Statue of Liberty goes dark

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - For several hours, Lady Liberty didn't shine so brightly.  The famed The Statue of Liberty was temporarily in the dark Tuesday night after what a spokesman calls an "unplanned outage."

The statue was dark except for the crown and torch. The lights returned shortly before midnight.

The outage sparked conversation on social media that perhaps it was done deliberately for Wednesday's "A Day Without Women" protest of economic and social inequality.

But National Park Service spokesman Jerry Willis says the outage was related to a project for a new emergency backup generator.

In a statement he stated:  "It was determined that power and a lighting system controller had been switched off in order to change out faulty lighting equipment.  Upon completion of that project, power was restored, but the outage was a result of a failure to properly reset the lighting system controller. "

He says, while this was an unplanned outage, there will be some planned outages related to the installation of a new emergency backup generator for Liberty Island.  The new emergency generator is one of the last Hurricane Sandy recovery projects at Liberty Island.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.