Replicas of the Statue of Liberty and set it on fire. The vandals also cracked the pedestal of the plaque. The mayor of Bordeaux, former prime minister Alain Juppé, condemned the attack. A replica of the Statue of Liberty in Colmar, the city of Bartholdi's birth, was dedicated on July 4, 2004, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his death. It stands at the north entrance of the city. The Bartholdi Museum in Colmar contains numerous models of various sizes made by Bartholdi during the process of designing the statue. Frédéric Bartholdi donated a copy of the Statue of Liberty to the town square of Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer.
Statue of Liberty the decade. The Liberty statue project was not the only such undertaking that had difficulty raising money: construction of the obelisk later known as the Washington Monument sometimes stalled for years; it would ultimately take over three-and-a-half decades to complete. There was criticism both of Bartholdi's statue and of the fact that the gift required Americans to foot the bill for the pedestal. In the years following the Civil War, most Americans preferred realistic artworks depicting heroes and events from the nation's history, rather than allegorical works like the Liberty statue. There was also a feeling that Americans should design