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History
The design of the
Eiffel Tower was originated by
Maurice Koechlin
and Émile Nouguier, two senior engineers who worked for the Compagnie
des Establissments Eiffel after discussion about a suitable centrepiece
for the proposed
1889 Exposition Universelle, a
World's Fair which would celebrate the centennial of the
French Revolution.
In May 1884 Koechlin, working at his home, made an outline drawing of
their scheme, described by him as "a great pylon, consisting of four
lattice girders standing apart at the base and coming together at the
top, joined together by metal trusses at regular intervals"
Initially Eiffel himself showed little enthusiasm, but he did sanction
further study of the project, and the two engineers then asked Stephen
Sauvestre, the head of company's architectural department, to contribute
to the design. Sauvestre added decorative arches to the base, a glass
pavilion to the first level and other embellishments. This enhanced
version gained Eiffel's support, and he bought the rights to the patent
on the design which Koechlin, Nougier and Sauvestre had taken out, and
the design was exhibited at the Exhibition of Decorative Arts in the
autumn of 1884 under the company name. On 30 March 1885 Eiffel read a
paper on the project to the Société des Ingiénieurs Civils: after
discussing the technical problems and emphasising the practical uses of
the tower, he finished his talk by saying that the tower would symbolise
"not only the art of the modern engineer, but also
the century of Industry and Science in which we are living, and for
which the way was prepared by the great scientific movement of the
eighteenth century and by the Revolution of 1789, to which this monument
will be built as an expression of France's gratitude."
Little happened until the beginning of 1886, when
Jules Grévy was re-elected as President and
Édouard Lockroy
was appointed as Minister for Trade. A budget for the Exposition was
passed and on 1 May Lockroy announced an alteration to the terms of the
open competition which was being held for a centerpiece for the
exposition, which effectively made the choice of Eiffel's design a
foregone conclusion: all entries had to include a study for a 300 m
(980 ft) four-sided metal tower on the Champ de Mars
.
On 12 May a commission was set up to examine Eiffel's scheme and its
rivals and on 12 June it presented its decision, which was that all the
proposals except Eiffel's were either impractical or insufficiently
worked out. After some debate about the exact site for the tower, a
contract was finally signed on 8 January 1887. This was signed by Eiffel
acting in his own capacity rather than as the representative of his
company, and granted him one and a half million francs toward the
construction costs: less than a quarter of the estimated cost of six and
a half million francs. Eiffel was to receive all income from the
commercial exploitation of the tower during the exhibition and for the
following twenty years. Eiffel later established a separate company to
manage the tower, putting up half the necessary capital himself.
The "Artists Protest"
The projected tower had been a subject of some controversy,
attracting criticism both from those who did not believe that it was
feasible and also from those who objected on artistic grounds. Their
objections were an expression of a longstanding debate about
relationship between architecture and engineering. This came to a head
as work began at the Champ de Mars: A "Committee of Three Hundred" (one
member for each metre of the tower's height) was formed, led by the
prominent architect
Charles Garnier and including some of the most important figures of the French arts establishment, including
Adolphe Bouguereau,
Guy de Maupassant,
Charles Gounod and
Jules Massenet: a petition was sent to
Charles Alphand, the Minister of Works and Commissioner for the Exposition, and was published by
Le Temps.
"We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and
passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest
with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted
French taste, against the erection…of this useless and monstrous Eiffel
Tower … To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy,
ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack,
crushing under its barbaric bulk
Notre Dame, the
Tour de Saint-Jacques, the
Louvre, the Dome of
les Invalides, the
Arc de Triomphe,
all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream.
And for twenty years … we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the
hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal"
These criticisms were masterfully dealt with by
Édouard Lockroy in a letter of support written to Alphand, ironically
saying "Judging by the stately swell of the rhythms, the beauty of the
metaphors, the elegance of its delicate and precise style, one can tell
that …this protest is the the result of collaboration of the most famous
writers and poets of our time", and going on to point out that the
protest was irrelevant since the project had been decided upon months
before and was already under construction. Indeed, Garnier had been a
member of the Tower Commission that had assessed the various proposals,
and had raised no objection. Eiffel was similarly unworried, pointing
out to a journalist that it was premature to judge the effect of the
tower solely on the basis of the drawings, that the Champ de Mars was
distant enough from the monuments mentioned in the protest for there to
be little risk of the tower overwhelming them, and putting the aesthetic
argument for the Tower: "Do not the laws of natural forces always
conform to the secret laws of harmony?"
