User:Mr. Prez/My very own Statue of Liberty lead section because my edits aren't accepted in this collaborative effort

Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La Liberté éclairant le monde), also known as the Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. Located on Liberty Island in Manhattan, New York, it stands on a stone pedestal atop the abandoned Fort Wood, facing east toward the Old World, and is a symbol of freedom and of the United States throughout the world. It was a gift to the United States from the people of France, and a gesture of international friendship between the two countries.

The statue is of a robed female figure, representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch, and a tabula ansata (tablet evoking the law), upon which is inscribed "July 4, 1776", the date of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in Roman numerals. She wears sandals as she appears to move forward upon a broken chain, which is a symbol of the forces of oppression and tyranny. She also wears a crown with seven "spiky rays", representing the seven continents and the Seven Seas, along with twenty-five windows representing the twenty-five gemstones of the Earth.

The idea for a large statue, the equivalent of which still fails to exist, began in 1865 when Bartholdi was inspired by professor Édouard René de Laboulaye at a dinner party. In the two decades it took for the Statue of Liberty to be built, Bartholdi visited the United States multiple times, and Gustave Eiffel, known for designing the Eiffel Tower, engineered the internal structure. The statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886 on Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island), as a celebration of the U.S. centennial. The statue took twenty-five years to develop a patina due to exposure to the weather.

Today, millions of people visit the Statue of Liberty National Monument each year. Public access to both the island as well as Ellis Island is only by ferry. After the September 11 attacks, the statue was closed to the public. The pedestal re-opened in 2004, and the statue in 2009, with a limit as to how many visitors could ascend to the crown at one time.