{"id":8490,"date":"2015-02-25T09:12:38","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T14:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=8490"},"modified":"2015-02-26T09:43:06","modified_gmt":"2015-02-26T14:43:06","slug":"liberty-unveiled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2015\/02\/liberty-unveiled\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberty Unveiled"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Liberty<\/a>
Liberty Statue, South Penn Square, April 16, 1918. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Little \u201cblue-eyed, pink-cheeked\u201d Nona Martin, the five-year-old from Chestnut Hill, stood motionless, \u201cawed by the numberless masses that stretched away before her vision down Broad Street, as far as the eye could see.\u201d By her side, on the platform, was her grandfather, William G. McAdoo<\/a>, the \u201ctall, gaunt, commanding\u201d Treasury Secretary. Behind them loomed the giant statue, draped in white.<\/p>\n

The parade had started as the the clocks struck noon. Twelve hundred schoolgirls “dressed as Goddesses of Liberty,\u201d escorted by the Police Band, marched northward from Broad and Jackson Streets. Each held in her uplifted hands torches of Liberty and the flags of France, England, Belgium, Italy, Canada, Japan, Poland, and, of course, the United States. Behind the \u201cprocession of the goddesses\u201d marched 5,000 marines and sailors. The pageant was great; the crowd greater; the music spectacular.<\/p>\n

Bands played \u201cOver There<\/a>.\u201d Then Clarence Whitehill<\/a>, baritone of the Metropolitan Opera Company, stepped forward. “A hush fell over the multitude. His voice rang out the first words of the hallowed \u2018Battle Hymn of the Republic,\u2019” (recently recorded<\/a> by another baritone, Reinald Werrenrath, at Victor in Camden.) As Whitehill’s voice echoed over the silent crowd, “it was as though an electric current had been sent through the solid masses of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the plan, at the conclusion of the singing, at the moment the words \u201cSweet land of liberty\u2026 wafted to the crisp Spring air from many thousands of throats,\u201d McAdoo would pull the cord allowing \u201cthe veil to fall from the Statue of Liberty.\u201d He then would announce the start of the Third Liberty Loan Campaign<\/a> to finance The Great War.<\/p>\n

But McAdoo had another idea. As \u201cthe last strains of patriotic song still were echoing down Broad street, over the heads of thousands upon thousands of men, women and children, between the walled land made by skyscraper office buildings,\u201d he handed the cord, \u201cthe other end of which ran to the top of the white drapery\u201d to his granddaughter.<\/p>\n

The crowd fell silent in anticipation as the time had come to unveil Philadelphia’s plaster Statue of Liberty, a 29-foot replica of Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Auguste Bartholdi’s 151-foot monument<\/a> in New York Harbor.<\/p>\n

This Liberty-lookalike, mounted on a 22-foot base designed by architect John T. Windrim, had been the work of sculptor Max Voight, himself once an arrival from Germany among the \u201chuddled masses yearning to breathe free.\u201d Voight\u2019s international, hand-picked team of sculptors included an Italian, a Frenchman and a Russian: Salvatore Morani, Armand Maeme and Nathan Adelman. Their work on the statue had been followed in the newspapers and documented \u201cby moving picture films,\u201d as was increasingly the custom<\/a>. Towering, 51-feet above Broad Street, Liberty\u2019s flaming torch lit up Philadelphia\u2019s nights and served as beacon, booth and site of symbolic gesture.<\/p>\n

\"Unveiling<\/a>
Unveiling the Statue of Liberty at start of Third Liberty Loan Drive, April 6, 1918. William H. Rau, photographer. (The Library Company of Philadelphia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cEach subscriber will be entitled to ascend the stairway to the foot of the statue and drive into the pedestal a large headed tack bearing his initials. This will transform the pedestal gradually from a wooden to a metal surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the gathered crowd stood in silence that April afternoon, Nona Martin “seemed for a moment lost as to her exact part of the affair. Her famous grandfather leaned over, spoke a word or two, and the child responded. \u00a0She gave a sudden, vigorous tug at the rope, while the draperies opened and fell, and Liberty\u2014the personification of that for which America and most of the civilized world is now waging\u2014stood revealed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the white sheeting fluttered to the base of the statue, the massed band struck up \u2018America.\u2019 \u2026 No less than 100,000 men, women and children joined in lifting the air as though in message to the Nation\u201d that Philadelphians would soon part with another $136 million to fund a bloody war “in civilization\u2019s and humanity\u2019s cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0(Sources from The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/i>: \u201cCopy of Famous Liberty Statue Rising in Phila.,\u201dFebruary 10, 1918; \u201cM\u2019Adoo To Open Loan Drive Here; To Unveil Statue,\u201d March 31, 1918; \u201cHuge Crowd Electrified With Patriotic Fervor at Statue\u2019s Unveiling,\u201d April 7, 1918.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little \u201cblue-eyed, pink-cheeked\u201d Nona Martin, the five-year-old from Chestnut Hill, stood motionless, \u201cawed by the numberless masses that stretched away before her vision down Broad Street, as far as the eye could see.\u201d By her side, on the platform, was her grandfather, William G. McAdoo, the \u201ctall, gaunt, commanding\u201d Treasury Secretary. Behind them loomed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}