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
Replicas of the Statue of Liberty a unique "sitting" Statue of Liberty in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. It is a sculpture on a dome of the house (15, Freedom Avenue) built by architect Yuriy Zakharevych and decorated by sculptor Leandro Marconi in 1874–91. A , 9,200 kg (9.2 tons) replica stood atop the Liberty Shoe factory in Leicester, England, until 2002 when the building was demolished. The statue was put into storage while the building was replaced. The statue, which dates back to the 1920s, was initially going to be put back on the replacement building, but was too heavy, so in December 2008 following