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Why the Statue of Liberty is green (and why she was almost painted)

The Statue of Liberty was the colour of a new penny, and in 1906 the US government planned to paint her.

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The real story

Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed the statue and Gustave Eiffel engineered the iron frame inside. Her skin is copper only about 2.4 millimetres thick, roughly two pennies stacked, hammered into shape by hand. She crossed the Atlantic in hundreds of pieces packed in crates, was reassembled on Bedloe's Island, and was dedicated in October 1886.

Rain and salt air slowly oxidised the copper, and by around 1906 she was green all over. Congress set aside money to paint her, and the plan caused an outcry in the newspapers: experts pointed out that the patina was a protective layer, not damage. Only the inside was painted. The green coat still shields the copper underneath today.

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The facts we checked

  • The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France, dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886
  • Its thin copper skin was shiny brown, like a penny; over a few decades the air turned it green (a protective patina)
  • In 1906 Congress set aside money to paint it; after a public outcry in the newspapers, only the inside was painted and it stayed green

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

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