Notes:
(1) Our Nation’s First Electric-powered Lighthouse was completed Oct 25, 1886, Dedicated Oct 28, 1886 and First Lit Nov 22, 1886. The Statue was built inside the courtyard of the 11-pointed star-shaped walls of Fort Wood and was orginally named “Liberty Enlightening the World.”

      French sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi intended the Statue of Liberty to serve as a lighthouse with kerosene lamps burning in the crown possibly to imitate the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria. The United States also expected Liberty would be a Lighthouse to enlighten the entrance to the New World!

      E.P. Hampson, American Electric Manufacturing Company, donated and installed ten 8,000-candlepower lamps (a $7,000 contribution) in the crown. One week before Dedication of Liberty, the Lighthouse Board authorized an Army Engineer to review and approve the Lighting plans. He did not approve the plans because the Light shining upwards would reflect off the clouds and confuse distant navigators.  He believed the Light should be directed horizontally from the torch and he ordered the piercing of two rows of bull’s-eyes covered with thick glass inserts inside the torch’s flame and the Lamps were moved from the Crown.  Both Bartholdi and the Electrical Company protested claiming the Horizontal Light would neither light the water or the statue. When the Light was lit, only a barley visible light was emitted from the torch.
Bartholdi remarked that the light looked like a glowworm.

      The electric plant on the island, designed and built by James Wood, American Electric Manufacturing Company, generated the Lights’ power. The federal Lighthouse Board administered the Statue of Liberty from November 1886 to November 1901. The jurisdiction of the Lighthouse was transferred to The War Department.

      In 1903, two lines from Emma Lazarus 1883 sonnet, “Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” was engraved on a plaque and placed in the pedestal as a memorial.  The engraved poem, including all fourteen lines, was relocated over the Statue of Liberty's main entrance in 1945.

      The torch measures 29 feet from the flame tip to the bottom of the handle and is accessible via a 42-foot service ladder inside the arm. The torch ascent was open to the public from 1886 to 1916.  The area for the Flame Lamps measures 12 feet high from the base and 7 feet across the base. The Lamps were refitted in 1916, 1931, and 1945.

      The 1945 Lamps were mercury vapor in combination with incandescent bulbs to resemble the flickering tints of an actual flame glowing with brilliant blue-white and gold colors.   The refitted Light rekindled Liberty’s Torch as a Victory Beacon at the end of World War II.

      A four-year repair and restoration project was completed with a four-day festival centering on July 4, 1986, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty.   The old Torch was removed and is on display near the base. The new torch duplicated Bartholdi’s original design and construction methods and has no windows.
The flame is covered with gold leaf and glows with reflected light.

(2) From the Base of the Statue to the torch. The pedestal is 154 feet high.

(3) The Head and assistant keepers with their families lived in the three-story brick hospital on the island.

(4) Liberty Island was formerly Bedloe’s Island until Aug. 3, 1956, when President Eisenhower approved a resolution of Congress changing the name to Liberty Island.

(5) Ferry Service: Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, N.Y. and Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J.