WSJ: The Eiffel Tower wasn't always a beloved icon

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The Wall Street Journal
MASTERPIECE
May 9, 2009

'Odious Column' of Metal
The Eiffel Tower wasn't always a beloved icon

By JILL JONNES

On May 15, the Eiffel Tower, the world's most celebrated monument and
the iconic symbol of Paris, celebrates its 120th anniversary.
Strikingly, the fame and allure of this improbable wrought-iron
masterpiece have only grown with the passing decades. The tower, built
by railway-bridge engineer Gustave Eiffel, has become a ubiquitous
global image connoting modernity and glamour, while visitors who
experience it firsthand are still amazed by the tower's potent mixture
of spare elegance, immensity and complexity. And when the Eiffel Tower
opens to its adoring public each day, the structure comes to life as
crowds gaily clamber up and down its stairs, eating, drinking and
flirting on the three platforms high in the sky. Open to the elements,
enveloped in Eiffel's distinctive design, visitors can see and touch
parts of the 18,038 pieces of iron (welded together with 2.5 million
rivets) as they ascend heavenward.
[Eiffel Tower] Getty Images

Gustave Eiffel's creation turns 120 years old on May 15.

The tower is so beloved that few today remember the storm of vitriol,
mockery and lawsuits provoked by its selection as the startling
centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. (One of the
losing entries was a gigantic working guillotine!) Even as Eiffel was
breaking ground by the Seine River in February 1887, 47 of France's
greatest names decried in a letter to Le Temps the "odious column of
bolted metal." What person of good taste, this flock of intellectuals
asked, could endure the thought of this "dizzily ridiculous tower
dominating Paris like a black and gigantic factory chimney, crushing
[all] beneath its barbarous mass"? The revered painters Ernest
Meissonier and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, writers Guy de Maupassant
and Alexandre Dumas fils, composer Charles Gounod and architect
Charles Garnier all signed this epistolary call to arms, stating that
"the Eiffel Tower, which even commercial America would not have, is
without a doubt the dishonor of Paris."

Gustave Eiffel, a self-made millionaire whose firm constructed much-
admired bridges all over the world, happily twitted his critics: "They
begin by declaring that my tower is not French. It is big enough and
clumsy enough for the English or Americans, but it is not our style,
they say. We are more occupied by little artistic bibelots. . . . Why
should we not show the world what we can do in the way of great
engineering projects?"

In fact, Eiffel was actually erecting what ambitious English and
American engineers had only dreamed of for decades: a thousand-foot
tower. "What was the main obstacle I had to overcome in designing the
tower?" asked (and then answered) Eiffel: "Its resistance to wind" --
a foe he had long ago bested in such pioneering bridge designs as his
Pia Maria railway bridge in Oporto, Portugal. "And I submit that the
curves of [the tower's] four piers as produced by our calculations,
rising from an enormous base and narrowing toward the top, will give a
great impression of strength and beauty." Eiffel the ardent republican
wondered why his nay-saying compatriots could not see the glory.
France, a lone republic surrounded by monarchies, was building "the
tallest edifice ever raised by man," a completely original industrial-
strength monument made possible by new knowledge and technologies, a
colossal modern wonder of the world designed to draw vast throngs to
France's Exposition Universelle.

The Americans did not hide their chagrin when they learned that at
1,000 feet the Eiffel Tower would dethrone their own 555-foot-tall
Washington Monument, finally completed in 1884. Sniffed the New York
Times' Paris correspondent: "The French admit [the tower's]
originality and value, but they deplore its ugliness . . . au fond,
they are not proud to show this gigantic iron structure to
strangers. . . . [T]hey vote it an abomination and eyesore." The
Timesman insisted that the Washington Monument is "after all, more
artistic than the Eiffel Tower." In truth, as the Eiffel Tower rose
gracefully into the Parisian sky, its unique modern beauty catapulted
it to world acclaim. An entire industry rushed to churn out Eiffel
Tower replicas, as Phillip Cate notes in his book "Eiffel Tower: A
Tour de Force" -- tiny gold charms, solid chocolate confections, giant
garden ornaments, or the myriad images executed in "pen, pencil, and
brush, in photo and lithography, in oil and pastel, on paper, canvas,
on wood and ivory, on china, steel, and zinc."

