Repaint the Statue?

At the time the Statue was designed and erected in the mid 1880's engineers knew that the Statue's copper skin would oxidize and turn, eventually, the green color she so proudly displays today. By its 20th anniversary in 1906 the weather did as predicted and she was no longer the brownish-copper color she was when she was erected in 1886.

There was a public debate about what if anything needed to be done. New Yorkers and others convinced Congress to appropriate $62,800 for the repainting  but engineers opposed to the repainting due to the fear that her skin might actually weaken from the paint, convinced the Army Corps of Engineers to abandon the project. The inside was painted, as it had been in 1896, but the outside was allowed to evolve to its iconic color. 

The following article appeared in the New York Times on July 29, 1906.

Note: The article mistakenly refers to the Statue as made of bronze. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin and much harder and less malleable than copper.