The Statue of Liberty was mainly created by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, with its internal iron framework engineered by Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, the same engineer behind the Eiffel Tower.

Who “built” the Statue of Liberty?

You can think of the statue as a team project, not the work of just one person:

  • Concept and design: Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a French sculptor, designed the statue’s overall look and symbolic form (the robed woman, crown, torch, and tablet). He supervised its construction in France between the mid-1870s and early 1880s.
  • Internal structure: Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel (often just called Gustave Eiffel) designed and built the metal framework inside the statue, which allows the thin copper “skin” to stand tall and flex safely in the wind.
  • Earlier structural work: Architect-engineer Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was initially involved in structural ideas before Eiffel’s system became the key internal support design.
  • Pedestal in the U.S.: The pedestal the statue stands on was designed by American architect Richard Morris Hunt and built on what is now Liberty Island (formerly Bedloe’s Island) in New York Harbor.
  • Craftsmen and laborers: Teams of French artisans hammered about 31 tons of copper sheets into shape and assembled them over the internal framework; American workers later reassembled the statue on its pedestal after it was shipped in pieces to New York.

In short, when people ask “who built the Statue of Liberty,” the most accurate answer is: Bartholdi designed and led the creation of the statue, Eiffel engineered its internal structure, and large teams of workers in France and the United States physically built and assembled it.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.