Liberty Island months in crates waiting for its pedestal to be finished, and was then reassembled in four months. On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was unveiled by President Grover Cleveland. The name Liberty Island was made official by Congress in 1956. On October 7, 2016, construction started on a new Statue of Liberty museum on Liberty Island. The new $70 million, museum will be able to accommodate all of the island's visitors when it opens in 2019, as opposed to the current museum, which only 20% of the island's visitors can visit. The original torch will be relocated here,
Liberty Island outmoded and obsolete, disused and its substantial stone walls were then used as the distinctive base for the Statue of Liberty given by the Third French Republic for the American 1876 centenary celebrations. It had become a part of the base for the Statue of Liberty after the island was first seen by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the statue's sculptor. The National Park Service (which had been created in 1916) took over operations of the island in two stages: in 1933, and the remainder in 1937. The military installation was completely removed by 1944. The statue, entitled "Liberty Enlightening the World",