From the day the Eiffel Tower first opened on May 15, 1889, at 11:50
a.m., fairgoers flocked to ascend its giddy heights. From high up,
they savored the spectacle of Paris looking tiny and the crowds down
below coursing through the rococo Exposition, enjoying such novelties
as Egyptian belly dancing, Japanese tea houses, Javanese dancers, wine
from the world's largest oaken cask (pulled to Paris by 10 pair of
oxen), and the miracle of recorded sound at the Edison exhibit.

Those emerging from the elevator at the tower's pinnacle might have
glimpsed Gustave Eiffel himself, attired in dark Prince Albert suit
and silk top hat, squiring around yet another politician, famous
actor, gold-brocaded royal from France's new colonial empire, or
Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West show in Neuilly was a sold-out
sensation.

By the time Gustave Eiffel welcomed Thomas Edison to his celebrated
monument that September, the tower was perhaps as famous as America's
most famous inventor. "Like everyone else I've come to see the Eiffel
Tower," Edison told a mob of journalists when he sailed into Le Havre.
After his first visit to the fair, Edison said: "The Tower is a great
idea. The glory of Eiffel is in the magnitude of the conception and
the nerve in the execution." Nor could Edison refrain from boasting
that the U.S. would "build one of 2,000 feet. We'll go Eiffel 100%
better, without discount."

When Eiffel heard of this later, he said, "We'll see about that." And
not until 1929 (six years after Eiffel's death) did another structure
surpass the Eiffel Tower in height. It was the Chrysler Building at
1,046 feet. Two years later, the Empire State Building wrested away
that title by reaching 1,250 feet. Moreover, while Gustave Eiffel's
original contract called for him to disassemble his tower after 20
years, he ensured the survival of his magnum opus by making it an
indispensable part of the French military's radio network.

Megaskyscrapers have long since overshadowed the Eiffel Tower's status
as the world's tallest structure. And yet, the Eiffel Tower still
speaks uniquely to the human fascination with science and technology
and to the human desire for pleasure and joie de vivre. In 1889, Jules
Simon, the republican politician and philosopher, declared, "We are
all citizens of the Eiffel Tower," a sentiment as true today as it was
then.

Ms. Jonnes is the author of "Eiffel's Tower" just out from Viking
Press.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124182319989202299.html

wrote:
The Eiffel Tower wasn't always a beloved icon

A good article, thanks.

On Mon, 11 May 2009 22:14:16 +0200, "Lou Ravi"
wrote:

wrote:
The Eiffel Tower wasn't always a beloved icon

A good article, thanks.

Perhaps the greatest indignity to the Tour Eiffel:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...el_Citroen.jpg

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Hatunen wrote:
On Mon, 11 May 2009 22:14:16 +0200, "Lou Ravi"
wrote:

wrote:
The Eiffel Tower wasn't always a beloved icon

A good article, thanks.

Perhaps the greatest indignity to the Tour Eiffel:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...el_Citroen.jpg

Yep, pretty bad, but I expect that they thought it was Hyper Hi-tech at
the time and went "wow!"

"Hatunen" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 11 May 2009 22:14:16 +0200, "Lou Ravi"
wrote:

wrote:
The Eiffel Tower wasn't always a beloved icon

A good article, thanks.

Perhaps the greatest indignity to the Tour Eiffel:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...el_Citroen.jpg

--

citroen (Dutch) = lemon :-)

"Lou Ravi" wrote in message
...
wrote:
The Eiffel Tower wasn't always a beloved icon

A good article, thanks.

It briefly mentioned Guy de Maupassant but not the famous story about him
eating lunch every day in the restaurant within the Eiffel Tower itself
despite
actually hating the structure.The reason of cause was because that was one
restaurant from which the Eiffel Tower couldn't be seen and spoil his view.
Cheers
Jeff