This photo shows the right hand of the Statue of Liberty, standing in Madison Square Park, approximately at the current intersection of Broadway and West 26th Street.
Bartholdi created the Statue of Liberty in France piece by piece. To convince Americans that the gigantic monument would actually be built and to attract donations, he began with the most striking detail — the right hand holding the torch.
It stood almost 13 meters tall, and the index finger of the future statue alone was approximately 2.5 meters long.
In 1876, the hand was brought to the World’s Fair in Philadelphia, marking the centennial of the United States. Visitors could climb a staircase inside the structure and emerge onto a circular balcony beneath the flame of the torch. After the close of the Fair on November 10, 1876, the hand was transported to New York. In February 1877, The New York Times sarcastically wrote that since the city had failed to raise the money for a complete statue, it had to make do with “a good big piece of a hand.”
In 1882, the structure was dismantled and shipped back to France, where it was reassembled with the remaining parts of the monument.
The Statue of Liberty was fully reassembled in France in 1884. It was then disassembled again, crated, and shipped across the Atlantic. The statue arrived in New York in June 1885, but remained in crates for about a year, awaiting the completion of the pedestal. The ceremonial unveiling took place on October 28, 1886.
📍Madison Square Park / 11 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10010
