool, thank you for doing this. Yeah, I got really excited. I love history stuff. It's a weekend of history. Oh. I was recently interviewed by US LHS historian and podcast host, Jeremy DeTremont.

1:10:23 Yeah. And it was a great time. So I posted about it on LinkedIn. I think that's the only place I posted about it. Okay. So just said thank you to him. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. We're on an interview, it's like 40 minutes. And I did not listen to it. I didn't either. I'm kind of scared to hear it myself. I don't wanna hear it myself. But y'all can go listen to it. Yeah, it's a. Lighthearted podcast. Yeah, lighthearted. You can go to the US LHS website. It has under one of their tabs, it says podcast. And then you can go and listen to it there. Or it's like on Apple or Google, Spotify, whatever. Anything else you wanna say? Nope. You guys should check out our Instagram. You can go to our website, thelighthouselowdown.com where you can leave us a review if you like this episode, please do.

1:11:09 We love it when we get reviews. And you can also leave a voicemail, send us a email at lighthouselowdown.gmail.com. I said lighthouse, okay. The lighthouse lowdown. So that's it. We hope you enjoyed listening to this super special episode. And we'll catch you next time on The Lighthouse Lowdown. We keep you lasted.