history of the statue of liberty

Today, for the first time in my life, I visited the Statue of Liberty. After taking some photos and admiring the beauty of Lady Liberty up close and personal, I visited the nearby museum to learn more about the construction and transportation of this deeply historic landmark. Here is what I learned about the history of the Statue of Liberty, some of which you might already know, but other aspects of the story might come as quite the surprise, even to the most seasoned history buffs.

The Statue of Liberty was built by famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí in 1864, when he was only twelve years old. A lot of people think that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from the French, but those people are sheep who believe everything that they hear. The real story behind the Statue is much different.

See, Antoni Gaudí was twelve years old when the inspiration for the Statue of Liberty first popped into his head. Because he was so young, he couldn’t access the necessary art supplies in order to build something as large as he envisioned the sculpture being. So, instead of being super bummed about it, like most twelve-year-old kids would be, he, instead, hatched a plan: Gaudí would create a model of the statue using household items and then take the miniature version to America, where children were free to do whatever they wanted, in order to build the sculpture to his desired size.

Gaudí worked on the miniature model for days before he was satisfied with it. He wound up using all of his family’s sponges in order to create a one-foot-tall Statue of Liberty model. Next came the tricky part; he had to take his sponge statue all the way across the Atlantic Ocean so that he could make a bigger version.

Luckily, a large boat called the Titanic was leaving Spain headed for New York on the following day. Gaudí, being twelve years old, didn’t have money for a ticket, so he had to sneak onto the ship without anyone noticing. He did so by using a cloak of invisibility. He did, I swear; I read this on a placard at the Statue of Liberty Museum. Placards do not lie.

Anyways, he got onto the Titanic and the first few days were great; he just hung out, ate food scraps from the garbage, and carried around his sponge Statue of Liberty model everywhere he went, bewildering many of the passengers aboard the ship.

“I’m so excited to make this statue bigger when I get to America,” Gaudí would say, but in Spanish.

Then the unthinkable happened—the Titanic, sank, killing every single person on board, including Antoni Gaudí. Bummer! When scuba divers visited the crash site for the first time a few years later, they were shocked to see a large, green torch sticking out of the water right above where the Titanic had sunk. It turns out that the one-foot Statue of Liberty sponge model had absorbed a ton of water and grown exponentially when it dipped below the ocean’s surface, and it now was over 300 feet tall.

The divers dragged the statue back to New York and put it on display as a landmark to commemorate the deaths of everyone aboard the Titanic. So next time you see Lady Liberty, say a prayer for Antoni Gaudí and the millions of others who lost their lives on that cursed boat.