Some of the protestors were to change their minds when the tower was built: others remained unconvinced.
Guy de Maupassant
supposedly ate lunch in the Tower's restaurant every day. When asked
why, he answered that it was the one place in Paris where one could not
see the structure. Today, the Tower is widely considered to be a
striking piece of structural art.
Construction
Work on the foundations started in January 1887. Those for the east
and south legs were straightforward, each leg resting on four 2 m
(6.6 ft) concrete slabs, one for each of the principal girders of each
leg but the other two, being closer to the river
Seine were more complicated: each slab needed two
piles installed by using compressed-air caissons 15 m (49 ft) long and 6 m (20 ft) in diameter driven to a depth of 22 m (72 ft)
to support the concrete slabs, which were 6 m (20 ft) thick. Each of these slabs supported a block built of
limestone
each with an inclined top to bear a supporting shoe for the ironwork.
Each shoe was anchored into the stonework by a pair of bolts 10 cm
(4 in) in diameter and 7.5 m (25 ft) long. The foundations were complete
by 30 June and the erection of the ironwork began. The very visible
work on-site was complemented by the enormous amount of exacting
preparatory work that was entailed: the drawing office produced 1,700
general drawings and 3,629 detailed drawings of the 18,038 different
parts needed: the
The task of drawing the components was complicated by the complex
angles involved in the design and the degree of precision required: the
position of rivet holes was specified to within 0.1 mm (0.04 in) and
angles worked out to one
second of arc.
The finished components, some already riveted together into
sub-assemblies, arrived on horse-drawn carts from the factory in the
nearby Parisian suburb of
Levallois-Perret
and were first bolted together, the bolts being replaced by rivets as
construction progressed. No drilling or shaping was done on site: if any
part did not fit it was sent back to the factory for alteration. In all
there were 18,038 pieces of wrought iron using two and a half million
rivets.
At first the legs were constructed as
cantilevers but about halfway to the first level construction was paused in order to construct a substantial timber
scaffold.
This caused a renewal of the concerns about the structural soundness of
the project, and senstional headlines such as "Eiffel Suicide!" and
"Gustave Eiffel has gone mad: he has been confined in an Asylum"
appeared in the popular press. At this stage a small "creeper"
crane was installed in each leg, designed to move up the tower as construction progressed and making use of the guides for the
elevators
which were to be fitted in each leg. The critical stage of joining the
four legs at the first level was complete by March 1888. Although the
metalwork had been prepared with the utmost precision, provision had
been made to carry out small adjustments in order to precisly align the
legs:
hydraulic jacks
were fitted to the shoes at the base of each leg, each capable of
exerting a force of 800 tonnes, and in addition the legs had been
intentionally constructed at a slightly steeper angle than necessary,
being supported by
sandboxes on the scaffold.
No more than three hundred workers were employed on site, and because
Eiffel took safety precautions, including the use of movable stagings,
guard-rails and screens, only one man died during construction.
Inauguration and the 1889 Exposition
The main structural work was completed at the end of March 1889 and
on the 31st Eiffel celebrated this by leading a group of government
officials, accompanied by representatives of the press, to the top of
the tower. Since the lifts were not yet in operation, the ascent was
made by foot, and took over an hour, Eiffel frequently stopping to make
explanations of various features. Most of the party chose to stop at the
lower levels, but a few, including Nouguier, Compagnon, the President
of the City Council and reporters from
Le Figaro and
Le Monde Illustré completed the climb. At 2.35 Eiffel hoisted a large
tricolore, to the accompaniment of a 25-gun salute fired from the lower level
There was still work to be done, particularly on the elevators and the fitting out of the facitities for visitors.
Eiffel had a permit for the tower to stand for 20 years; it was to be
dismantled in 1909, when its ownership would revert to the
City of Paris.
The City had planned to tear it down (part of the original contest
rules for designing a tower was that it could be easily demolished) but
as the tower proved valuable for communication purposes, it was allowed
to remain after the expiry of the permit. The military used it to
dispatch Parisian taxis to the front line during the
First Battle of the Marne.
