Liberty’s return: New York’s enduring monument to freedom has her comeback

While her birthday is Oct. 28 — for her autumn 1886 dedication — July 4 has always been the true day to celebrate the Statue of Liberty. She even has “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI” inscribed on the tablet in her left hand (recall your Roman numerals from grade school). And this Independence Day she, like the rest of us, is coming out of COVID.

A year ago on America’s birthday, Lady Liberty, like just every New Yorker with the exception of the essential workers we all rightly laud, was hunkered down. Liberty and Ellis islands had been closed since March, and images of her famous visage wore a mask. A year later, posters sport a vaccine Band-Aid on her upstretched left arm.

Sisters in Liberty. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

Both islands reopened last summer, but only since Thursday has her pedestal welcomed visitors again. Just her crown has yet to resume tours, which the National Park Service must figure out a safe way to do soon.

One Ellis visitor Thursday was Philippe Étienne, the French ambassador to the United States, who was there accompanying Liberty’s little sister, a 9-foot bronze replica that has long stood in Paris and was just sent from France. She’ll be on Ellis for a few days before heading to Washington for Bastille Day and will spend the next decade at the ambassador’s residence. But the big girl is staying in the big city.

Non-diplomatic visitation levels for the national monument are running at about 40% of pre-COVID numbers, with weekends reaching almost 50%. Ticket sales are 80% by advance booking, which cuts down on lines and lessens the chance that tourists will be played for suckers by the notorious illegal ticket hawkers who, before COVID, used to swarm the Battery plying rides for boat rides that don’t even stop at Liberty Island.

Ready for her visitors. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

Thankfully, the hawkers have not reappeared. These pests, always conning and sometimes threatening, tourists and New Yorkers, first showed up after New York’s last calamity, Superstorm Sandy. Hopefully they’re now out to permanent pasture.