LibertyThe Statue of Liberty one of Americas most important symbols was almost never built: Initially, France created the statue and shipped it to New York as a gift But in 1885, Lady Liberty was sitting broken into 214 crates in a warehouse in New York. They almost had to ship it back to France because they didnt have the funds to build the pedestal for it. But Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant, was devastated at the thought of that: Hed come to the U.