New York [antikvár]

Part of the decoration in the lobby of the Empire State Building in New York City consists of illustrations of the Seven Wonders of the World at the time of Alexander the Great. When the building was finished in 1931 it was widely hailed as the eighth wonder of the world, but students of antiquity knew that the natural successor to the original seven had already been a part of the New York scene since 1886. And of the many dreams that are the fabric of New York, nothing is more symbolic of them than the statue that stands in the harbor, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi's Liberty Enlightening the World.One of the ancient Wonders, the Colossus of Rhodes, also overlooked one of the world's great harbors and was placed there as a symbol of the spirit and creativity of a nation. It was also remembered for centuries as the biggest and best of the great colossal statues. But it was a full fifty feet shorter than the lady in New York harbor. Even Nero's spectacular monument to himself in Rome was thirty feet shorter. The Statue of Liberty, from the tip of her toe to the top of her torch, is 151 feet, one inch high. Along with the pedestal, the whole monument rises to a height of 305 feet, six inches.Since October 28, 1886 when President Grover Cleveland officially accepted this gift of the people of France, the statue has consistently been among New York's top five tourist attractions and, except for the Brooklyn Bridge, which predates it by five years and three months, it is the oldest landmark synonymous with the city itself.But the Statue of Liberty is more than a symbol of New York City. It is a landmark of the American dream. And it stands less than a half mile away from the second greatest landmark of the same dream, Ellis Island.The immigrant station at Ellis Island was formally opened on January 1, 1892 when a transfer boat carrying 148 steerage passengers from the S.S. Nevada pulled in to its new pier. Annie Moore, a fifteen year-old girl from Ireland was first to set foot on the island as an immigrant. Before it was closed as a reception center in 1932, more than sixteen million souls had followed in her footsteps.In its final year the Ellis Island facility processed 21,500 immigrants. In its peak year, 1907,1,285,349 were admitted.During World War II and up until its final closing in 1954, Ellis became a detention and deportation center and some German