Reading 3 of 6 free1776 Club · all 6 storiesWednesday, October 28
From the desk
Start with 1886: a copper woman nearly 150 feet tall, a decade late from France, finally lit before a few thousand people who sat through rain and fog while President Cleveland formally accepted her on Bedloe's Island. Worth a longer look is 1962, when Khrushchev's public pledge to pull missiles from Cuba ended thirteen days of nuclear brinkmanship, one day after a U-2 pilot died over the island, and years before anyone learned about the secret Jupiter trade behind it. The Gateway Arch's two legs finally met that same date in 1965, proof the day favors things finally finishing.
— The Patriot Compass desk
1886Featured · This day in history
Rain and fog over the harbor; Cleveland unveils Liberty before 2,000 shivering guests
For a decade, France had been building a gift it had not yet delivered: a copper woman nearly 150 feet tall, meant to mark a hundred years of American independence. On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland stood on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor and formally accepted the Statue of Liberty from France, unveiling it before roughly 2,000 to 2,500 people who sat through rain and fog to watch. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French developer of the Suez Canal, spoke, gun salutes fired, and the statue's torch was lit for the first time. Manhattan had already seen a procession and a 300-boat water parade earlier that day.
Bedloe's Island (now Liberty Island), New York HarborStory page →
The American Throughline
Cleveland's acceptance speech called the statue a symbol of "enduring friendship" and shared principles, framing a French engineering project as an American monument on sight. Within decades, Liberty became the first sight millions of immigrants had of New York Harbor, a meaning far beyond the Franco-American alliance Laboulaye had originally intended.
Did you know
QWho first proposed building the Statue of Liberty, and why?
Édouard de Laboulaye, a French historian and abolitionist, floated the idea around 1865, years before Bartholdi ever sketched a design. Laboulaye wanted to honor the American centennial of 1776 and also to needle his own government, using the gift as a quiet jab at Napoleon III's regime by praising American liberty and self-rule. He recruited Bartholdi to turn the idea into a sculpture, but the project traces back to a historian's political statement, not an artist's vision. Laboulaye died in 1883, three years before the statue he imagined ever stood in New York Harbor.
QWhat does the broken chain at Lady Liberty's feet actually represent?
Beneath the robes and largely invisible from the harbor, Bartholdi placed a broken shackle and chain at the statue's feet, a direct reference to the abolition of slavery. The symbol sits apart from the torch and tablet that dominate the statue's public image, tucked where ships passing below would never see it. Bartholdi folded this detail into a monument officially framed around Franco-American friendship and the 1776 centennial, giving the statue a second meaning most visitors on dedication day never noticed. It remains one of the least photographed parts of the entire structure.
QWhat exact date is carved into the tablet Liberty holds in her left arm?
The tablet reads "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" in Roman numerals, spelling out July 4, 1776, the date of the Declaration of Independence rather than the statue's own 1886 dedication. Bartholdi designed the tablet to look like a legal document, complete with a hinged, book-like shape, and sized it roughly 23 feet long. Visitors expecting a plaque honoring the statue's construction or France's gift instead find a date a full decade older than the ceremony itself, anchoring the monument to the nation's founding rather than to the year it actually opened.
The Daily Record · free by email
Tomorrow's edition in your inbox — one story, one quote, the flag.
1965innovation
Crews set the last piece, and the Gateway Arch finally closes at 630 feet
For two years, St. Louis had watched two curved steel legs rise from the Mississippi riverfront without touching. On October 28, 1965, a crane lowered the final nine-ton triangular section into the gap at the top, and the two sides met. About 10,000 people gathered along the river to watch the topping-out, completing Eero Saarinen's 630-foot catenary arch after seven years of planning and building. The completed structure stood as the world's tallest arch.
Saarinen built the Arch to mark St. Louis as the literal gateway to westward expansion, and dedicated it to "the American people" rather than any single leader or battle. It gave the country a monument to westward expansion itself, not a war or a man, at a site chosen because St. Louis itself was founded there in 1764.
Did you know
QHow much did it cost to build the Arch, in today's money?
The Arch cost $13 million to build, which works out to roughly $98.4 million in 2024 dollars. That sum covered everything from the structural steel to the stainless-steel cladding that gives the monument its mirror-bright finish. For a single standalone monument with no practical function beyond observation decks and a museum underneath, it was an unusually expensive undertaking for a monument with no practical function beyond observation decks and a museum.
QWhat does Saarinen's own description of the Arch leave out?
Saarinen described the Arch as symbolizing "the gateway to the West, the national expansion, and whatnot," a notably offhand phrase for an architect discussing his signature work. He never lived to hear the shape called the tallest arch in the world or watch it become shorthand for St. Louis on postcards and license plates. The "and whatnot" suggests a man who saw the form as self-evident and didn't feel the need to oversell it.
QHow tall is the Arch compared to other American landmarks?
At 630 feet, the Gateway Arch is taller than the Washington Monument, which stands just over 555 feet. By some measurements, it is the tallest human-made monument in the Western Hemisphere. Its height of 630 feet is also exactly equal to its width at the base, a widely cited design detail of Saarinen's final structure.
1962general
Khrushchev agreed to pull the missiles out of Cuba
For thirteen days, American cities sat inside range of Soviet nuclear missiles ninety miles from Florida. On October 28, 1962, Premier Nikita Khrushchev publicly agreed to dismantle and remove them from Cuba. It was his answer to President Kennedy's quarantine, and it ended the standoff that had begun on October 14, when U-2 flights spotted the sites under construction. The announcement came one day after Soviet forces shot down an American U-2 over Cuba, killing Major Rudolf Anderson Jr. Kennedy got the public pledge he needed, but the Jupiter missile trade that made it possible stayed secret for years.
Kennedy publicly pledged not to invade Cuba and privately agreed to pull American Jupiter missiles from Turkey, a trade kept secret from the public for decades. The crisis also produced the Moscow–Washington hotline, built as a direct teletype link between Washington and Moscow.
$17.76 your first year · then $39.99/yr · cancel anytime
Quote of the day
“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.”
