Castle Garden New York Showing Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty 1887 Size:24x18 rendered in the dignified manner

rendered in the dignified manner reserved for men whose fortunes shaped textile mills and library endowments alike

its movable keeper's dwelling and stacked range optics drawn with the precision of a man who knew this light had to be re-aimed as the channel wandered

his likeness preserved long after the guns went quiet

Every one of her four masts strains against the wind in a tableau that reads less like reportage and more like a boast set down in ink

when every state bank issued its own promises and only the engraver's line stood between solvency and forgery

Castle Garden New York Showing Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty 1887 Size:24x18 rendered in the dignified mannerCastle Garden New York Showing Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty 1887 the old immigrant depot at the Battery's tip framed against Bartholdi's copper colossus, barely a year on her pedestal, the harbor caught in the strange overlap of arrival and allegory. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National Archives, regional historical societies, and the lithographic publishers