ZMT: Daily Fact: What was the Statue of Liberty’s original hue?

Daily Fact: What was the Statue of Liberty’s original hue?

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Original photo by Tom Coe/ Unsplash

The Statue of Liberty was originally brown.

Lady Liberty opted to go green long before most New Yorkers. In 1885, French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi dismantled his gleaming copper-skinned creation — a gift to the U.S. from the French people — into 350 pieces for its voyage across the Atlantic. The statue was eventually rebuilt atop Bedloe's Island (now called Liberty Island) in New York Harbor, but during the next two decades or so, the landmark underwent a prominent color change.

The now-familiar minty tint is actually a patina, a common coating that forms on copper as well as its alloys brass and bronze. The patina is a result of the chemical reactions the statue has endured in its environment, an urban center surrounded by water. Over the years, the copper has reacted to oxygen, sulfuric acid, chloride, and other components of the surrounding air and water, changing its mineral composition in a gradual evolution. Today, chemists believe the seafoam-green hue has stabilized. And while there's occasionally been talk of repainting the statue or polishing off her patina, public sentiment — and input from copper manufacturers — has kept "Liberty Enlightening the World" from being returned to her initial metallic sheen. Fortunately, the patina is protective, which means Liberty's chameleonlike qualities actually help preserve her.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Number of pennies that could be made from the Statue of Liberty's copper exterior

435 million

Minutes into "Planet of the Apes" (1968) where the decimated Lady Liberty appears on screen

111

Estimated price businessman Joe Tsai paid in 2019 to own the WNBA's New York Liberty

$10-14 million

The women's shoe size that would be required to contain the statue's 25-foot-long feet

879

Did you know that the Statue of Liberty shares a designer with the Eiffel Tower?

Lady Liberty's first internal designer, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, died in 1879, so Bartholdi asked bridgemaker Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel to take over the job. Eiffel improved on the existing blueprints by adding a giant central support structure as foundation for the truss work holding up the copper exterior. This tactic increased the structure's flexibility, making it less susceptible to cracking or warping. During windy spells, the Statue of Liberty can sway up to three inches in any direction — slightly more than the top of the Eiffel Tower. Once his work was complete, Eiffel engineered his namesake showpiece between 1887 and 1889.

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Daily Fact: What was the Statue of Liberty’s original hue?