The Statue of Liberty was very nearly Egyptian. Sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi first proposed his colossal robed figure, torch held aloft, as a monument at the entrance to the Suez Canal. When that fell through, a dinner-party conversation with French political thinker Édouard de Laboulaye redirected her to New York harbour instead.

She arrived ten years late and nearly ended up in Boston or Philadelphia, both of which offered to fund her pedestal if she'd relocate. In New York, no government official would pay. It was Joseph Pulitzer, a newspaper publisher and immigrant himself, who crowd-funded the shortfall, pledging to print the name of every donor in his New York World newspaper: poker clubs, saloon drinkers and a Brooklyn home for recovering alcoholics all chipped in. At her 1886 dedication, no women were permitted on the island. Suffragettes chartered a boat to protest the irony of a female Liberty in a state where women couldn't vote.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the statue's improbable origins, unpack the symbolism buried in her design, and connect her story to Ellis Island's twelve million arrivals.