Statue of Liberty Congress officially renamed Bedloe's Island as Liberty Island, a change advocated by Bartholdi generations earlier. The act also mentioned the efforts to found an American Museum of Immigration on the island, which backers took as federal approval of the project, though the government was slow to grant funds for it. Nearby Ellis Island was made part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument by proclamation of President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. In 1972, the immigration museum, in the statue's base, was finally opened in a ceremony led by President Richard Nixon. The museum's backers never provided it with an endowment
The American Volunteer (statue) based on the Antietam model. Batterson allowed O. Langworthy & Company to photograph the colossal statue at the Rhode Island Granite Works prior to its departure by ship for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This may have been intended to generate publicity before its formal debut at the Centennial Exposition in May 1876. The statue probably arrived at the Centennial fairgrounds by railroad from the Schuylkill River docks, and in two pieces. The Pennsylvania Railroad had built numerous stub lines, first to deliver construction materials for the Exposition buildings, then to deliver their exhibits. The Main Exhibition Building was the largest building in