It may seem odd to focus on the origin of cement that was used to build the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, but this choice is guided by the interest of many visitors to the origin of all the materials. Copper, he comes from Norway. The plates of granite, they come to a Connecticut career. Cement, he comes from Germany.
The story begins on June 4, 1864. This day is the beginning of the activity of the "Portland-Cement-Fabrik Dyckerhoff and Söhne", a new company specializing in the new materials, cement. The founder was Wilhelm Gustav Dyckerhoff, he placed her son Gustav as commercial director and her second son Rudolf as technical director. The company followed another company accumulated losses, the cement plant "Dyckerhoff and Brentano" in Hattenheim in the Rheingau, which was founded on June 1, 1861. Five years later they were already employed 100 people, and that number was increasing up to reach 500 employees in 1883. Innovative, cement won many national and international awards for its various products. In 1886 they signed one of the biggest contracts of their careers, providing 8,000 barrels of Portland cement in the United States, cement for the construction of the base of the statue of Liberty. It was then the biggest cement order ever made in the United States. It still represented 1,360 tons. Following this order the leader of the company, Mr Dyckerhoff, was invited to the inauguration of the statue in 1886.
Today, this company is owned by an Italian group, the Buzzi Unicem.
See also: History of the statue of Liberty
See also: Pedestal of the statue of Liberty
