Statue design ripped off by Chinese manufacturers

From the Daily News:

There's something unseemly about a Statue of Liberty souvenir that says "Made in China."

Yet there they are by the thousands - pink, white and blue in Times Square gift shops.

Workers in Shanghai making just $197 a month churn them out by the truckload. No wonder China just passed Japan to become the world's second-largest economy, gaining on us fast.

Don't get me wrong. China makes cool souvenirs of New York City. Like the water tower bank, King Kong climbing the Empire State Building eraser and the skyline-in-a-book keychain complete with pop-up midtown and foldout Central Park.

I just wish they didn't all seem to be made in Guangzhou.

So does Ovidiu Colea. The Romanian immigrant, who did five years in a labor camp, says it's strange that a country with few freedoms mass-produces our most recognizable symbol.

"I find it very ironic," Colea says from his small Colbar Art factory near Calvary Cemetery in Blissville, Queens.

As workers finessed the folds on Lady Liberty's resin robes, added silver crowns and dipped her torch in gold elixir, Colea, a 71-year-old sculptor with hands like mitts, observed: "China makes so many freedom symbols, but their country is not free. Their people are not free. People here fought for liberty; they died for liberty."

Saving the historic vista

From Courier-Life:

Green-Wood Cemetery’s Roman Goddess of War is about to clash with her toughest foe to date: city bureaucracy.

Area preservationists are seeking to secure a historic, though often threatened, view corridor between the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor and the Minerva — a nine-foot-tall bronze statue that regally presides over the cemetery.

The cemetery is beginning a campaign to create a “197a plan,” a jargony name for something very basic: a document that would, at least in theory, force the city to consider the community’s wishes if a developer threatens the view plane.

The name “197a” that refers to a section of the City Charter that formalizes a community’s policy position.

“This is an important statement of city policy,” said Kenneth Fisher, the former councilman and attorney representing the cemetery. “It would force the city to go on the record with any deviation from that [stated] policy.”

The Statue of Liberty has stood in New York Harbor since the 1880s. When the statue of Minerva was erected in 1920 — to commemorate the crucial Revolutionary War Battle of Brooklyn — the goddess’s gaze was intentionally fixed upon Lady Libery.

But in 2008, that view corridor was threatened by a development at Seventh Avenue and 23rd Street. Public outcry helped persuade the developer to reconfigure his building to preserve the view.

Even before that threat, the cemetery had been calling for an official “scenic view” that would prevent out-of-scale development in a line from Minerva through Greenwood Heights and the South Slope to Red Hook, where undeveloped properties like Joe Sitt’s Revere Sugar site on Richards Street make statue-watchers nervous.

Early efforts failed when the city made it clear that it wasn’t interested in embarking on what would be a complex, unprecedented and time-consuming change that would affect an array of individual properties.

Supporters hope that the 197-a plan will give prospective developers pause if they were to consider constructing a building tall enough to breach the view plane.

But the 197-a plan is not legally binding and only serves as a guide for city agencies that might be required to review a prospective project.

Photo from Save the Vista

Statue of Liberty's crown to reopen

From NY1:

Starting July 4th, visitors to the Statue of Liberty will once again be allowed to visit her crown.

But to do so, they need to have won a ticket through a newly-created lottery.

It is the first time the statue's crown will be open since the September 11th attacks.

The lottery came about after officials expressed safety concerns about the narrow staircase used to climb to the top.

Groups have been limited to 30 people who are being allowed an hour-long visit.

7 military veterans will also take their citizenship oaths there tomorrow.