Since the earliest days of American coinage, an image “emblematic of liberty” has been required on all U.S. coins.  The new presidential coins feature on their reverse the symbol that may be the most evocative of all: the world-renowned Statue of Liberty.

Raising her torch dramatically at the entrance to New York Harbor , this colossal copper-sheathed steel statue rises 305 feet above the ground.  The figure herself is 151 feet tall, with an index finger alone measuring eight feet long. In her left hand she holds a tablet with the date “July 4, 1776” in Roman numerals.  The seven rays of her crown represent the world’s seven seas and continents.

Lady Liberty arrived in June of 1885 as 350 separate pieces packed in 214 crates.  The journey from her native France is as extraordinary as that of any immigrant to sail through New York Harbor .

The Statue of Liberty history begins at a 1865 dinner party in France, where a scholar and abolitionist named Edouard Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye told prominent sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi about an idea he had: As a gift to mark the centennial of American independence 11 years hence, France should give America a statue to commemorate the friendship the two nations forged during America’s Revolutionary War – and to demonstrate that liberty is a value shared among both nations.

The idea stuck with Bartholdi, and two years later he began designing the statue. In 1871, he traveled to America with a sketch and small model of the statue he called “Liberty Enlightening the World,” hoping to generate enthusiasm and funds for the project.  He found plenty of interest, but very little money.  By 1874, a joint Franco-American fund-raising committee was formed.  The plan was for France to pay for and build the statue while the Americans would provide the base.

By the end of 1879, the French has raised enough money to construct the statue, but American fund-raising lagged behind.  It was a Hungarian immigrant, Joseph Pulitzer, who saved the day.  Pulitzer owned a New York newspaper called The World, in which he published an editorial blastingthe rich for their selfishness and calling on ordinary people to pick up the fund-raising slack: “Let us not wait for the millionaires to give this money.  It is not a gift from the millionaires of France to the millionaires of America , but a gift of the whole people of France to the whole people of America .”

Pulitzer promised to publish the name of every contributor, no matter how small.  The money poured in.  On August 11, 1885, the front page of The World trumpeted, “ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!” The Statue of Liberty would become a reality.