Cultural Landscape Report for Liberty Island, Statue of Liberty National Monument

Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation; State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry

Liberty Island is a 14.1-acre historic district located in New York Harbor, primarily significant as the designed landscape setting for the monumental Statue of Liberty. The small harbor island is also found within the homelands of three federally recognized Lenape Nations. These include the Delaware Nation, the Delaware Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, and Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians. This report satisfies a stipulated requirement of the 2016 Memorandum of Agreement regarding the construction of the new Statue of Liberty Museum. Intending to address and mitigate potential adverse effects due to the construction of the large new facility, the multi-party agreement was negotiated between the National Park Service the New York State Historic Preservation Officer, the New Jersey Historic Preservation Officer, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. The report includes a site history, documentation of existing conditions, and analysis and evaluation of the Liberty Island's significance, integrity, and contributing landscape characteristics and features. While this volume does not include landscape treatment recommendations, the findings in this report may be used to inform general treatment guidelines or detailed treatment recommendations in the future. This project employs new methods that have yet to come into widespread use in cultural landscape preservation work. Conventionally, cultural landscape reports include illustrated and annotated two-dimensional site plans documenting existing landscape conditions paired with additional two-dimensional site plans, commonly referred to as “period plans.” Period plans illustrate and graphically describe the subject landscape at important inflection points in the past. Period plans are typically prepared with the same uniform scale, orientation to north, and graphic conventions as existing conditions mapping, facilitating an easy comparison between present-day and former landscape conditions. While the juxtaposition of existing conditions versus former conditions has been found helpful to many, Olmsted Center staff have long observed that the interpretation of two-dimensional site plans is difficult for many. Given the iconic status of Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty, and the island’s relatively modest size, this project suggested an opportunity to explore new visualization methods derived from the field of computer graphics and the video gaming industry; tools that make the visualization of landscape history more accessible. Working with university partners at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, the project team has wielded powerful new tools to include digital 3D period-models, supplementing the more traditional 2D period plans. Additionally, these new digital modeling and visualization tools have made it possible to take the practice of “repeat-photography” to another level. It has been a longstanding practice in historic preservation resource documentation to pair existing conditions photographs next to a historic photograph of a building or landscape. Using three-dimensional digital modeling in preparation of the Cultural Landscape Report for Liberty Island has made it possible to pair a series of images across multiple time periods, all composed from a consistent vantage point, or point-of-view. These new digital tools have made it possible to include paired imagery from dates prior to the advent of photography, or otherwise from locations where no photographer ever stood.

Cultural Landscape Report for Liberty Island, Statue of Liberty National Monument

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