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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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 Tue Feb 03, 2004 7:47 pm Statue of Liberty |
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| Quote: | LIBERTY ISLAND, N.Y. - They are the most beloved 354 steps in America, for they lead to a view of the nation's greatest city through the eyes of the nation's greatest symbol. But visitors have not climbed the stairs in more than two years, and they may never climb them again.
The Statue of Liberty has been closed since 9/11, longer than any time since its dedication in 1886. Although officials cite security and safety issues, they won't say exactly what they are, or just why they are dramatically different from those at other national landmarks that have reopened.
About $5 million is being raised privately for work that the National Park Service says probably will allow the monument's pedestal, which contains an immigration museum, to reopen to the public later this year. But there's also this startling possibility: The crown - accessible only by a narrow spiral staircase from the top of the statue's pedestal - might not reopen at all.
Officials say it may be too difficult to evacuate people in an emergency. Anyway, the trip to the crown "is not that vital to experiencing the statue," says Stephen Briganti, president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, which raises money for the statue. "You get the same views from the top of the pedestal."
But the walk to the crown is an American tradition. "Keep the people out and you will turn the statue into an international symbol of craven fear," declared a New York Daily News editorial. Otherwise, the newspaper says, the statue will have been "ceded to al-Qaeda."
Ken Burns, creator of a documentary film about the statue, says "it's a wonderful, playful, transcendent event when you make that huge climb with everyone else."
"Keep the people out and you will turn the statue into an international symbol of craven fear."
-New York Daily News
Although Liberty Island reopened to the public three months after the 2001 terror attacks, visits to the island are still down by at least 40%. Kim Wright, spokeswoman for the Circle Line ferry, says that's largely because people want to go inside the statue and up to the crown.
Landmark security is a cantankerous issue, for it raises a most fundamental of post-9/11 questions: What is caution, and what is cowardice?
In Washington, D.C., city officials complain about the federal government's refusal to reopen Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. Philadelphia Mayor John Street has ignored federal officials and reopened the street in front of Independence Hall. Meanwhile, a citizens group opposes plans for a security fence around the hall and the Liberty Bell.
The Statue of Liberty is the only major national landmark not to reopen after 9/11. Visitors can ride up the Washington Monument, walk past the Liberty Bell, drive across the Hoover Dam and tour the White House.
At Liberty Island, it's another story. "Don't rush out to the statue," a ferry dockhand advised a group of tourists boarding in Jersey City recently. "It's cold, and there's nothing to do there." Better to linger nearby at Ellis Island, where a museum chronicles the American immigrant experience, he said.
Some visitors arrive thinking that if Liberty Island is open, the statue must be, too. A small white sign at the base of the statue delivers the bad news. "I think you have to go up to the crown to really feel what it's like," says a disappointed Sina Froning, 25, who moved here from Germany two years ago. Unable to enter the statue or stand the winds of New York Harbor, most visitors huddle inside the snack bar and gift shop.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that as long as the statue is closed, "in some sense, the terrorists have won." On these winter days, standing outside the statue's huge bronze doors, it's hard to draw any other conclusion.
'Through the eyes of Liberty'
People were going inside the Statue of Liberty before it was even assembled. The right hand and torch were displayed in Philadelphia in 1876, and the head in Paris two years later.
Visitors eagerly clambered inside. Rudyard Kipling was 12 when he took 36 steps to the crown. A Frenchman told him, "Now you young Englisher, you can say you have looked through the eyes of Liberty herself!"
But the trek to the crown became a ritual almost by accident.
Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor, intended his statue to be seen from the outside. The interior staircase was designed to allow a lighthouse keeper access to the torch.
But the American committee that had raised money for the statue's pedestal and that after its dedication in 1886 hoped to raise more for upkeep wanted to encourage tourists to take the 25-cent ferry ride. People were allowed up to the crown's cramped interior observation platform, which has 25 windows, and to the torch's small, wind-blown balcony.
The climb became a sensation. The statue was the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere until the turn of the century and offered the city's finest views. Visitors also could see the statue's intricate internal skeleton, devised by French engineer Gustave Eiffel to support the 151-foot high, 225-ton goddess.
The rigors of the climb became legend. Listen to vaudeville comedian Cal Stewart's country bumpkin character, "Uncle Josh": "I commenced to climb, and I climbed and climbed and climbed, until I allowed as I must be up around her ear or nose, or up there somewhere. I stepped out a little door what I seen, and I shouted 'FIDDLESTICKS!' I hadn't gotten up any further than her big toe!"
After the torch was closed in 1916, the crown was the place to go - even though the city's new skyscrapers offered higher views.
Barry Moreno, a park ranger, recalls standing outside the front door on summer mornings waiting for the arrival of the first ferry. Suddenly, a mob of tourists would appear, sprinting toward the statue, eager to be the first to the top, winded before their first step up.
The hike to the crown was a sort of secular pilgrimage, a staple of class trips and family vacations. You waited for hours, sweating, making friends, complaining.
Complaining was half the fun, for in summer the statue's staircase was hot, crowded, noisy and monotonous. How clever, writer Madeleine Blais once observed, for a monument associated with immigration to "replicate the atmosphere of steerage."
Was it worth it? No, says Park Ranger Doug Freem. "But it's not so bad the next day. And next year you're bragging about it. And 20 years later you're back with your own kids to do it again."
A target as well as a symbol
But tourists were not the only ones who wanted into the statue. Suffragette demonstrators hired a boat to crash the dedication ceremony in 1886. Ever since, the statue has been a political symbol - the scene of demonstrations and occupations by everyone from Vietnam Veterans Against the War to Hungarian nationalists. People have chained themselves to the crown and unfurled banners from its windows.
