Posted on 06/21/2012 7:04:20 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Old photos of the Statue of Liberty standing in Paris were extraordinarily surreal
In science fiction filmdom, the destruction of the Statue of Liberty is merely a sign that the carnage is chugging along at a steady tack. But reality provides some equally strange views of Lady Liberty, particularly when she was under construction in Paris during the mid-1880s. Here are some curious photographs of this iconic Statue in various states of disarray.
The Statue of Liberty was supposed to be a centennial gift from France to the United States, but funding difficulties waylaid the project for almost a decade.
The head and torch were completed long before the base and the rest of the body — these disembodied sculptures were put on display years prior, with the hand ending up at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Only after a decade of fundraising did construction accelerate. As the National Park Service explains:
Financing for the pedestal was completed in August 1885, and pedestal construction was finished in April of 1886.
The Statue was completed in France in July, 1884 and arrived in New York Harbor in June of 1885 on board the French frigate "Isere" which transported the Statue of Liberty from France to the United States. In transit, the Statue was reduced to 350 individual pieces and packed in 214 crates.
The Statue was re-assembled on her new pedestal in four months time. On October 28th 1886, the dedication of the Statue of Liberty took place in front of thousands of spectators.
Here are some photographs of the Statue looming over Paris. They evoke the spoils of some time-traveling despot who steals monuments throughout history. Or perhaps that never-was post-apocalyptic thriller, Planet of the Men with Mustaches.
How do you say that in French?
Vous maniaques! Vous il soufflait, damn vous!
You beat me to it.
What happens to every nation that abandons God and loses it’s moral foundation. France has fallen a long way from Joan of Arc to secular socialism.
I had trouble finding any reference until I searched for info on Isaac Singer, which led me to wiki pages with
>>>Isaac, meanwhile, had renewed acquaintance with Isabella Eugenie Boyer, a Frenchwoman he had lived with in Paris when he was staying there in 1860. She left her husband, and married Isaac under the name of Isabella Eugenie Sommerville, on June 13, 1863, while she was pregnant. <<<
And
>>>The Duchess of Camposelice was still a striking lady when she met the sculptor Bartholdi. It is rumored she was his model for the Statue of Liberty.<<<
Well *if* that rumor is true, he sure didn't do her any favors!
Correction to my previous post: the model for the statue was named Isabella Eugenie Boyer Summers - here is information from the NY Times:
In fact, Bartholdi’s model was the beautiful Frenchwoman Isabelle Boyer, who was first married to the American industrialist Isaac Merritt Singer (of sewing machine fame), and later to the Duke of Campo Selice of Luxembourg. In 1878, the 36-year-old Duchess de Campo Selice attracted the attention of the sculptor who forever immortalized her features in the face of Lady Liberty.
In “The Food of Love” (London, 1978), a biography of Winnaretta, Isaac and Isabelle Singer’s daughter, Michael de Cossart notes that “when the Statue of Liberty was finally completed in 1886, it was scarcely realized that the massive sculpture dominating New York’s waterfront owed something for its inspiration to the wife of one of America’s famous sons.”
World War One happened, and an entire generation was snuffed out.
Ping!
[Englishman Arthur S Mole and his American colleague John D Thomas took these incredible pictures of thousands of soldiers forming icons of American history. Arthur's great nephew Joseph Mole, 70, says: "In the picture of the Statue of Liberty there are 18,000 men: 12,000 of them in the torch alone, but just 17 at the base. The men at the top of the picture are actually half a mile away from the men at the bottom"]
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