We call the Statue of Liberty “Lady Liberty” for short. But she has a long name too. Do you know what it is? French people gave the statue to the United States as a gift. They called it “Liberty Enlightening the World.”

A man named Edouard de Laboulaye thought of the idea for the statue. He wanted the French people to get to choose their own leaders like people in the United States did. Could the gift inspire French people to create a government like America’s? Mr. de Laboulaye hoped so. The French planned to finish the statue by 1876. The gift would mean, “Happy 100th birthday, America!”

France and the United States made a deal. The French would build the statue. The United States would create the building the statue stands on (called the pedestal). In France, a sculptor named Frederic Auguste Bartholdi went to work. Most people think he modeled the statue’s face after his mother.

Not everyone felt as excited about the statue as its builders did. Mr. Bartholdi wanted to cover the whole copper statue in gold. He had a hard time convincing people to pay for the statue at all. In the end, he barely had enough money to build the statue and ship it overseas! So the finished statue didn’t look golden like Mr. Bartholdi hoped. But it also didn’t look green like it does today. It looked shiny like a new penny.

After Mr. Bartholdi built his statue, he disassembled it again. It was packed into 214 crates. Instead of one piece, it traveled in 350 pieces. The statue arrived in the United States in 1885, almost 10 years later than planned. Once it landed, French workers had to build it all over again!