How tall is the Statue of Liberty?

Two heights: the copper figure and the whole monument

The Statue of Liberty is 92.99 m (305 ft 1 in) tall from the ground to the tip of her torch, according to the National Park Service, which manages Liberty Island. That is the figure used on this page and in our 3D comparisons. The NPS says it's about the height of a 22-story building.

Much of that height is not the statue at all. The copper figure, officially Liberty Enlightening the World, measures 46.05 m (151 ft 1 in) from the top of her base to the torch. The rest is Richard Morris Hunt's granite pedestal and the concrete foundation inside the walls of old Fort Wood. Confusion between these two numbers, 93 m and 46 m, explains most of the conflicting heights you'll find online.

Notice that the ground-to-pedestal height (46.94 m) and the statue height (46.05 m) are almost equal. Bartholdi's figure stands on a base about as tall as herself. Historical accounts say the pedestal was planned taller still, around 114 ft, but was cut to 89 ft when money ran short.

Body measurements: how big is Lady Liberty?

The NPS publishes a full set of body dimensions, and they help you picture the figure better than the overall height does. Her head alone, chin to cranium, is 5.26 m (17′3″), roughly the height of a giraffe. Her index finger is 2.44 m (8′0″), longer than most doorways are tall. The hand holding the torch is 5.00 m (16′5″) from wrist to fingertip.

A quick scaling exercise: from heel to top of head she is 33.86 m. Compared with an average American woman of 163.5 cm (see the average height data), Liberty is scaled up about 21 times. At that scale her 1.37 m nose would belong to a person with a roughly 6.6 cm nose, which is in the normal human range. Bartholdi kept realistic proportions even at colossal size.

What she is made of, and why that matters for height

The statue is a thin skin hung on a frame. The copper sheeting is just 3/32 of an inch (about 2.4 mm) thick, about two pennies stacked, according to the NPS. Workers hammered it into shape over wooden molds, a method called repoussé. In total the copper weighs about 176,000 lb (80 tonnes). The internal framework weighs about 440,000 lb, and the concrete foundation under the pedestal accounts for a huge 54 million lb.

The framework was engineered by Gustave Eiffel's firm, with Maurice Koechlin doing much of the structural design, a few years before work began on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. A central iron pylon carries a secondary frame, and flexible iron straps connect it to the copper. The straps let the skin expand, contract and move in the wind instead of cracking. The NPS says the statue can sway up to 3 inches in strong wind, and the torch up to 6 inches.

During the 1984–1986 restoration, Eiffel's original puddled-iron armature bars were replaced with stainless steel. Engineers also found that the head had been mounted about 2 ft off center and that the raised right arm had been attached poorly, so it swayed more than intended. Both problems were reinforced without changing the statue's height.

The color change

When she was dedicated in 1886, Liberty was the reddish brown of a new penny. Air and salt spray in the harbor slowly oxidized the copper, and the NPS says the green patina took about 30 years to form completely. The patina is a protective layer, not damage.

From France to New York Harbor: a timeline

The French paid for the statue and the Americans for the pedestal, and the American side struggled to raise its share. The Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation credits Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper campaign with closing the gap. The paper printed the name of every donor, however small the gift. The crates sat in storage until the pedestal was ready, and then the statue was reassembled on what was then called Bedloe's Island.

The torch: the highest point nobody can visit

The flame at the top of the 92.99 m figure is not the original. In 1916 the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who later carved Mount Rushmore, cut windows into the copper flame so it could be lit from inside. The changes let in water for decades. During the 1980s restoration the torch was replaced with a copy of Bartholdi's original design, its flame covered in 24-karat gold leaf. It reflects sunlight by day and is floodlit at night. The 1886 torch is now on display in the Statue of Liberty Museum on the island.

The torch balcony itself has been closed since July 30, 1916. That night German saboteurs blew up a munitions depot on the Black Tom pier in Jersey City, and the explosion damaged the raised arm. The NPS notes the torch is reached only by a narrow 40-foot ladder inside the arm. That's why the official top of the statue is a place no visitor reaches.

The base beneath the pedestal: Fort Wood and the foundation

The bottom third of the 92.99 m total is easy to miss. Before the statue arrived, Bedloe's Island already held Fort Wood, an early-nineteenth-century army fort whose walls form an eleven-point star. Engineers poured the statue's foundation inside the star, and Hunt's pedestal rises from the middle of it. Wikipedia's dimensions table, based on NPS figures, gives the concrete foundation as about 65 ft (19.81 m) and the granite pedestal as 89 ft (27.13 m). Together they make up the 154 ft from ground to the top of the pedestal.

That stacking explains several details of the statue:

• Why the torch is so high above the water. Without the fort and pedestal, a 46 m figure on a low island would be lost against the Manhattan skyline. On its 47 m base it rises above ships entering the Upper Bay.
• Why the foundation is so heavy. The NPS gives the concrete foundation as 54 million lb, about 300 times the weight of the copper skin. That mass anchors a hollow, wind-loaded figure that would otherwise act like a sail.
• Why the statue is "grounded" through its pedestal. The NPS notes that lightning strikes travel down through the massive concrete and granite base, which acts as the statue's earth connection.

Liberty at human scale

The numbers become easier to grasp next to people. At 33.86 m from heel to head, the copper figure is about 15 times the height of a 229 cm basketball center like Yao Ming. Her index finger alone, at 2.44 m, is taller than any NBA player on record. The 5 m hand holding the torch is about the length of a family car. A visitor standing on the pedestal observation level comes up to roughly the height of her sandal straps, which is why photos taken there show mostly copper folds and very little statue.

Liberty compared with other landmarks and statues

At 92.99 m to the torch, the Statue of Liberty is tall for a statue on a pedestal but modest next to modern buildings. Here's how she compares with other structures in our landmark data. All heights can be checked side by side in the 3D comparison tool.

The figure alone is not the tallest statue in the world, and has not been for a long time. Several modern statues are far taller, including India's 182 m Statue of Unity, which is about four times the height of Liberty's copper figure. Liberty's fame comes from her setting and symbolism, not from records.

Visiting the pedestal and the crown

Access is controlled by ticket type, all sold through the official ferry operator.

• Grounds only: walk Liberty Island and visit the museum.
• Pedestal: reach the observation level at the top of the pedestal, about 47 m above the ground and right under Liberty's sandals. An elevator serves the pedestal.
• Crown: climb inside the statue to the 25 windows of the crown, a few meters below the top of her head. The NPS says crown tickets usually sell out three to four months ahead and that visitors must be able to climb about 10 floors of stairs, including a narrow spiral staircase.

The crown windows look out over the harbor toward lower Manhattan. Seven rays rise from the crown above them. They are often said to stand for the seven continents and seas, though the foundation describes them more generally as sun rays. Inside the statue it can be hot and cramped in summer, and the staircase is not suited to anyone uneasy with tight spaces.

Why the height still matters

When the statue was dedicated, her torch rose above almost everything in New York Harbor, and for immigrants arriving by ship she was the first sight of the city. Manhattan's skyline has long since passed her. One World Trade Center across the water is nearly six times her total height. But the 305-foot figure still dominates the harbor. For more on how she ranks among the world's monuments, browse our landmarks hub.