Amazingly cool that they understood they had to make the statue handle winds in the harbor. Kind of neat to have a piece that's so emotionally powerful, aesthetically pleasing, and so beautifully engineered.
The decade-long campaign to raise money in both France and US was an impressive feat of crowdfunding. And the sculptor himself had terrific business acumen, selling tickets to tour his workshop and exhibiting full-scale parts of the statue in Paris to large crowds to keep up interest while it was still years away from completion.
Perfectly understandable in this case, that construction technique was really cutting edge, and the change has been born out by the real acid test of engineering, it has stood for this long.
[1] Careful study had revealed that the right arm had been improperly attached to the main structure. It was swaying more and more when strong winds blew and there was a significant risk of structural failure. In addition, the head had been installed 2 feet (0.61 m) off center, and one of the rays was wearing a hole in the right arm when the statue moved in the wind. The armature structure was badly corroded, and about two percent of the exterior plates needed to be replaced.[138] Although problems with the armature had been recognized as early as 1936, when cast iron replacements for some of the bars had been installed, much of the corrosion had been hidden by layers of paint applied over the years.[139]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty (Renovation and rededication 1982–2000)