A Crowning Experience

When I was much younger, I had the opportunity to go to the Statue of Liberty and walk up the spiral staircase to the crown. It was well before the 1986 centennial celebrating the completion of the statue and all the rehabilitation work, but the joy of being able to look out of this most recognizable symbol of the US was there every step of the way.

Since 9/11, the crown has been closed to visitors because of concerns about a terrorist attack and the ability to safely evacuate those in the crown. Right now, you can only reach the top of the pedestal and look up into the statue, but you cannot climb to the crown.

Rep. Anthony Weiner is pushing legislation to change this. He's added an amendment to a funding bill to get the National Park Service to reconsider the closure.

The House of Representatives Tuesday prodded parks officials to reopen the crown of the Statue of Liberty to the public.


Rep. Anthony Weiner, (D-N.Y.), for the second year in a row added an amendment to a spending bill giving the National Park Service $1 million to study how to safely reopen the staircase to the statue's crown -- something that has been prohibited since the 2001 terror attacks.

"I'm not going to stop pushing on it and I think it's reasonable to expect that sooner or later they're going to have to answer," he said.

I'm all for reopening the crown, so long as the appropriate security measures are in place. It might mean reworking the interior spaces to permit new staircases to wind its way through the armatures that actually carry the weight of the statue (the current staircase actually carries much of the statue's weight and was designed by Gustaf Eiffel).