The Columbian. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1910, 1886-11-05

dess' skirts even were fitted fairly to
her waist.
For the last month or more almost
daily note has been made of the slow
progress of riveting the vast copper
sheatbes together and the gradual
softening of the heavy lines and sur
faces which looked 80 coarse and vague
aground, to the easy, graceful, airy
symmetry of the splendid figure as II
now stands. The statue was practi-
cally finished on October Is. From
that day, at least, the American com
mittee will always date its first mo
ment of relief.
THE SITE AND THE FOUNDATION
Barthol1i himself chose Bedlow's Is.
land fifteen years ago for the site of
his great monument No spot, in fact,
could have been happier one for the
purpose. From the shores of the Bay
the level islet looks like the mere natu-
raj base of the vast statue and its SOL
id-faced pedestal.
Gut away from any rival objects
large or small, dwarfed or dwaifug,
the colossal figure stands clearly against
the free back ground of water, land
and sky, blending with them easily and
simply, like an image drawn, as tho
goddess ls, on their own scale. And
if the great bronze figure fits, like one
of its own rivets in the copper sheath,
into the surroundings of sea and sky,
the granite pedestal finds a ready made
support to the double star shaped inner
walls of old Fort Wood
The base of the pedestal is almost
hidden from the outside behind them,
and when the old parade ground is
filled in, and the sodded terrace slopes
gently downward from the crown of
the foundation over them to the sea.
wall below, their tops will make An
easy break halfway where the stair
cases will broaden out into spacious
platforms, and benches will be ranged
for loiterers in the pleasant weather.
The outworks of the fort have disap-
peared; so have the powder-houses
and the sally-ports. The bastions
themselves will soon be buried in the
dirt. Only the small sea battery with
its guns freshly polished for display,
net use, will be left to remind one in a
year or two that Bedlow's Island was
once Government post.
The bulk of the pedestal's founda-
tion will, of course, be out of sight
when the landscape gardener has fin
ished his work on the approaches to
the statue. 1t starts, in fact, beneath
the old parade ground, at thirteen feet
above the mean low water mark. In
shape it is something like a truncated
pyramid, with gentle slope.
1t does not rise, however, with
continuous wall, but with series of
great layers of concrete, each one
trife smaller than the one it rests up
on. The top reaches up above the fort
walls tifty-two feet ten inches from the
base. There is no break to the very
top. The whole thing is a vast mass
of concrete and rock, which measures
on its upper face about sixty-five feet
square.
WELL BUILT PEDESTAL.
The pedestal proper at Its base is
sixty-two feet square, and begins at an
elevation above tide-water or sixty-fve
feet. In the middle of each face, lust
on leval with the proposed terrace,
is {, doorway, five feet wide and thir-
teen feet high. On each side of every
door is a projecting disk of stone on
which the arms of the United States
and of France will be cut in relief
Above the doors is broad band of
stone running around the pedestal and
broken into forty smooth faced medal
lions, ten on each side, on which the
coats -of-arms of the various States will
probably be placed. Still higher than
the medallions are four large panels,
twenty-three feet and six inches long
and five feet and three inches from top
to bottom. These will also be covered
with appropriate inscriptions and de-
signs.
Where the walls join again there is
jutting frieze of plain sranite, crown
ed with low open balcony on which
four doors open again from the shaft
within. Here the third section begins.
The walls contract several feet, though
the balcony rail breaks the sharpness
CT the effect from below. 1t is but a
few tiers now to the top of the pedes.
tai, hid from view by the rich draperv
of the goddess's tunic. The topmost
platform is thirty-nine feet and four
and three eighths inches square and
154 feet above low-water mark.
The pedestal is in its way a most
graceful and modest structure. IL is
neither monotonous or heavy, and has
been made to look smaller than it
really is. The goddess, in fact gains
in point of elevation by this suppress
ion, and towers over everything else,
but the effect is in no way forced or
stilt-like. The soft gray shade Of TIE
pedestal blends well with the reddish
brown of the copper, and the whiteness
of the rough quoins shows far across
the water in the santing rays of the
early morning or late afternoon sun
The granite used is from a quarry on
Leete's Island in Connecticut, and the
size of the blocks made the building of
the pedestal one of the heaviest pieces
of masonary ever undertaken about
New York. General Charles z. Stone
was the chief engineer of the work,
Richard M. Hunt the arceitect, and
David ii. King, Jr., the builder. The
pedestal cost in all about S250,000.
COLOSSAL SIZE OF THE FIGURE.
The Goddess of Liberty is the larg-
est work of its kind that has ever been
completed. The legendary Colossus of
Rhodes could not possibly have had
the shape of bigness attributed to it.
The colossal statue of Arminius, in Ba-
varia, is about ninety-four feet in
height that of st. Charles Borromeo,
on the shores of Lake Maggiore, sixty
six feet. The Virgin of Puy comes
next, fifly-two feet, and statue of Ba-
voria last, scarcely more than foot
shorter, All of them shrink out of
countenance beside the gigantic copper