For security reasons, in the mid-'90s the Park Service began limiting the number of people who went to the crown. It had become clear that to some people with a cause or a grudge the statue was more than a symbol. It was a target.
When the last ferry left Liberty Island at 5 p.m. Sept. 10, 2001, it looked as if it would be a record year for attendance: more than 4 million. The next morning, before the first ferry left its slip, the World Trade Center was attacked.
The island did not reopen to the public until Dec. 20. Terrorists, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said that day, "cannot - and they will not - shut us down."
That was precisely what they did. Four months later, Mayor Bloomberg asked the Park Service to open the crown "as soon as it possibly can." Then, in May 2002, U.S. intelligence indicated the possibility of an attack on Liberty and other New York landmarks.
Gov. George Pataki went to Liberty Island and vowed, "We will never give in to terror." Park Superintendent Diane Dayson said visitors would be allowed into the statue by summer.
It never happened. Peg Zitko, spokeswoman for the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, says, "Some people are saying, 'What's taking so long?' "
The short answer is security; park rangers speak darkly of images on the Internet of the statue being crushed by a fist. And, in a report issued in September 2003, Interior Department investigators said that "icon" national parks were "woefully unprotected" against terror attacks.
Last November, the foundation announced plans to raise $5 million for safety improvements that would allow the pedestal to reopen. Although the amount is well within reach, no one will say exactly how the money will be spent.
Brian Feeney, the Park Service's New York spokesman, sounds like a mobster hauled before a congressional committee when asked about anything related to statue security. But "three years ago," he says, "I'd tell you anything." It's sad, he says: "I miss what we're losing. Everything is scrutinized. But maybe our kids will get used to it."
Briganti, president of the foundation, says the big issue is evacuation. There's only one way in and out of the pedestal.
The Park Service won't comment on its plans for the statue, but they could include new exits created by building two covered exterior staircases between the top of the pedestal and the ground. Details of the project and a rough timetable for reopening the pedestal are expected to be made public within two months.
The crown is another matter. Although American Express ads soliciting donations for the safety work imply that the entire statue will reopen as a result, officials said two months ago that visitors probably would not be allowed to the top. "We don't want to have people up in there out of our sight and out of our reach," says Freem, the park ranger.
Briganti says there might be a way to allow visitors to see inside the statue from the top of the pedestal without going to the crown. The Park Service says nothing has been decided.
High-profile target
The idea of climbing to the crown excites schoolchildren, but it terrifies security experts.
They describe Liberty pre-9/11 as a peerless terrorist target: a relatively fragile, world-famous symbol in the middle of New York Harbor, filled with hundreds of people on a narrow stairway. Their frightening scenarios: a killer runs amok on the staircase; a suicide pilot strikes before people can be evacuated; a vessel opens fire from the harbor; a chemical or biological weapon is detonated inside the statue, which is like a capped chimney.
But some lovers of the statue are not convinced. "It is worth the risk, as long as they're careful about who gets on the ferry," says Betsy Maestro, author of a children's book on Liberty. "If we can secure airplanes every day, why not that island?"
"The feds may be frightened," the Daily News editorialized last month, "but the public most certainly is not."
Darren Bruna isn't sure what to think. On Independence Weekend 1986, the statue reopened after a two-year restoration. American schoolchildren had raised $6 million, and 50 of them were chosen from a poetry-essay contest to be the first to re-enter the statue.
Bruna, then a seventh-grader from Hollenberg, Kan., had written:
"Quietly, patiently, lovingly
The statue stands
A symbol of our country
The Lady."
It wasn't Yeats, but it was enough to win him a trip to New York and a place in front of the line.
"I think everybody ought to be able to go up there and see the view," says the erstwhile poet, who grew up to be a carpenter. "It is pretty remarkable."
At 32, Bruna still has photos and newspaper clippings from 1986. He understands why the statue is closed and that there are reasons why the crown might never reopen. But he has two boys of his own, and he says that someday he wants to take them into the statue - all the way to the top.
02-03-04 13:48 EST
� Copyright 2004 USA TODAY
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Last edited by Theresa on Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:19 pm; edited 1 time in total
-------signature-------
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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Kyle Reese
Cadet Gunnery Sergeant
Joined: 21 Apr 2003
Posts: 5672
Location: The United States of America
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| Tue Feb 03, 2004 9:29 pm |
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If I could climb it, I wouldn't go to her head. No way. I'd jump onto her arm and climb up to the torch, stand on top, and wave to the people 
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IntrepidIsMe
Pimp Handed
Joined: 14 Jun 2002
Posts: 13057
Location: New York
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| Wed Feb 04, 2004 4:40 pm |
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My mother climbed it when she was younger, or so she says.
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Mulder
Rear Admiral
Joined: 27 Dec 2001
Posts: 2520
Location: Netherlands
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| Thu Feb 05, 2004 3:05 am |
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| Kyle Reese wrote: | | If I could climb it, I wouldn't go to her head. No way. I'd jump onto her arm and climb up to the torch, stand on top, and wave to the people |
And blow out the torch?  j/k
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Jeremy
J's Guy
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 7823
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
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| Sat Feb 07, 2004 8:46 am |
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You might get inot trouble if you did that.
I think that it will open again, but if the Terror Alert goes to red then they might close it. Or if they recieved information that it could be targeted. In a way it would be really bad, but then think: What would happen if a suicide bomber went into the base and blew him/her self up. The people would be trapped, and many others would be killed.
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