Original Statue of Liberty torch moved to museum

NEW YORK — It took two years of worry and strategizing, but the day of truth finally arrived for Doug Phelps. As part of a $100 million upgrade, his construction crew moved the original Statue of Liberty torch from its resting place inside the statue’s pedestal, where it’s been on display since it was replaced in the 1980s, and relocated it to a new museum nearby.

Early Thursday morning, a crew of 15 moved the 3,600-pound torch, made of copper and amber glass, from one side of Liberty Island to the other. The obvious question: How were they going to do it?

“Very carefully,” Phelps said.

Some clever engineering was required. As designed by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi and delivered to America in 1885, the torch is more than 16 feet tall and 12 feet across. The doors of the museum are not quite 8 feet high. The torch would need to be disassembled.

In 1885, the torch was transported in crates by ship from France to what was then a military base known as Bedloe’s Island. It was made of solid copper sheets, and about a month before the public dedication of the statue in 1886, the U.S. Lighthouse Board cut two rows of staggered holes for electric lights inside the flame. But the light was scarcely visible from the harbor, and the results were disappointing.

In the early days, the military opened the torch up to VIP visitors, who would climb a 40-foot ladder into it and gaze onto New York Harbor from its ornate balcony. “But you had to be pretty special to do that,” said John Piltzecker, superintendent of Liberty National Monument.

In 1916, the flame was redesigned by Gutzon Borglum, the creator of Mount Rushmore, to accommodate windows. They were beautiful, but they weren’t done properly, and every time it rained, the torch leaked.

Then in July of that year, the Black Tom explosion — an extraordinary but mostly forgotten disaster — rocked the harbor when saboteurs destroyed a munitions plant across the water in Jersey City, New Jersey. The explosion destroyed the depot, breaking windows as far away as Manhattan and sending debris flying into the statue.

The Statue of Liberty remained standing, but the torch was weakened, which gave the military an excuse to put a stop to the visits. It was closed and never reopened, except to maintenance workers.

“I can’t tell you how many people have said to me, ‘I’ve been up to the torch,’” said Stephen A. Briganti, president and chief executive of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. “I say, ‘No, you probably haven’t, unless you’re really old.’” Apparently people confuse it with trips they’ve taken to the crown, which is still open today. Or maybe they’ve seen Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 film “Saboteur” one too many times, which features a dramatic but fictional standoff in the torch.

Even without visitors, the torch fell into disrepair over the years, and in the 1980s, the Liberty Island Foundation was formed to raise money to restore the statue and replace the torch for its centennial celebration. The island was closed, the statue surrounded by the largest scaffolding ever constructed up until that point and the torch gently lowered by crane.