Eiffel Tower

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Though it is now regarded as the symbol of Paris, before it was even built, the Eiffel Tower was derided by French culture’s stars such as Charles Garnier and Alexander Dumas as “useless and monstrous,” thinking it would make Paris “ugly.” It turned out history thought otherwise. Diagram of tower circa 1889

Design

A version of the tower was first put on paper in 1884 by Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel’s two lead engineers, Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin. But the P.R. savvy Eiffel secretly filed the patent that forever linked this ultimate folly to his name solely.

In May of 1886, 107 entries for a 300-meter, four-sided structure to be the major focal point for the 1889 World’s Fair (also referred to as the “Exposition Tricolorée”) were received by the Centennial Committee of the 1789 Revolution.

First Nouguier/Koechlin design for tower 1884	Jules Bourdais entry for Centennial Committee 1886	Sauvestre sketch circa 1886

Eiffel felt this design could be a perfect choice but he and the engineers had added architect Stephen Sauvestre to the tower project as well. Sauvestre thought it should be beautified somewhat with its purely decorative and non-load-bearing arches both at the bottom and middle (which didn’t get built) and stonework-like veneers (Landon freestone) for the concrete supports beneath each leg. Plans & elevations circa 1889

In addition to the “shoes” and arcs of iron he suggested, Sauvestre thought the tower should terminate with a pair of curved wrought iron trusses, that from a distance would resemble a dome and bring the height to 300 meters (984 feet). He also suggested the iron should be painted a brownish red. Diagram of elevator circa 1889

Though Bessemer steel had been perfected, the “Compagnie des établissements Eiffel” had been building bridges and railroad stations with more familiar iron. And this is what history’s most famous folly came to be made of. Gustave Eiffel may have also built the first “Organic” construction, as he wrote that “wind resistance” was the principal reason it looks the way it does. And its splayed feet and gossamer body prove he was scientifically right. Perspective drawing circa 2000

Though the design was somewhat “domesticated,” Eiffel was well aware of the beauty of pure technology. In 1875, he’d built a train station in Budapest that proudly displayed its shed of wrought iron and glass fronting on the main façade. He had also pre-fabricated sections for bridge-building before. Budapest train station 1877 (photo circa 2011)

Rights

But Eiffel was also quite aware that he needed to legally own the rights to Sauvestre’s aesthetic improvements as the architect wasn’t technically under his employment. So Eiffel revised his original 1884 patent.

Eiffel’s company, long respected for being adept at iron bridge-building and well known for the support cage inside America’s Statue of Liberty, submitted its idea for what would later be known as the Eiffel Tower.

They won the competition.

Edward L. Sambourne cartoon 1889	Statue of Liberty structure 1886

But the Commission only awarded Eiffel less than twenty percent of the construction costs, assuming that by giving him only a fraction of the money to build it, he would offset the deficit with loans covered by his contracted concession revenue. It may have been a short-sighted misjudgment but it was definitely a long-term error for the government. World’s Fair drawing 1889

Site For logistical purposes and to move the structure as far as possible from the exhibitions, it needed to be placed on the city-owned land closest to the river and not the state-owned Champ de Mars itself. Also, as most of Paris sits on an ancient bed of thick clay, a better foundation for such a tall tower was the compacted sand and gravel from an equally ancient underground sandbar closer to the water. Tower site 2018

Controversy At the start of construction, though, a “Committee of 300” of the most famous composers, artists, playwrights, and architects were outraged at the thought of an ugly (to them) and huge iron tower that looked in the words of writer Guy de Maupassant to be, “...a ridiculous thin shape like a factory chimney.” They wrote to the lead commissioner: “Even the commercial Americans would not want this Eiffel Tower which is, without any doubt, a dishonor to Paris.” Guy de Maupassant by Nadar 1888

Eiffel responded that engineers, too, had a standard of beauty equal to painters and sculptors. The commission’s selector of Eiffel’s tower was not so restrained in his pushback. But it was a writer after the Exposition opened who wrote that all its critics were in a sense “has-beens” who failed to see that iron was the future. Ironwork

