The inside of the Statue of Liberty, showing the pure copper sheathing, which hangs on the steel framework. Back in September of 2009, I managed to get a pair of tickets to visit the Statue of Liberty with Crown access…
The tour basically allowed me to do the same as the regular tours – boat over to Liberty Island and then into the pedestal of the statue – but then to go up the more restricted staircase leading up through the body of Lady Liberty, to the Crown itself.
One thing I never realised about the Statue’s torch was that originally it was a full copper torch – then in 1916 (the Statue was dedicated in 1886) they cut away large portions of the copper in the torch flame and installed glass windows, with an internal light inside. Because the windows leaked, moisture got into the arm, and eventually sped up the corrosion of the inside of the statue. In 1986 they replaced the torch with a solid version which you see now, with gold plating covering the flame which is lit by external flood lighting. You can see the original torch with the glass windows in the museum in the pedestal.
The photo above shows the inside of part of the ‘body’ of the statue, with what used to be Iron skeletal supports (they’re now steel) holding up the outside covering of copper panels. The copper panelling is just less than the thickness of two pennies. Built into the pedestal’s massive masonry are two sets of four girders, which connect up to part of Eiffel’s framework for the statue itself.
The picture above was taken from one of the stairways on the way up to the crown, looking directly at one of the sides of the statue from the inside of the Statue of Liberty. The whole area inside was a mixture of shadows and highlights due to the lighting – the lack of light also forced me to use a high ISO / very low aperture to get the picture – the light highlight you see is actually from one of the internal lights in the statue.
Canon EOS-5D Mark II
1/40 sec at f/1.2
ISO 1250
85mm
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