statue fred reason bartholdi. his first vision was to build the statue at the southern end of the sues canal and it would commemorate the opening of asia on to europe, the bringing of enlightenment to asia, that was his idea, and partly he had this idea because he, like many educated americans, and emma lazarus was one of them, studied the ancient world and -- and bartholdi had actualitily taken a trip up the nile and had seen the ancient collase of thebbes build 3,000 years ago, and he was impressed by those, and he wanted to build a classal stat you've his own, and he thought he should do what the ancients did. he should build it in egypt, hand that was his first idea, and it was only because the egyptian government ended up being bankrupt. they were in hawk to the british and the french and the british were actually able to use their position of being creditors to buy up the suez canal. that's the reason that they took control of it, and the egyptian ruler, a man named ismael, just didn't have the money to fina

bartholdi made that pale in comparison. he talked to a wide range of people and explore the countryside, and he wanted to understand what made americans tick, and he was surprised by what he saw. he had read that americans were individualistic. he actually saw us as collectivist. he saw the united states as a group of people who likes to form associations, who wanted to be with other people. he saw the french as the individualist and the americans as the more social people, and from that he concluded he was going to put up his colossal statue. it was going to have your mean something to people as a collective entity, and that is what made him realize the statue of liberty needed to say something to all americans, so he came up with the idea that what it would do is commemorate a hundredth anniversary of the declaration of independence, and this idea worked that he would build the statue in 1876, and it would stand for 100 years of american liberty, the longest period of liberty anyone had seen, and when he presented it in t

bartholdi understood. he did not think of the statue of liberty as welcoming immigrants, but he that came into the night states would have to almost touch the statue of liberty. you go through the narrows added channels every boat into a place where you have to come so close to the statute that you cannot miss it. why when you saw the statue, you could reach out and touch it. you thought the boat was going to tip over. everybody was crying. people are crying when they see the statue of liberty, and she becomes alive. they speak to her and she speaks to them and they speak to her. it is this amazing and emotional experience. you know you are here when you see the statue of liberty and you can reach out and touch it. >> even though she is such a fixed icon, it looks like she is always in motion, almost coming out of the harbor, through the mist. in some of these more recent times, she was a very powerful symbol during 9/11. how did americans come to imagine her in the face of 9/11? >> afterward, the statue o

. >> the image of includesus that artists like bartholdi had came from a lithograph, german lithograph of the 18th century of the colossus of roads, and it shows a gigantic male figure astride two slivers of land cut by a harbor. and this was the harbor at rhodes, and this 18th century lithograph was very different. archaeologists found out from the original statue the colossus of rhodes. it was a warrior image, male image, powerful giant presiding over a victorious country and that's not like the brazen giant of greek fame. that's what emma lazarus had in mind. we're not doing that. >> and she started out with a negative statement which isn't what we usually think of with poetry, like let's start criticizing something else. >> not like the brazen giant of greek fame with conquering limbs, conquering limbs astride from land to land. we're not going to do that. we're going to have a milder image. now the image is still going to be a mighty woman with a torch, but it's interesting that the transformation has been from a male warrior image to a female image. it's not a demure woman. it's

bartholdi made that pale in comparison. he talked to a wide range of people and explore the countryside, and he wanted to understand what made americans , and he was surprised by what he saw. the saw us as collectivist. he saw the united states as a group of people who likes to form associations, who wanted to be with other people. he saw the french as the individualist and the americans as the more social people, and from that he concluded he was going to put up his colossal statue. it was going to have your mean something to people as a collective entity, and that is what made him realize the statue of liberty needed to say something to all americans, so he came up with the idea that what it would do is commemorate a hundredth anniversary of the declaration of independence, and this idea worked that he would build the statue in 1876, and it would stand for 100 years of american liberty, along this --- the longest period of liberty yone had seen, and when he presented it in those terms that it was going to be the anniversa