Ironically, only the Eiffel Tower and Ferdinand Dutert’s enormous “Galerie des Machines” enclosing 20 acres were modernist constructions. Every other pavilion pretended to be a traditional stone building, though they, too, were built with skeletons of iron or wood clothed in historical plaster frosting. Ferdinand Dutert Galerie des Machines interior 1889

Construction As the tower is mostly air, its relative lightness required only two-meter-thick foundation pads of concrete under each of the two legs facing the Champ de Mars. But those on the Seine River side needed two 20-meter cast iron piles under their concrete pads driven down to calcite limestone bedrock. Concrete and stone footings circa 1887

At the end of January 1887, workers dug four several-meter-deep trenches 125 meters apart for the poured concrete and limestone blocks. Those closest to the Seine each needed four air-pressurized caissons of 15 x 6 meters, five meters under the level of the water. The method had worked before in Eiffel’s use of it in an 1857 bridge design. And the Brooklyn Bridge had used bigger versions earlier and much deeper in 1870. Riverside caissons circa January 1887

In July 1887, the tower began its construction. By its end, 7,300 tons of “puddled” iron in over 18,000 pieces from Lorraine were used. Its slag had the advantage of forging lower carbon material with less susceptibility to corrosion. Start of construction circa 1887

Eiffel’s workshops bolted together 5-meter, 3-ton clusters of the wrought iron beams, rods, and gussets that had been pre-painted reddish brown. The bolts were then replaced in the factory by rivets, whose cooling shrank the connections to clamp the sections tightly. But as they were assembled on the site, the sections themselves were riveted together, forming a strong, unmoving vertical truss like the bridges the Eiffel company had built all over Europe. Construction circa 1887

As the construction of the legs reached what would be the first platform on December 7th, 16 wooden scaffolds 30 and 40 meters high were built to support the workmen for the first platform. Small steam cranes climbed up the empty elevator shafts to lift the iron beams used for the legs and deck. By April 1st, 1888, the platform itself was finished.

In rapid succession, the second platform was reached August 14th followed by the tower’s topping out on March 31st, 1889. In total, the construction took only two years and two months.

Construction of first platform circa December 1887	Construction of second platform circa August 1888

Elevators

In the design process of the tower, the need for elevators to the first and second platforms was financially important as they would receive the most visitors. But even though the crowds would be smaller, those further ascending to the top level at nearly 300 meters, using altogether different mechanics, were critical as well.

One method for the vertical ascent to the top first discussed was the counterbalance of two round double-decker pods (one going down while the other went up). However, they were to rotate in a screw motion. The dizzying unworkability of this system meant it was quickly eliminated.

Elevator to top circa 2011	Elevators to the top circa 2000

The relatively straightforward runs up the lower part of the East and West legs found a French elevator company (Roux, Combaluzier and LePape) but the curved legs up to the second proved the need for an American one (Otis) for those more complicated North and South elevator runs. However, the imperious Eiffel almost put an end to the Chicago company’s involvement with his transatlantic demands and ultimatums.

In the end, each system used hydraulic power but the East and West leg French version pushed the double car for each pier up to the first platform by two conveyor belts. The longer Otis elevator runs in the North and South legs up to both the first and second platforms used hydraulic pistons to pull the double car by steel cables and became one of the most popular fair attractions.

Roux, Combaluzier and LePape elevator drawing circa 1889	Otis elevator cutaway drawing circa 1889

The French Edoux system was used for the elevators to the top. The straight vertical structure of the tower was actually divided into two runs of nearly 80 meters each so the bottom of a huge direct hydraulic pusher plunger of a single car wouldn’t protrude beneath the first platform. Each car was the counterweight to the other, meeting at a barely visible intermediate transfer platform halfway up the 160-meter section to disgorge the first car into the second and a final run up to the level of the topmost observation area. Edoux elevators drawing circa 1889

Laborers

150 to 300 workers assembled the tower each day with a remarkable safety record of only one death considering its height and rudimentary safety measures.

