Statue of Liberty Souvenirs are all in the Family

The souvenir shop on Liberty Island is a third-generation family business.  Check out this fun article I discovered from 2009 in the Downtown Express, a newspaper in Manhattan.  How many of the Statue of Liberty souvenir pictured in this family photos to you own?  Here’s part of the article:   “The first private concession on Liberty Island for tourists opened in 1931 by the current owner’s Grandmother. Brad Hill’s father was born on the island. And Hill has spent more days in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty than he can count, especially since he joined his family’s concessions business full-time 28 years ago. But no matter how many times Hill, 53, has stood at the base of the Statue of Liberty looking up at the sea-green arm stretching skyward, the sight never gets old. “I’m not jaded at all,” Hill said as he walked the island’s breezy perimeter on a recent afternoon. “It’s still a special place to me.” Hill’s concession business, called Evelyn Hill, Inc. after his grandmother, has come a long way in the 78 years since it started as an outdoor table covered in small statue replicas and letter openers. Today, the 3.25 million people who visit the statue annually shop at Evelyn Hill’s indoor gift shop, stacked floor to ceiling with memorabilia, and eat in Evelyn Hill’s cafe, which serves T.G.I. Fridays-style food. Hill has put a green spin on his family business’s operations, diverting over 75 percent of the island’s trash into recycling.”  Of course today, they also have an online shop.