symbol of hope and promise in America 's post - Civil War period . `` The arrival on Ellis Island is the fulfillment that you know something good is going to happen to you , '' said Belarksy , now a 91-year-old widow living in a Russian enclave of Brooklyn , New York . Her family became part of the more than 12 million immigrants processed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954 , according to the U.S. National Park Service . Adjacent to Ellis towers Lady Liberty , measuring more than 305 feet from base to torch . Originally , the statue was supposed to be an Egyptian peasant girl that would have stood at the entrance of Egypt 's then-new Suez Canal , but plans would evolve into the Roman goddess who would instead adorn New York Harbor . `` The sculptor , -LRB- Frederic -RRB- Bartholdi , was very clever , '' said Edward Berenson , professor of history and director of the Institute of French Studies at New York University . `` He put -LRB- the statue -RRB- where he did because it 's right at the narrows of New York Harbor , so he knew
New York -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- As snow fell across New York Harbor , Isabel Belarsky clutched her mother , Clara , aboard a passenger ship that puttered toward Ellis Island and wondered what their new lives would bring . The year was 1930 . About a week earlier , the 10-year-old girl from what is now called St. Petersburg , Russia , had embarked on a transatlantic journey with her Ukrainian parents from the French port city of Cherbourg , escaping what she described as Jewish persecution at the start of Joseph Stalin 's Soviet Union . On an island near Manhattan stood the copper colossus that would etch her first memories of the new world . `` It was a wonderful sight , '' she said of the Statue of Liberty , which marked its 125th anniversary Friday . The idea for the monument is thought to have been conceived at a 19th-century dinner party among French aristocrats , historians say , who sought to pay tribute to American liberty . And while the French gift is also widely believed to have at least in part catered to domestic politics , for many , it quickly became a