Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi 1871, not finishing the massive sandstone statue until 1880. In 1871, he made his first trip to the United States, where he pitched the idea of a massive statue gifted from the French to the Americans in honor of the centennial of American independence. The idea, which had first been broached to him in 1865 by his friend Édouard René de Laboulaye, resulted in the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. After years of work and fundraising, the statue was inaugurated in 1886. During this period, Bartholdi also sculpted a number of monuments for American cities, such as a
Bartholdi Fountain repaired deterioration to the metals inside and out, and also provided modern pumps and motors, a new water treatment and filtration system, and a zinc coating to preserve the original cast-iron of the fountain. The fountain was returned to Bartholdi Park in spring 2011. The fountain is composed of a series of basins, supported by sculptures of classical figures. The cast iron is coated with bronze, stands thirty feet high, and weighs thirty thousand pounds. It stands in the center of a large circular marble pool. Three figures of women, standing on a triangle pedestal with an ornamental design of