Yasmin Sabina Khan - Enlightening the World: The Creation of the Statue of Liberty

Half a year before his death Allan Temko recommended that I read his book. I already had Notre Dame of Paris on my bookshelf, so I started it immediately. I was thinking much about liberty at the time, both grateful for a system of government based on respect for individual liberty and worried that our unique inheritance might, out of fear, be diminished by our own government. Allan Temkos sensitive book about how and why Notre Dame was built encouraged me to explore a monument as meaningful to our nation as Notre Dame is to France, and as universally cherished. Thus began my work on this book.

A book of course is never the work of an individual, and many people have supported me in various ways over the years as I thought about and prepared this text. Nicole Fronteau, Sergio Coelho, and Beatriz Lienhard-Fernandez helped with translations, and my brother Martin Reifschneider with the illustrations. Kathleen Coleman and Maria Luisa Mansfield offered valuable suggestions on individual chapters of the manuscript as it developed; Sr. Virginia Daniels, Carmella Yager, Msgr. Dennis Sheehan, Liliane Chase, Adam Chase, and Zillur R. and Tanjina Khan also read portions of the text. John Mansfield, Arlene Polonsky, Marlies Mueller, Beatriz Espinosa de Fernandez, and Chin-Chin Yeh generously offered their thoughts and advice on the full manuscript, and two anonymous readers shared their knowledge of the topic and the literature on the statue. A number of people at libraries, museums, and collections greatly assisted my research, including Marie-Sophie Corcy at the Conservatoire national des arts et mtiers near Paris, Franoise Gademann and Rgis Hueber at the Muse Bartholdi, the photographer Christian Kempf in Colmar, Sherry Birk and Mari Nakahara at the Richard Morris Hunt Collection of the American Architectural Foundation in Washington, D.C., Barbara Wolanin and Jennifer Pullara Blancato at the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, Catharina Slautterback at the Boston Athenaeum, and David Cassedy of the Union League of Philadelphia. Diane Windham Shaw at Lafayette College, Alan Hoffman, and other admirers of the Marquis de Lafayette helped me appreciate the involvement of France in the American War for Independence; many others clarified my thoughts by discussing the statue and my ideas for the book. I sincerely thank everyone who shared in some way in this project.

Michael J. McGandy, my editor at Cornell University Press, worked with me for close to a year to shape the manuscript, and his background and guidance are reflected in this text. With his help I have been better able to express my wonder at the statues story and at how the inspired efforts of individuals can affect the course of history.

My husband, Stephen D. Byron, encouraged me to pursue my idea for a book when it was yet a vague concept. Aware of the intense research and focus that a book demands, he supported me as this idea began to take form and assisted me in innumerable ways, from finding sources to traveling to France to visit collections. I am thankful for his companionship and count on his support for all of my efforts.

I consulted several collections dedicated to the statue or its designers. In France, the Muse Bartholdi, located in Bartholdis family home in Colmar, preserves Bartholdis papers, photographs, and models, many of which are on display in the museum. The museum also furthers research through publications about Bartholdis work. The photographer Christian Kempf of Studio K in Colmar is responsible for maintaining the collections photographs. The Statue of Liberty Collection of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Mtiers in Paris contains a large number of photographs, along with original announcements concerning the statue and the FrancoAmerican Union. Complementing these two collections, the Bartholdi Collection of the Bibliothque du Conservatoire National des Arts et Mtiers in Paris contains newspaper clippings from the period of the statues design and unveiling.

In the United States, my research was assisted by the Richard Morris Hunt Collection of the Octagon, the Museum of the American Architectural Foundation, in Washington, D.C., which preserves Hunts sketchbooks and a transcript biography of Richard Morris Hunt that was written by his wife, Catherine Clinton Howland Hunt, based on Hunts journals. The Abraham Lincoln Foundation of the Union League of Philadelphia assisted with information on the Lincoln portrait by Edward Dalton Marchant. The Frdric Auguste Bartholdi Papers maintained by the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, consists of Bartholdis journal from 1871, when he visited the United States for the first time, and letters Bartholdi wrote to his mother during this trip. The collection includes the English transcriptions of Bartholdis writings by Rodman Gilder, which are the source of quotations in this book.

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