It’s a warm afternoon early in the fall, and I’m at the Statue of Liberty again, this time with my wife. The stairway to the crown, off-limits after the September 11 attacks, is now open, but only until the statue’s 125th anniversary (October 28, 2011), when new renovations will shutter it once more. We wanted to hike to the top before then, which required reservations months in advance. The National Park Service allows only a dozen people up each hour, about two hundred a day.
Inside the statue, the security procedures are intense. Having threaded the airportlike screening at Battery Park, those headed for the crown undergo several additional checks. First, a Park Service ranger wraps our wrists with a green paper bracelet like those issued at amusement parks and state fairs. She then peruses our picture IDs. She’s amazed we’re from New York; locals rarely make the climb—or even visit Liberty Island itself—although this may change as the 125th anniversary nears. New Yorkers glimpse the Statue of Liberty from a distance all the time, but you really need to see it close up and from the inside.
In any case, the park rangers are immovably strict: no ID, no go up. An Australian couple had only one picture ID between them; the man had left his passport back at their uptown hotel. No amount of pleading convinced the ranger to allow him inside. The couple had to race to the subway, return to their hotel to grab his documents, and speed back to Battery Park in time to make their ferry reservation an hour hence. Unfamiliar with New York’s subterranean maze, the Australians took the wrong train and landed in Brooklyn. When they finally reached the ferry dock nearly an hour late, they saw that no one notices your reservation time and that they needn’t have rushed.
Once we pass the ID check, we’re ushered into a locker room, where we’re told to strip ourselves of everything but a camera and the clothes on our backs. To rent a locker, I stick my thumb in a scanner. When we return later to reclaim our possessions, the machine will match my thumb with its recorded print. Once we’ve stowed wallets, Kindles, keys, and phones in the high-tech locker, we then go through a full-body scanner. If we had this kind of security at airports, no shoe-bombers would ever board planes. But, of course, the airlines would never stand for it, and neither would most of us.
The first 150 steps to the top of the pedestal are relatively easy. It’s only when we enter the statue itself that the staircase narrows to the width of one good-size human body. One staircase goes up and another down. Claustrophobes beware. Liberty’s 354 steps wind tightly around its twenty-two-story central pylon; climbing them jacks my heartbeat to an aerobic rate. The lighting inside is dim, but there’s nothing dangerous about the ascent. After ten minutes or so, the stairwell brightens; I’m approaching the top. The summit itself is tiny, with room for a half-dozen people. It’s a glorious, sunny day, and the view is spectacular. Pointing to Brooklyn, the Australian asks, “Is that New Jersey?” He’s completely turned about. Brooklyn is straight ahead; the graceful Verrazano-Narrows Bridge off to the right. Manhattan and the port stretch out to the left, the ghost of the World Trade Towers shadowing a skyline clipped tragically low.
The experience is nothing like what I remember of my sixth-grade trip. Then, the crown’s windows were so caked with grime that I could barely see out. Replaced during the restoration, the portholes now can be opened (with the right tools) and squeegeed clean. Everyone snaps pictures of the harbor, the torch arm up above, and the tablet below. Looking up, I remember the segment of Ken Burns’s documentary showing a trio of stunt men shimmying up the rays pointing out from Liberty’s crown. It seems an impossibly dangerous thing to do, but in the newsreel footage Burns had found, the skywalkers miraculously positioned themselves to wave returning doughboys home from the First World War. Refocusing on the here and now, I can see the seams of the individual copper plates that form Liberty’s skin and the rivets that lock them in place. This close-up view makes me realize, again, just how ingenious Bartholdi was. He knew that both the seams and the rivets would be invisible when the statue was glimpsed from afar.
Even better than the harbor, which after all, you can see from a plane, is the underside of Liberty’s copper skin. I can almost touch it in places and easily tell just how thin it is. Eiffel’s brilliant engineering, updated in the 1980s restoration, is evident as well. I see exactly how the skin is laced with copper strapping, which itself is attached to thin metal arms. The only thing slightly disconcerting about being in the crown is the distinct feel of Lady Liberty swaying in the wind.
The guard lets us take our time in the crown, but after twenty minutes or so, we’re ready to head down. The descent, though less arduous physically than the climb, feels uncomfortable: steep, winding, poorly lit, and narrow. The woman in front of me is so terrified that she cries audibly the whole way down. Her boyfriend has to tread dangerously backward to comfort and coax her on every step. When we finally reach the pedestal, she seems too shaken to feel much relief.
She speaks what sounds like an Eastern European language, so I can’t understand what she says. But her body language is clear: she would have rather stayed on the ground. Aside from the Australian couple, most visitors aren’t English-speakers. But the park rangers make precious few allowances for them. They bark orders and directions even I can’t understand.
When my wife expresses sympathy for the uncomprehending visitors from abroad, one of the relatively few Americans we encounter complains that there are too many foreigners inside our statue. He’s exercised over the number of undocumented immigrants in Sacramento, his hometown, and just doesn’t like all these people in our midst who don’t speak English. But the Statue of Liberty, we say, is an international wonder, the symbol of our country’s openness to the world. We want foreigners to visit, no matter what tongues they speak. Our Californian holds his ground: “This is the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” he says hotly. “They should speak ENGLISH.”
When we’re back at the base, we decide to end our excursion with a stop in the huge new Statue of Liberty gift shop. It’s an emporium of the most wonderful kitsch: replicas of the statue from two inches to several feet tall, Liberty Barbies, flashlights in the form of the statue’s torch, maple syrup in Liberty-shaped bottles, snow globes, Christmas tree ornaments, mugs, T-shirts, pens, you name it—everything “Made in China,” needless to say. In one corner of the store resides a Bartholdi robot that opens and closes his mouth and eyes, moves his hands, and speaks English in a perfect Maurice Chevalier accent. It’s half-serious and half-kitsch and makes a droll contrast to the excellent, if earnest, museum exhibit that occupies the statue’s base. Recalling Chevalier, the Bartholdi puppet says of his creation, “Like all ladies, she only improves with age.”
We’d stayed most of the day on Liberty Island and inside the great green monument. For the two of us, the total bill (not including souvenirs) came to $30, the price of a modest Manhattan lunch. The excursion to Liberty Island gets three stars in my Michelin Guide; even the most blasé of New Yorkers will find it well worth the detour.