Statue of Liberty in popular culture the statue that supports the most weight over a relatively small area. This arm weakness was most recently repaired in the mid-1980s. The torch that the statue holds was also replaced then, because the original torch had been irrevocably damaged by water and snow seeping in through the windows. The old torch now sits in the Statue of Liberty Museum. The stone at Liberty's feet has also needed repair in the past. Fifty years after the statue was first erected, in 1937, it was discovered that water was leaking in to the pedestal that the statue stands upon. A giant
Statue of Liberty the Eiffel factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret. The change in structural material from masonry to iron allowed Bartholdi to change his plans for the statue's assembly. He had originally expected to assemble the skin on-site as the masonry pier was built; instead he decided to build the statue in France and have it disassembled and transported to the United States for reassembly in place on Bedloe's Island. In a symbolic act, the first rivet placed into the skin, fixing a copper plate onto the statue's big toe, was driven by United States Ambassador to France Levi P.