Quick answer
The Statue of Liberty is a 305-foot copper monument on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, a gift from France dedicated on October 28, 1886. Sculpted by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi with an iron framework by Gustave Eiffel's company, it is a National Monument and a UNESCO World Heritage Site visited by about 3.8 million people a year.
Full transcript
The gift
The Statue of Liberty began as a French idea: in the years after the Civil War, the thinker Édouard de Laboulaye and the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi proposed giving the United States a monument to liberty, a celebration of the centennial and of Franco-American friendship. It was built in France between 1875 and 1884 — the iron skeleton engineered by Gustave Eiffel's company, the skin made of copper — then taken apart, shipped to New York in 1885, and reassembled on its pedestal. On October 28, 1886, it was dedicated. The statue is 151 feet tall; with the pedestal, 305.
The poet's lines that changed its meaning
The statue's official name is Liberty Enlightening the World, and it held a torch and a tablet reading July IV, MDCCLXXVI — July 4, 1776 — with broken shackles at its feet. But the meaning most people carry came from a poet: Emma Lazarus's sonnet The New Colossus, written in 1883 for a fundraising campaign and later fixed to a plaque inside the pedestal. Its lines about the huddled masses turned a gift about liberty into the welcome sign of the world's greatest immigration port, the first thing millions of people saw as their ships came up the harbor.
Going up
About 3.8 million people visit every year, and everyone arrives by ferry from the Battery in Manhattan or Liberty State Park in New Jersey, with a stop at Ellis Island along the way. If you can get a crown ticket — they sell out weeks ahead — you climb 377 steps for a view from inside the crown itself. If you cannot, walk the island's perimeter for the classic shot of the green figure against the skyline. Read the sonnet on the pedestal plaque before you leave — the copper turned green on its own, but the welcome never did.