Happy birthday, Lady: Honoring the Statue of Liberty as she turns 136
While there’s no special present for a 136th birthday for a fabulous copper-skinned French woman who has stood in New York Harbor since 1886, today is an extra happy occasion as it’s the first birthday since before COVID when the entirety of the monument is open to visitors. Lady Liberty’s crown is again welcoming all those who walk up the 146 spiral steps to look out of windows facing Brooklyn down below.
If you, fellow New Yorker, haven’t been recently, we urge you to make like a tourist and go.
A decade ago today, we were out at Liberty Island when she was reopened by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar following a yearlong renovation to enhance crown visits. Salazar will always be a hero for listening to our pleas and reopening the crown, which had been shuttered since 9/11. Then Superstorm Sandy blew in the next day, swamping Ellis Island, destroying the National Park Service superintendent’s house on Liberty Island and shutting everything down until the following July 4.
From the woes of 9/11, to Sandy, to COVID, we have championed this enduring symbol of freedom and democracy and New York and America and immigration. Now that illegal ticket-hawkers are mostly gone from the environs, the present struggle is to improve landside facilities for visitors. In both the Battery and Jersey City’s Liberty State Park, it’s time to banish the unsightly and uncomfortable white tents that the feds use for their airport-style scanning machines.
Move the machines into the two empty, beautifully restored historic buildings on the waterfront, the Pier A headhouse in Manhattan controlled by Gov. Hochul, and the Communipaw Terminal controlled by Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.
Then, have the Liberty/Ellis boats tie up to floating docks or barges in Manhattan and Jersey, like the private NY Waterway and the city’s public ferry boats do. The current steep gangplanks are dangerous and all but impossible for people with disabilities. Access should be equal to all who wish to celebrate our heritage and honor the tired, hungry, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
