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Posts: 37198Timestamp: Thu Jul 17, 08 8:37 PM
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| Post URL: Statue of Liberty maze unveiled in Yorkshire
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Telegraph: Composed of more than a million living maize plants and covering about 18 acres, is one of the biggest mazes ever constructed.
With a length of 1,300ft it dwarfs the real Statue of Liberty, which is just 111ft high.
Farmer Tom Pearcy said he wanted the design - built in fields just a few miles from the centre of York - to celebrate the connections between New York and the British city from which it took its name.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
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Lady Liberty, Ten Times Larger!
Instructables: Composed of more than a million living maize plants and covering about 18 acres, is one of the biggest mazes ever constructed.
With a length of 1,300ft it dwarfs the real Statue of Liberty, which is just 111ft high.
"As a 'new' York Maze it seemed appropriate to base this year's design on New York," Mr Pearcey said.
"I also wanted to mark the links between York and New York.
"The Statue of Liberty is an instantly recognisable image and makes a great maze."
Stephen Briganti, president and chief executive of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, in New York City, said: "We are so pleased to see that the Statue of Liberty is being celebrated in such a unique way in York.
"Lady Liberty stands as a symbol for all the people in the world but it is especially gratifying to see her linking Old York with New York."
Source: Instructables.com
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U.S. to Study Access to Liberty’s Crown
NY Times: The National Park Service has started inching closer to reopening the Statue of Liberty’s crown for the first time since the 9/11 attacks by seeking ways to make access safer.
The closest some tourists got to the Statue of Liberty on Friday, the Fourth of July, was at Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
The park service is seeking bids from engineers and architects to study whether alterations to the crown would make it safer for visitors to evacuate in case of an emergency. The crown is currently accessible only by a narrow, double-helix-shaped staircase that is not in compliance with federal, state or city fire and building codes. The issue of whether the stairway was ever in compliance was not raised publicly until after 9/11.
If changes to the statue are not practical, the park service will look for other ways of minimizing the dangers, possibly by limiting the number of visitors.
The park service acknowledged it was considering reopening the crown after Representative Anthony D. Weiner provided reporters on Friday with a copy of the agency’s request for proposals. The Daily News reported the park service’s decision on Friday.
Mr. Weiner, during a news conference on Friday in Battery Park with the statue behind him, said the off-limits crown was an “embarrassment” to the city and demonstrated a “lack of creativity and imagination” on the part of the park service.
Mr. Weiner, a Democrat who represents parts of Queens and Brooklyn, helped arrange a Congressional hearing in September on reopening the crown.
“Something that many of us remember from our youth — going up those narrow stairwells, getting up on our tippy-toes, looking out through the crown to one of the most glorious vistas you can imagine,” Mr. Weiner said, “that experience has been denied to visitors now for seven Fourth of Julys.”
As possible solutions, Mr. Weiner suggested caps on the number of visitors, strict height and weight guidelines and requiring visitors to sign waivers acknowledging the risks.
Liberty Island was closed to the public after the 9/11 attacks. The statue’s base reopened on Aug. 3, 2004, after a $20 million effort to improve fire safety, security and evacuation routes. But the crown remained closed because the park service said it posed a potentially catastrophic hazard to visitors.
The decision to look at the feasibility of reopening the crown came in response to a request by Congress at the September hearing, David Barna, a spokesman for the park service, said on Friday. He said the park service wants to have a study on reopening the crown completed by January.
Advocates who have sought the reopening praised the decision but said they hoped the park service would find a way to open the crown before any renovations were completed — a move the park service said it was not considering.
Alexander R. Brash, the northeast regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, said, “We think it is high time to open the crown, and certainly by next Independence Day at the very latest.” He added, “The more people who can experience it, the more awe-inspiring their visit to the statue, the better.”
When the roughly 10 flights of steps leading to the crown from the top of the pedestal were open to the public, park rangers were regularly faced with visitors with medical problems, including those with heat exhaustion, panic attacks and claustrophobia, according to a park service statement. The park service said the stairs were originally intended to be used by maintenance workers.
The statement, issued on Friday, noted that the statue’s creator, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, never envisioned visitors climbing to the crown.
“The Statue of Liberty is being experienced as intended,” the park service said, “from the waters of the harbor, on Liberty Island, and within the pedestal itself up to an observation deck that affords breathtaking 360-degree views of New York harbor.”
Critics of closing the crown have said that it has hurt the economy by reducing tourism at the statue. Mr. Weiner said that in 2006, the number of visitors decreased to 2.5 million from 3.6 million visitors in 2000. The park service said on Friday, however, that about 3.2 million people visited the statue last year and that it expected to see an even higher number this year.
Source: Nytimes.com
 Statue-Of-Liberty, Yorkshire
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Statue of Liberty maze unveiled in Yorkshire
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