Happy Presidents' Day!Here’s a surprise for an American exploring the Luxembourg Gardens. This familiar statue served as the model for Sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi before he made the real one given to the Americans in 1885. And next to it on the right (impossible to see without its summer leaves), is an American oak tree which was planted in 2000 as a dedication and memorial to the victims of 9/11. 
Bartholdi started the construction of our statue in 1875 with help on the metal structure from Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel). He completed it in 1884 and shipped it to the States in 350 pieces the next year. On 7/4/1889, the American community in Paris offered the French people a bronze replica of the statue (about a quarter of the scale of the original or
about 35 feet high). It sits on the Ile des Cygnes (Swans Island) in the Seine River, which is really just a small piece of cement sitting around the underside of a bridge.
The day I took the Metro to get as close to the statue as possible was freezing cold! I believe it is facing southeast as the Seine makes a turn past the Eiffel Tower (not far from avenue du President Kennedy by the Radio-France offices). So I think this means that it’s facing the US…?
Bartholdi started the construction of our statue in 1875 with help on the metal structure from Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel). He completed it in 1884 and shipped it to the States in 350 pieces the next year. On 7/4/1889, the American community in Paris offered the French people a bronze replica of the statue (about a quarter of the scale of the original or
about 35 feet high). It sits on the Ile des Cygnes (Swans Island) in the Seine River, which is really just a small piece of cement sitting around the underside of a bridge.The day I took the Metro to get as close to the statue as possible was freezing cold! I believe it is facing southeast as the Seine makes a turn past the Eiffel Tower (not far from avenue du President Kennedy by the Radio-France offices). So I think this means that it’s facing the US…?
There's also a model of the Statue of Liberty in the Arts et Metiers Musee's chapel but I never visited that museum (even though the apartment was very close to it).