In explanation of that one death, it seems a weekday laborer, Angelo Scagliotti, was showing off to his girlfriend during a Sunday afternoon peek of the first platform when he plummeted to the ground. As it didn’t occur during a week of construction, it was never counted among the casualties but became embedded instead into folklore.

Construction workers drawing circa 1889	Painter circa 1937

Opening

At the dedication on May 6th, Eiffel climbed all 1,710 steps (the elevators weren’t open until May 26th) to the topmost point of the tower. He and the governmental dignitaries hoisted the French flag from its highest point to a 21-gun salute and a display of fireworks.

In the end, the tower cost 6.5 million Francs, of which the French government contributed only 1.5 million with the rest coming from Eiffel himself. This, in effect, was a loan from the Eiffel company. For his additional payment, he was granted all the concessions from the elevators to the telescopes and restaurants for twenty years. After then, however, the tower was meant to be demolished.

Eiffel and others atop the tower circa 1889	Tower at opening drawing 1889

Experiments

At heart, though, Eiffel was a scientist. He had engraved 72 names of France’s most famous scientists into the edges of the largest platform and built himself an office at the top (just below the arched cupola) for experiments. His studies of wind turbulence, air pressure, gravity, and astronomical observations from its lofty perch throughout the twenty years were well known.

At the contract’s expiration in 1909, the military stepped in to extend the tower’s life for budding wireless research and Eiffel’s concession was then granted for seventy more years. As Eiffel died at 91 in 1923, the concession money was kept in the family. But since 1980, the City of Paris has benefitted from its revenues.

Eiffel’s office atop the tower circa 1889	Scientific research circa 1889

Critics The artists’ open letter in Le Temps in the month after construction began led nowhere. Though after the tower opened, Guy de Maupassant was noticed regularly dining in one of its restaurants and he remarked that it was the only place in Paris where he couldn’t see it. Restaurant pavilion circa 1889

Lights

When “L’exposition Universelle 1900” on the Champ de Mars opened at the turn-of-the-century, the tower was repainted in darker shades of orange near the bottom, graduating to yellow at the top, and the elevators in the legs were replaced. But its nighttime look was also part of the celebration. The 10,000 1889 gaslit globes were deemed insufficient and outdated, so 5,000 lightbulbs outlined all four sides.

Seeing it as a gigantic billboard, it attracted the Citroen automobile company, which for the 1925 Art Déco exposition erected huge flashing letters advertising the vehicle on three faces.

Several garish installations were finally ended when, in 1958, golden projections on the outside of the framework and in 1985, glowing sodium lamps inside had turned the tower into one of the world’s premier nighttime attractions.

Night view during 1900 exposition	Citroen letters circa 1925

The new millennium saw both a pyrotechnic display shooting “stars” from the tower and its present light show of 20,000 twinkling xenon strobe lights (made permanent in 2003) to join sweeping dual beams at the top for an unforgettable nightly experience.

Many colorings have lighted the tower with each special event (even turning it into a giant Christmas tree in 1978) and it has become an ever-changing barometer of French politics.

Millennium exhibition 2000	Night view of tower circa 2010	View down the rue de l’université circa 2019

Today

Now 324 meters tall (including the topmost transmission antennas), it is still one of the tallest freestanding towers in Europe. And standing as a giant in low-rise central Paris, it has celebrated the “Machine Age” like no other remaining structure. But it has become more than famous.

Parisians may never visit it as tourists, leaving out-of-town visitors to the experience, but they would be horrified to see it disappear. The tower has not only become the symbol of Paris but also all of France.

Throughout the years, the Eiffel Tower has become an international icon, joining the pyramids of Egypt, Great Wall of China, and perhaps the Empire State Building in America to signal permanence in an uncertain world.

View from atop the Arc du Triomphe circa 2019	View from the Fountain of Warsaw circa 2019