What a piece of work
CDG
48˚ 51’ 32” N | 2˚ 17’ 40” E
CDGE13299*
Paris is a city of a thousand worlds, and Allen and I would be hard-pressed to choose just one. History writ in stone. Baroque opulence and hard-edged modernity. Fresh baguettes, chocolat, and vin rouge. Oui, s'il vous plaît, et tout suite! © Vast Compass, 2025.
What we expect of architecture
Charles Dickens famously opens his novel A Tale of Two Cities with the line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
The maxim endures in our every day because life is a paradox. Meaning every age—even absent the bloody Revolution which is a backdrop for Dickens’ story—engages in a to-ing and fro-ing of how to adjudicate the human condition. Things have never been better!, vs. Things have never been worse! What an achievement!, vs. What folly! When I was young...!, vs. Okay, Boomer!
Take the Eiffel Tower. Was it an achievement? A folly? Both? When we build civic structures are our expectations too high, too low?
It’s fair to say we expect a good deal of architecture. We want it to be...
...of its time, yet timeless.
...unique, yet blend in.
...beautiful, yet functional.
...impressive, yet affordable.
While impassioned fans and critics can argue the merits of Paris’ star attraction (and they still do), most of us today see the famed Tower with the benefit of time and distance from when ‘The Iron Lady’ (Fr. La dame de fer) was erected for a third Exposition Universelle in Paris—one of numerous World Fairs being staged across the globe to showcase human innovation in an era when the Industrial Revolution was re-shaping life in dramatic ways. It was an age of achievements like the phonograph and electric streetcar.
It was an also an age in which the top 1% of society held more than half the world’s property and wealth. So World Fair expositions were largely conceived for the wealthy and influential who had leisure time and could afford to travel. The expositions reached their pinnacle during two eras which mostly overlap—the Belle Époque in Europe, and America’s Gilded Age. In Dickens’ novel he contrasted obscene wealth in the French court with abject poverty in the streets of Paris and London. It was a novelization of societal ills that prove all too durable. Indeed, in 2025 even as more than a billion people continue to live in multi-dimensional poverty, AI is helping to create a new billionaire class. These bro billionaires hold an annual event of their own every year to showcase their latest innovations. CES is the new Exposition Universelle.
To quote another Brit with a certain knack for a turn of phrase, “What a piece of work is man.”
Achievement, or folly?
The lattice-inspired Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889, is a powerful exemplar of the Belle Époque. Setting aside the untoward concentration of wealth at the time, the era also is noted for its astonishing burst of innovation and a sweeping sense of optimism that accompanied every new wonder of wonders. In France this meant a celebration of technological prowess graced with sophistication.
With that as a cursory backdrop, does The Eiffel Tower meet the demands we have of architecture, as laid out above?
Being a mash-up of ornamentation echoing the past, even as it’s made of modern materials using modern methods, it’s clearly of its time. Yet it’s proving to be timeless, because today it’s not just the premier travel destination in all of France, it’s the 21st-century’s premier monument-as-light extravaganza.
Admittedly, the Eiffel Tower is not unique. On this point it lags, because by default, imitation appears to be the sincerest form of flattery, with outright copies or derivatives rising tall in 38 countries:
From Las Vegas (Only 1, thank goodness, though the U.S. boasts 11 more)...
...to Japan (4), China (3), and France, itself (2)
Russia has (6), with former members of the U.S.S.R. having two—Azerbaijan (1) and Uzbekhistan (1)
Ukraine has (3)
And there are at least 24 more, including in Morocco, Guatemala, and Indonesia
Beyond the spreadsheet of economic contribution, guidebooks, and Insta, many consider the Eiffel Tower Paris’ most beautiful site, even as it continues to serve a functional role with radio, TV, and mobile phone antennas atop its aerie.
It’s certainly an impressive feat of engineering.
And while the tower had a 20-year window to re-coup its cost of $35 million, concessions erased the Tower’s debt within a year, and today it generates in excess of 100 million euros annually—it’s an economic success that neither the Exposition Tricolorée committee nor Gustave Eiffel could have imagined.
With this admittedly simple adjudication of its merits, the Eiffel Tower has proven its naysayers wrong. From predictions of its ultimate folly to a pun-ily ‘towering’ achievement, it’s a singular story and enduring symbol of the City of Light—for Paris, for France, and for the world writ large.
Is imitation really the sincerest form of flattery?
Vive la France en Las Vegas! At 541’ the faux Eiffel Tower on the Strip is just a bit more than half as high as the real deal. Photo credit: Eloi_Omella, iStock.
The ‘ghost city’ of Tianducheng has seen growth in recent years. Built in the style of the Second Empire Photo, the green space surrounding the replica Eiffel Tower is being developed for commercial use with its opening slated for 2026. Photo credit: MNXANL, iStock.
