BEDLOE’S ISLAND

Evening Star, Issue 19546, 3 May 1927, Page 8

BEDLOE’S ISLAND

WHERE THE STATUE OF LIBERTY STAHDS On the anniversary of 'Washington’s birthday fifty years ago the spot in .New York Harbor now best known was designated for the role it plays. Bedloe’s Island, on February 22 of tins year, passed the semi-centenary _ of its association with the Statue of Liberty. That association draws to the little island more visitors a year, no doubt, than it has seen in all its preceding history. , . . The little twelve-acre plot of ground became by Presidential proclamation a national monument three years ago, states the New York ‘ Times.’ It had a measure of renown in Dutch days as a source of rabbits and oysters, and was called Oyster Island. Governor Lovelace, in 1670, gave the name Love Island to this “certaine little island in ye Bay neare this Citty,” which became a privileged place where no warrant or attachment or arrest shall be made of force or served unless it be by “ye Governor’s special warrant and case of breach of ye peace or Crymlnall Mnttrs.” Isaac Bedloe held a patent to the land in colonial times, but his daughter, Mary Smith, sold it for £IOO to Captain "Kennedy, commander of the British Naval Station of New York._ He built a summer home on it, and it became known as Kennedy’s Island. New York bought the island in 1750 as a site for a pcsthouso. Fifty years later this city presented it to the Federal Government for use in harbor defence. The star-shaped Fort Wood was constructed there in 1841. After the Franco-German War the French sculptor, Frederick August Bartholdi, was commissioned by a group of leading Frenchmen to make the Statue of Liberty and to profler it to America ns a symbol of the-friend-ship between France and the United States. He suggested Bedloe’s Island as a like!v location for such a statue, and on February 22, 1877, Congress authorised President Hayes to set apart , a site there.

The first section of the “Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World ” had been seen in the United States the year before, when the forearm bearing the torch was shown at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, For ten years it was mounted in Madison square. The bead had been completed for a showing at the Paris Exposition in 1878, and three years later, on the anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown, the pieces of the framework and base were put in place in Paris. Three more years passed before the gigantic sculpture was completed. On 4th July. 1884, it was presented to the American Ambassador; in August the cornerstone of the pedestal was laid on Bedloe’s Island, and in the following June the French ship Isere landed the figure in New York in 210 packing cases. The pedestal being completed, the task of putting he parts together was initiated in the spring. The statue, measuring 305-Jft from foundation of pedestal to torch, was unroiled on October 23, 1886, some sixteen years after the project -was first

started. Popular subscription in Franco raised 700,000d0l for the cost of the statue; popular contribution in the United States supplied the 300,000dollar pedestal.