Lady Liberty

I was looking for a decent image of the Statue of Liberty to modify for my own purposes (as so many have already done) when I stumbled onto a wonderful Library of Congress page with some decently high resolution TIFF's from the very early days. I also found my way to this bit of liberty impairing legal gobblygook (it seems that there are always too darned many lawyers).

Leica Geosystems was recently part of an effort (along with Texas Tech) to create a 3D map of the statue, which could be used to create digital images and CAD files (available to the public, one would hope). See this document for more information. I also found an interesting, all in one document (PDF) covering the history of the Lady. Of particular interest to me...

The best vantage point for viewing the Statue is from a ship in the harbor moving toward the port of New York. The island vantage point is too close; the back is not very exciting. The Battery Park view is too far away. Indeed, it is a colossus designed to be viewed from a ship’s deck. Although the Statue does not really face Europe, it seems to — one reason the site was selected by Bartholdi.

I had to go look at this, because I've always thought of the statue as facing the Mediterranean area (east by southeast, more or less). Uh, not quite. Seeing it from behind on the Jersey side while driving like a maniac on the Parkway (or Turnpike), or even from the train only yields a general idea on direction. From several maps, it's obvious that the monument faces just about completely southeast. The really strange thing is that I've only seen the statue closely from a ship or boat (the last time being during the summer of 1976, a good time to be in the area). So the century old idea seems to work. As many times as I saw it from the water, I wasn't piloting nor paying strict attention to our orientation. It just feels like it's pointing toward open ocean as you approach it (even if you know that you've rounded a bend).

Anyway... if you've never seen it from the water, you really should. I think there are boat tours which go out and more or less circle the statue; better ones might run up and down both sides of Manhattan (Hudson and East River views) and run as far south as the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (an impressive sight all by itself, especially at night).

The only view (that I'd ever experienced) which once contested that seen from the water (if only to put the monument in perspective) was from the bar area at Windows on the World (south end of the 107^th floor of the North Tower). I'll save some more about WOW for another day.