Thank you France

Where do you get this view of lower Manhattan? I'll give you two hints...

Here's her right arm...

Here's her left arm...

Here's her nose...

You're right! Lady Liberty herself. Today Dominic and I climbed the 357 steps up into her crown and learn about this generous gift from the people of France.

While the artist Bartholdi worked with a man named Viollet-le-Duc to design her head and arm, he began collaborating with Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel in 1880. Eiffel opted not to use a completely rigid structure so that the statue could move with the winds of New York Harbor and as the metal expanded on hot summer days. His design was also an example of curtain wall construction where the exterior is not load bearing but supported by an interior framework. Does this framework look familiar to any Paris tower you've seen?

We climbed that spiral staircase in the center to get up here and peer out of her crown's windows...

It was a somber day in NYC today. Rather than comment on the emotions we felt and the stories we heard I'll leave you with a dedication to those fire fighters and police offers who lost their lives:

And an image of the building progress of one of the WTC buildings from the harbor: