Before it became a symbol of the city itself, the Eiffel Tower, or La Tour en Fer de Trois Cents Metres as it originally was known, was a controversial architectural curiosity. Selected to be the centerpiece for the 1889 World's Fair, it was initially derided as ugly, anti-French, and useless.
Fittingly, the critical tides turned once the fair opened and the public flocked to this monument designed to celebrate the power and ingenuity of the French Republic; "Eiffel would say proudly, 'We gave the monarchies the spectacle of democracy happy by virtue of its own effort'"(155). Jill Jonnes' Eiffel's Tower attempts to capture the time and place that gave birth to what is, once robbed of its familiarity, a strange creation.
Defending it from early critics, Eiffel argued "'the tower will have its own beauty'"(27). "Noticeably touchy on the subject of its practical purpose(21), he maintained that in building the "'tallest edifice ever raised by man....there is an attraction and a charm inherent in the colossal...it will show that we are not simply an amusing people, but also a country of engineers and and builders who are called upon all over the world to construct'"(27). Some lambasted it as ugly, dismissed it as "'an inartistic...scaffolding of crossbars and angled iron'"(16). It drew inevitable comparison through allusion to the Tower of Babel: the correspondent for the London Telegraph referred to it as "Eiffel's Tower of Babel...a gigantic monument [that] strikes you as being one of the most daring attempts since Biblical days"(42); tone-deaf to hubris, a French champion of the Tower, Le Figaro's editor Albert Wolff admired the audacity of its conception, the mathematical precision of its execution...at once graceful and imposing, having naught in common with that tower of Babel, which, if it ever did exist, rose no higher than a fifth story window"(46). A French mathematician declared the design fundamentally flawed and predicted the tower would collapse.
While often thought of as an art object, the Tower was and is a remarkable feat of engineering. Nearly doubling the height of the Washington Monument, "'there was virtually no experience in structural history from which Eiffel could draw other than a series of high piers that his own firm had designed earlier for railway bridges'"(32). For the tower to reach to a thousand feet, the surface of the first platform of the tower, at a height of approximately 180 feet, had to be precisely flat. To achieve this, Eiffel constructed a unique system of sandboxes along and hydraulic jacks under the towers four legs, allowing them to adjust the height of each leg to a millemetre. Likewise, rivet holes on the towers many arches and braces had to be accurately placed to "one-tenth of a millimeter'"(42). Then, there was the engineering difficultires arising from Eiffel's insistence that the cars run up the legs of the tower, rather than up the side.
Once completed, the public loved it, visiting it in droves. Eiffel was "deluged with all sorts of letters,"(152) including one from a woman who "spending one night" on the tower. It would eventually attract 12,000 visitors a day. Jonnes is quick to compare this to Edison's phonograph that attracted "tens of thousands" daily and the Wild West show that attracted thirty thousand people a day (138). The press gushed over it. Journalist after journalist climbed to its top and enthused over the novelty of the experience. Jonnes relies a bit heavily on newspaper accounts.
While centered on the tower, Jonnes' intends her book as a history of the Tower's particular moment. She attempts this by writing of the various legendary figures who crossed paths under the large shadow cast by the Tower. These figures include: the painters Paul Gaugin and James McNeill Whistler who exhibited at the fair, Thomas Edison who introduced his phonograph at it, New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennet who chronicled it for Americans present and at home, and Wild Bill Cody and Annie Oakley who were part of Cody's Wild West Extravaganza playing in a field nearby. Each of these lines is full of interesting facts and colorful incidents and Jonnes does an admirable job of weaving them together while staying focused on the Tower.
Yet, one is left wondering at the end of the book exactly what Jonnes was after. While her account is entertaining, it is hard to grasp the whole she was after by choosing the characters and story threads she weaves together here: what was it about this moment that made it unique or admirable or distinctly and uniquely fascinating? Perhaps she's content to simply lay out the evidence and let it speak as it will to the reader.
At one point, Jonnes defines the moment of The Universal Exposition as pivotal by borrowing the assessment of the Vicomte de Vogue, "'In this monumental chaos which has arisen in the Camp de Mars, in these edifices of iron and of decorated tile, in the machinery which obeys a new dynamic power, in these encampments of men of every race, above all, in the new ways of thinking which suggest new ways of living, are to be seen the lineaments of a civilization which is as yet only outline, the promise of the world which will be tomorrow'"(261).
This is a diverting book. The Universal Exposition was devoted to spectacle and the book follows suit. It presents a parade of arresting images and intriguing scenes without probing too deeply into any one. What to make of Edison crossing paths with Souix cheiftains and warriors at the top of the Eiffel Tower? Paul Guagin at Wild Bill Cody's Wild West Show? The odd little apartment Eiffel built himself at the top of the tower? The visit of American minister Whitelaw Reid to Cody's Souix warriors in hopes of finagling their names on a treaty deeding away yet more of their land? The glittering banquet Le Figaro held for Edison attended by: The Bey of Tunis, "'the famous toreadors Garcia and Valentin,'"Buffalo Bill, Jules Massenet, Prince Roland Bonaparte, "'trailed by a procession of Foreign Ministers, French generals, and various exponentnts of Art and literature'"(226). Talk about your twelve days of Christmas guest list.
And, finally, this story for all those who ever had a bad boss. The tyrannical Herald editor James Gordon Bennett was aboard his yacht playing chicken with an American navy cruiser till his editor who happened to be aboard took control and steered Gordon's yacht out of harm's way. Bennett was unforgiving; initially "he had deposited his managing editor on a desolate island," left some food, "before steaming off"(74). Other guests aboard convinced him to go back and save the poor managing editor, who was subsequently fired(74).
