Editorial Review
The Brooklyn Museum has completed conservation work on its "little" Lady Liberty, a thirty-foot replica of the Bedloe's Island Statue of Liberty. The historic statue, which once adorned the Liberty Warehouse in Manhattan, is part of the Museum's permanent collection of New York City architectural pieces.
Perhaps no American symbol is more widely recognized or powerfully expressive than "Liberty Enlightening the World"—the Statue of Liberty. Since 1885, when the 151-foot original created by the French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (1834–1904) was erected on Bedloe's Island, the colossal figure has inspired numerous smaller-scale replicas intended to echo the ideals of freedom, tolerance, and opportunity that it embodied for waves of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. This thirty-foot replica was commissioned about 1900 by the Russian-born auctioneer William H. Flattau to sit atop his eight-story Liberty Warehouse (at 43 West 64th Street), then one of the highest points on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Flattau thus combined his entrepreneurial spirit with pride in the adopted country in which he had prospered.
Although squatter in proportion and less gracefully detailed than the massive original, Flattau's replica retained something of the forceful gravity of expression achieved by Bartholdi. Until 1912, visitors could ascend an interior staircase to enjoy a view of Columbus Circle from an opening in the statue's head. This "little" Lady Liberty takes its place among the distinguished collection of outdoor sculpture and architectural fragments that the Brooklyn Museum began about 1960 in an effort to preserve unique New York City treasures that were increasingly at risk. Conservation of this work began spring 2006 and includes refurbishing the interior structure and refinishing the surface to remedy the effects of more than a century's exposure to the elements.
