Statue of Liberty and about two percent of the exterior plates needed to be replaced. Although problems with the armature had been recognized as early as 1936, when cast iron replacements for some of the bars had been installed, much of the corrosion had been hidden by layers of paint applied over the years. In May 1982, President Ronald Reagan announced the formation of the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Centennial Commission, led by Chrysler Corporation chair Lee Iacocca, to raise the funds needed to complete the work. Through its fundraising arm, the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., the group raised more than
Replicas of the Statue of Liberty This statue was given in 1889 to France by U.S. citizens living in Paris to celebrate the French Revolution three years after the main statue in New York was inaugurated. In 1937, the statue was turned from looking east to looking west straight to the direction of the New York's statue. The statue is near the Grenelle Bridge on the Île aux Cygnes, a man-made island in the Seine (). It is high and weighs 14 tons. Inaugurated on July 4, 1889, it looks southwest, downriver along the Seine. Its tablet bears two dates: "IV JUILLET 1776" (July 4, 1776: