Eiffel's Tower [Hardcover]

During the restoration of the Statue of Liberty some years ago, I supervised several museum projects relating to its history and construction, which attracted me to the life and work of the famous French engineer, Gustave Eiffel. Everyone knows that his company designed and built the Eiffel Tower, but few know that they were also responsible for the internal support structure of America's most famous symbol. The builder of a number of remarkable railroad viaducts including the magnificent Garabit bridge, Eiffel immortalized himself with the unprecedented construction of the 300 meter tower, known to all the world as the Effel Tower.

So, when any books appear on the market relating to Eiffel, I feel compelled to have it. Such was true when I came across Jill Jonnes' newest publication, "Eiffel's Tower," I bought it. And from the day it arrived as I perused the first few pages, I found it utterly irresistible. Confronted with the life of a very complex personality and a long list of masterful achievements as is the case with Eiffel, Jonnes sensibly keeps her focus on the building of the tower as the centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition, but sets it in the context of the many other fascinating individuals whose lives and activities--at least for a time--revolved around the tower. As the tower gradually rises to the heavens in the face of mounting controversy and public criticism, it serves as a backdrop to a veritable who's who of characters, including Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, Thomas Alva Edison, Rosa Bonheur, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and James McNeill Whistler, whose various adventures are played out in its ever-extending shadow.

Jonnes' well-researched account does not ignore the engineering aspects of the Tower's construction, such as the frustrating problems with the installation of the elevator system, but she knows the right moment to pull away and pick up on any one of the several story-lines that gradually evolve throughout the book. As history, it has the taste and feel of really good fiction. But don't expect a dry historical kind of ending, which in so many cases, merely . . . .ends. "Eiffel's Tower" concludes in triumph and tragedy with the completion of the tower to world-wide praise and recognition on all sides (well, almost), followed by the Panama Canal disaster which fell heavily on the shoulders of Eiffel. Highly recommended.

When Gustave Eiffel built his famous tower in Paris for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, he fully expected it to be a temporary monument. It was to outlast the exhibition, but for only twenty years, whereupon it would be demolished. In _Eiffel's Tower: And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count_ (Viking), historian Jill Jonnes shows that part of the reason the tower was to be temporary was that it was not universally appreciated. It was an ugly eyesore, the critics claimed, "an inartistic ... scaffolding of crossbars and angled iron." As the foundation was being dug, artists and intellectuals (like composer Charles Gounod and author Guy de Maupassant) signed their names to an angry protest letter which called the structure a "dizzily ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a black and gigantic factory chimney, crushing [all] beneath its barbarous mass." It was a tower "which even commercial America will not have." The tower proved popular, however, and when the twenty year mark rolled around, Eiffel was glad to be using it as a scientific station, and to be able to claim that it was still needed in that role. He had convinced the French military to use it as a radio antenna in 1903 (but had had to pay for the telegraphy unit himself). When World War One came, any controversy about its permanence was over, since it was essential as a viewing tower and communications post. Jonnes's lively and funny book has a history of the building of the tower and its troubled reputation and construction, but is also about the fair for which it was built, an epochal gathering of notables that Jonnes profiles here. It is hard to imagine Paris without its tower, but the other buildings of the exhibition are long gone, as are the exhibitors, and this book is a welcome recreation of the event.

Eiffel had entered the new field of railroad engineering, and was adept at building complicated bridges and aqueducts. His tower (_Tour en Fer de Trois Cents Mètres_) beat out entries including the gigantic replica of a guillotine (the exposition was to celebrate the centennial of the Revolution). The tower was finished on time for the opening of the exposition, but the elevators were not, and for the first three weeks, if you wanted to get to the top, you took the stairs. You could go to the viewing platform, and if you were famous, you could get invited to Eiffel's own aerie apartment, a suite of rooms with settees and a piano (on which the composer Gounod, who had campaigned against the tower, was graciously invited to play). The tower was the anchor for the Paris Exposition, and it is the anchor for Jonnes's book as well. Jonnes has wonderful stories of those who exhibited, performed, or visited the tower and the fair. Among the most famous of the personalities here was Buffalo Bill Cody (or _Guillaume Buffalo_), who started an extremely successful European tour in Paris. He brought real Indians with him, and Frenchmen enjoyed the spectacle of re-enactions of the stagecoach battles that tamed the West, but the Indians enjoyed the spectacles of Paris. When they were taken to the Cirque d'Éte, they were delighted with French clowns parodying their riding and their Indian wars, and laughed so hard at the clown version of their war dance that they shed tears. With Buffalo Bill was his sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who was a sensation with her ability to shoot down glass bubbles tossed into the air or to split a playing card shot edgewise. Also featured here is Thomas Alva Edison, who was there to show off (and to market) his phonograph; Parisian celebrities were delighted with the machine's capacity to capture their voices. He was feted everywhere, and was dismayed by the richness of the eight or eighteen course dinners. The bad boy of publishing, James Gordon Bennett is here, running the _New York Herald_ from a distance and also founding a Paris edition which touted the exposition; it survives as _The International Herald-Tribune_. Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin are on the fringes as impoverished artists hoping for their big break, a break that the exposition did not provide.

Jonnes takes us on a tour of the fair, where visitors could see Arab orchestras, gigantic engines, and Javanese dancing girls, and could tour the grounds by miniature railroad or by authentic rickshaws. They could view the world's largest oaken wine cask (200,000 bottles worth), or a shepherd using the stilts traditional to his region for getting quickly to far-flung herds. They might fantasize about buying the Eiffel Tower model on display encrusted with 40,000 diamonds. For souvenirs, they did buy lamps, umbrellas, chocolate, and handkerchiefs depicting the tower, just as tourists still do. Jonnes's book swings nicely between engineering, celebrity portraits, and social history, and is a fine resource for all of us who could not make it to the Exposition Universelle ourselves.

This lively and entertaining book is obviously extensively researched. Using newspaper articles, interviews, letters, and so forth, the author lets the reader see events unfold as those who lived at the time saw them.

The book covers the details of the building of the Eiffel Tower as well as the doings of famous people who attended the 1889 Paris World's Fair. The book has nice photos illustrating the building of the tower, showing famous people who attended the world's fair, and scenes from the fair.

Some untranslated French is used in the book, but I got the point even though I don't know French.

Two of my family members were also interested in this book, so we read it aloud. Reviewer Two thought the start of the book was a bit slow (while we were being introduced to so many people). However, once we got to know the characters, he thought the book was one of the most interesting books he'd read in a long time.

Reviewer Three enjoyed the whole book except the epilogue where we're told what happened to these people after the Fair. She was sad to hear what happened to most of them after their high point at the fair since many didn't have happy endings.

I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the building of the Eiffel Tower or in what happened at the 1889 Paris World's Fair. Also, history buffs interested in technology would probably enjoy this book.

Review also posted at Different Time, Different Place Book Reviews

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