Aerial view of Tokyo Tower (r.) with Mount Fuji rising above the city of 37 million residents—the world’s largest. Photo credit: Tawatchaiprakobkit, iStock.
LISE11026*—Ten years after the Eiffel Tower made her debut on the world stage, Lisbon introduced the Elevador de Santa Justa (Saint Justa Lift). Wrought iron’s popularity as the newest construction material was attractive to the earthquake-prone city.
In 1890 London’s civic boosters solicited proposals for a ‘Great Tower of London’ to compete with France’s Eiffel Tower. Of 68 entries, design #37 won the day. Construction began in 1892, but marshy ground and financial snags caused construction to cease after the structure had risen only 154 feet. Planned to top out at 1,200 feet the monument would have been taller than both the Eiffel Tower and today’s iconic Shard in London.
The abandoned project remained a spectacle for a number of years before being deemed unsafe and blown up in 1904. Wembley Stadium was built over the site for the 1923 British Empire Exhibition. When the stadium was rebuilt in 2000, the lowering of the level of the pitch resulted in the concrete foundations of the failed tower being rediscovered. Image credit: Public domain, Wikipedia.
Known officially as Wembley Tower (and as ‘Watkin’s Folly’ by wags) the Great Tower of London was never completed. Edward Watkin was a railway magnate and member of Parliament. His railway was planned to transport paying visitors to an amusement park featuring the iron tower at the terminus of his railway in Middlesex, now Wembley. This photograph was taken some time between the completion of the first level in 1899 and its demolition in 1904. Photo credit: The Public Domain Review, Wikipedia.
First published drawing of the Eiffel Tower, Génie Civil, December 13, 1884, reprinted in American Architect, February 21, 1885. Note that the French illustration ignores the existence of the Washington Monument by not listing it as among the tallest structures in the world. (Loyrette, Eiffel)
What’s in a name?
Eiffel’s name is attached to the tower because he owned the firm that built it. He also owned the early sketches and designs, though they were not in his hand. Conveniently, he also was on the committee overseeing the guidelines of the competition and was enthusiastic about the proposed height of the ‘clou’ (he was well aware, given his experience in iron and steel engineering, that only new materials of the day in which he specialized could achieve the committee’s vision of a 1,000-foot monument). He also may have had a hand in design specs regarding the footprint of the gateway to the fair as laid out by the committee in its ‘open call’ for submissions—a tidy square of 410’x410’. Any guesses as to the baseline dimensions of the Eiffel Tower?
CDGE13304*— Engineers on Eiffel’s payroll—MM. Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin—conceived of the structural framework while the Eiffel Tower’s architect was Stephen Sauvestre, a friend of Eiffel’s.
CDGE07017*—Sauvestre brought elegance to the tower’s base with the addition of its decorative, filigreed arches which provide minimal structural integrity.
The architect created visual heft with the addition of concrete bases at each corner on which the tower appears to rest. Three contain elevator hydraulics and one holds an office. Photo credit: resulmuslu, iStock
Excavations for the foundations reached 72 feet on the Seine side and 49 feet on the Champ-de-Mars side. Concrete foundation blocks were poured on compacted gravel. Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons (r.).
Be careful what you ask for
Before the design competition was even completed, Eiffel bought the sketches and early blueprints from his inner circle to ensure the structure would be solely his. These actions to secure the IP behind the tower in no way impugn Eiffel’s name. In truth, no one else at the time had the notoriety, financial wherewithal, and political connections to make his namesake tower a reality, as his team of confidants well knew. After all, they stayed with him to realize the fully-formed vision and oversee the execution of the monument we know and love today.
With the design portion of the tower’s journey conceptually complete, the real work could begin. But with less than 25% of the project funded by the Exposition Tricolorée committee on which he served, full payment for its construction would come down to M. Gustave Eiffel.
It remained to be seen if the Tower was a folly or a fortuitous investment. But one thing was certain, the Tower was being built in a period of infectious optimism. It was an era of big ideas and bigger risks, and Eiffel, if nothing else, was most assuredly cut from the cloth of his time. Straining to raise 10,000 tons of iron higher than the Pharoah’s pyramids themselves was the stuff of both cautionary tales and of heroic bravura.
What a piece of work is man, indeed.
Recommended
There are more than 60 books profiling Gustave Eiffel and his Tower. Of books currently in print, nearly 200 have the Tower on their cover, and Mappit’s open source community tags the Eiffel Tower directly as the setting for 21 books. But for my money, Jill Jonnes’ conversational style and exhaustive detail in Eiffel’s Tower makes the era in which the Tower was built come alive in a particularly entertaining and satisfying way.
Eiffel's Tower: And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count
From Amazon
“The story of the world-famous monument and the extraordinary world's fair that introduced it.”
Universal Icon
“The perfect international icon, she is an inspiration to the greatest artists and creators, and an embodiment of the values of liberty and peace.”