A Wondrous Statue?
 Jennifer Smith - Newsday
Apparently you can never have enough wonders.
First came the seven wonders of the ancient world, Mediterranean glories such as the Colossus of Rhodes thought to have been compiled by pre-Christian Greeks or Romans. Since then, catalogs of noteworthy edifices and natural sites - from Stonehenge to the Panama Canal and the Great Barrier Reef - have been generated by medieval scholars, world travelers and modern civil engineers.
Now, in a testament to our evident compulsion to rank things, a campaign to name the new seven wonders of the world touches down in New York City, where the Statue of Liberty is one of 21 finalists whose wondrous status will be decided by an Internet vote.
The Wednesday visit by the campaign's founder, a self-described adventurer of Swiss-Canadian extraction named Bernard Weber, is the last on his whistle-stop tour of the 21 sites, which include ancient and modern monuments and buildings across six continents.
Weber came up with the idea seven years ago as a way to make such cultural symbols relevant to modern audiences, according to Tia Viering, a spokeswoman for the Zurich-based project.
Only one of the seven ancient wonders still exist, the Egyptian pyramids at Giza. For the new list, architectural experts helped winnow 77 earlier nominees to the current 21. Weber thought the democratic way to choose the big seven was to have people worldwide cast online ballots.
More than 27 million votes have come in so far, Viering said. People also can vote by phone or by sending text messages; the results will be announced at a July 7 ceremony in Lisbon.
The idea is to "learn about other cultures and bring people together," Viering said last week via cell phone from Mexico, where she and Weber were on their way back from the ruins of the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá (a finalist), on the Yucatan peninsula. "This is a small step on the road to peace."
An excerpt from Weber's blog on the campaign's Web site, new7wonders.com, echoed Viering's sentiment:
"One of the aims of the New7Wonders campaign is to bring emotions to the man-made monuments," Weber wrote from Rio de Janeiro, where his visit to the statue of Christ the Redeemer included appearances by a soccer player, a Roman Catholic cardinal and dancers from a local samba school.
During Weber's visit, the plan is for metropolitan area schoolchildren to gather at a flagpole near the statue on Liberty Island and spell out "Vote For Me" for media helicopters and a blimp carrying the campaign's film crew. Organizers said a proclamation from Mayor Michael Bloomberg would be read at a news conference in Manhattan later that day and Lady Liberty will be officially nominated.
"It's the international icon of liberty and freedom, and it's recognized as such the world over," said Darren Boch, a spokesman for the National Parks Service, which maintains the statue as a national monument.
Only one monument from each country was allowed into the top 21. Lady Liberty nudged out the other U.S. contenders, the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge.
"It's nice to be recognized, but we're not lamenting that we weren't chosen," said Mary Currie, a spokeswoman for the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.
The campaign has received a fair amount of attention, particularly after his January visit to Egypt, where officials hostile to the idea that the pyramids had to compete for top seven status refused to meet with him, according to Viering and media reports. Reception elsewhere has been enthusiastic, she said.
New wonders
The Statue of Liberty is among the finalists in a competition to select a new seven wonders of the world. Organizers will visit New York's "Lady in the Harbor" this week and then will begin paring the list from 21 to seven.
EIFFEL TOWER
TAJ MAHAL
EASTER ISLAND
PYRAMIDS OF GIZA
ANCIENT CITY OF PETRA
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE
The Ancient wonders
Colossus of Rhodes
Great Pyramids of Egypt
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
Pharos of Alexandria
Statue of Zeus
Temple of Artemis
New contenders
AFRICA
Pyramids of Giza, Cairo
Timbuktu, northern Mali
ASIA
Ancient City of Petra,
Petra, Jordan
Angkor Park, Siem Reap, Cambodia
Great Wall, China
Kiyomizu Temple, Kyoto, Japan
Taj Mahal, Agra, India
EUROPE
Acropolis, Athens
Alhambra, Granada, Spain
Colosseum, Rome
Eiffel Tower, Paris
Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey
Kremlin and St. Basil's
Basilica, Moscow
Neuschwanstein Castle
Schwangau, Germany
Stonehenge, Amesbury, England
NORTH AMERICA
Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico
Statue of Liberty, NewYork Harbor
AUSTRALIA
Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia
SOUTH AMERICA
Christ Redeemer statue, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Easter Island, off the coast of Chile
Machu Picchu, Urubamba Valley, Peru
STATUE OF LIBERTY
Gift of friendship from France to the United States and is a universal symbol of freedom and democracy.
Dedicated Oct. 28, 1886, designated a national monument in 1924 and restored for centennial on July 4, 1986.
Estimated 4 million visitors tour statue and nearby Ellis Island annually.
SOURCES: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; NEW7WONDERS.COM |
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Travel & Outdoors | March 2007 
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