How big is Statue of Liberty? | Scale of the Universe

The Statue of Liberty is a copper statue of a robed woman holding up a torch, on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. From the ground to the tip of the torch, it stands 93 meters (305 feet 1 inch) tall. That height includes the stone pedestal; the statue alone is 46 meters (151 feet 1 inch) from its base to the torch. It was a gift from the people of France and was dedicated in 1886.

Size

The National Park Service, which runs the monument, gives the full height as 305 feet 1 inch, or 92.99 meters, from the ground to the tip of the flame. Slightly more than half of that is the pedestal, whose top is 46.94 meters (154 feet) above the ground. The copper figure stands on top, 33.86 meters (111 feet 1 inch) from heel to the top of the head, with the raised arm and torch above. When it was completed in 1886, it was the tallest structure in New York City.

The figure's parts are built on a giant scale. The right arm is 12.8 meters (42 feet) long, the head is 5.26 meters (17 feet 3 inches) from chin to top, and the index finger is 2.44 meters (8 feet) long. The tablet in the left hand is 7.19 meters (23 feet 7 inches) long. In strong wind the statue can sway up to 7.6 centimeters (3 inches), and the torch up to 15 centimeters (6 inches).

Size comparisons

The figure alone, from heel to head, is about 20 times as tall as a person 1.7 meters (5 feet 7 inches) tall.
The index finger is longer than that person is tall, and the head, from chin to top, is about three people tall.
From the ground to the torch, the monument is about 1.2 times the length of a Boeing 747-8 airliner, which is 76.25 meters (250 feet 2 inches) long.
Its full height is about 85 percent of the length of an American football field, which is 110 meters (120 yards) long with its end zones.

How the statue was built

In 1865 the French scholar Édouard de Laboulaye proposed that France give the United States a statue representing liberty. The sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi designed it. The French paid for the statue, and Americans raised the money for the pedestal, which was designed by the architect Richard Morris Hunt.

The statue's skin is made of copper sheets about 2.4 millimeters (3/32 inch) thick, less than the thickness of two pennies placed together. The sheets hang on an iron framework designed by Gustave Eiffel, before he built the Eiffel Tower. The statue was assembled in Paris, taken apart, and shipped across the Atlantic, arriving in New York on June 17, 1885. Rebuilt on its pedestal, it was dedicated on October 28, 1886.

The green copper and the torch

When it was finished, the statue was the brown color of a penny. Over about 30 years, its copper reacted with the air and formed the green coating, called a patina, that it has today.

The torch it holds today is its second. The first was removed in 1984 and is displayed in the museum on Liberty Island. Its replacement has a flame of copper covered in 24-karat gold, which reflects sunlight by day and is lit by floodlights at night.