Statue of Liberty of War; since 1933 it has been maintained by the National Park Service. Public access to the balcony around the torch has been barred for safety since 1916. According to the National Park Service, the idea for the Statue of Liberty was first proposed by Édouard René de Laboulaye, president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and a prominent and important political thinker of his time. The project is traced to a mid-1865 conversation between de Laboulaye, a staunch abolitionist, and Frédéric Bartholdi, a sculptor. In after-dinner conversation at his home near Versailles, Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in
Conservation-restoration of the Statue of Liberty the seventeenth of December in Washington D.C., titled "French Technical Report on Restoring the Statue of Liberty". The report, written with the assistance of a regional historical architect from the NPS, was an attempt to identify and address the apparent problems associated with the statue. In the report, the consultants took note of what they saw to be the most serious problem affecting the statue: that two predominant sections, the torch-bearing arm and the rest platform at the head level, had corroded significantly. The report also alluded to the corroded girders toward the top of the pedestal and the bottom