Eiffel's Tower

by Jill Jonnes

  Did Vincent and Theo van Gogh ever envision that Vincent’s paintings from his years in Provence and Auvers would become some of the most beloved, familiar, and valuable images in the world? Could Dr. Gachet have dreamed, as he sat for two portraits by van Gogh, that one day, in the final years of the twentieth century, one of them would sell at auction for $82.5 million?

  One can more easily imagine Paul Gauguin concluding that the exalted status and stratospheric prices of his art were long overdue.

  As for James McNeill Whistler, he would have expected his art to be sought after and admired, as it indeed is. But he would be furious to learn that contemporaries such as van Gogh and Gauguin had so eclipsed him—in status, prestige, and prices.

  After James Gordon Bennett’s death, Ogden Mills Reid, son of Whitelaw Reid and by then publisher of The New York Tribune, eventually came into ownership of The New York Herald and, of course, its European edition. No one would have been more amused and pleased than the imperious Commodore to see the Paris-based International Herald-Tribune outlast every New York paper of his day except The New York Times, which came to own it. The International Herald-Tribune’s readership of 240,000 is not huge, but it is very influential.

  One suspects that Annie Oakley might object somewhat to her brassy portrayal in the Broadway musical and Hollywood movie that have most famously preserved her fame and legend, Annie Get Your Gun. But as a longtime star, she could only have approved of her story becoming a classic in American entertainment.

  As for Buffalo Bill, he remains an amazingly enduring American icon, hugely popular, much loved, his myth and persona kept alive over the decades through television, movies, and his very own town. Cody, Wyoming, population nine thousand, is “a small western town with a big city attitude” that keeps the memory and spirit of Buffalo Bill alive through its museums, horse culture, rodeos, and Irma Hotel. Fittingly, the Wild West show lives on in Paris at EuroDisney, while the French love affair with the American West is undiminished.

  And Gustave Eiffel, as he predicted, is now largely forgotten, while his Tour en Fer has become only more famous with the passing years. It is probably safe to proclaim Eiffel’s tower the most celebrated and instantly recognizable structure in the world, as well as the ubiquitous and undisputed symbol of Paris and French culture. All this would undoubtedly have pleased Eiffel the engineer—as would knowing that it took four decades before another building topped his 1,000-foot tower. In 1929, the skyscraping Chrysler Building in New York surpassed the Eiffel Tower, at 1,046 feet. Chrysler’s reign proved to be short-lived, for two years later the Empire State Building became the tallest building in the world, at 1,250 feet.

  Eiffel was sufficiently the patriot that he, above all others, would have gloried in how completely his tower became the symbol of France. Nothing better illustrates this than the story of the final days of World War II in Paris.

  “Lucien Sarniguet, a forty-five-year-old captain in the Paris fire department,” relates Joseph Harriss, “had had the duty of lowering the French flag from the tower’s mast for the last time the morning of June 13, 1940. At that time he had vowed to himself to be the first to raise the tricolor when the occupation ended. Now, having eagerly followed, through the clandestine radio broadcasts of the Resistance, the advance of Leclerc’s Second Armored, Sarniguet judged that August 25 would be the crucial battle for Paris and he intended to boost French morale the best way he knew.” He prepared by fashioning a large tricoleur from old bedsheets dyed with “weak wartime dyes of red and blue.”

  On the morning of August 25, as a battle raged around the nearby École Militaire, Sarniguet and three fellow firemen arrived at the foot of the Eiffel Tower and began their ascent of the 1,671 steps. “When the Germans [at the École Militaire] saw Sarniguet’s group climbing the stairs they opened fire on them, sending bullets ricocheting through the tower’s iron beams. But what Sarniguet saw above him was worse, in a very personal sense, than the danger from German rifle fire: two other men were already halfway up the stairs with a flag in their arms. He bounded up the steps three at a time but could not catch the others, personnel from the nearby French Naval Museum. Trembling with fatigue and frustration just below the top, Sarniguet watched as the two raised the French flag on the Eiffel Tower for the first time in four years. Then, suddenly forgetting his disappointment, he found himself grinning and hugging the men who had beat him to the top—the occupation was over, as every Parisian knew who saw the tricolor snapping defiantly that afternoon atop their proud tower.”

  The Eiffel Tower in 1932, an iconic symbol of Paris

  Strikingly, the Eiffel Tower’s fame and allure have only grown with the passing decades. In 1889, the year when Monsieur Eiffel so triumphantly first held court high in his aerie, more than two million people came to ascend the tower. That figure would not be matched again until 1965. And yet, as the tower marks its 120th anniversary, six million visitors annually wait in long lines for the pleasure of communing with the landmark. What accounts for its enduring glamor and popularity, for its mystique and ubiquity as a globalized image?

  Mega-skyscrapers long ago overshadowed the Eiffel Tower’s status as the world’s tallest structure. Yet no other man-made artifact has ever rivaled the tower’s potent mixture of spare elegance, amazing enormity and complexity when experienced firsthand. The gargantuan wrought-iron skeleton provokes awe as it lays bare the details of Eiffel’s practical engineering genius. The Eiffel Tower, with its sheer aerial playfulness and charm, literally comes to life as crowds clamber up and down its stairs and elevators, and dine and eat and flirt aloft on its platforms high in the sky. And, of course, when visitors feel that frisson of unease as they gaze far below to the panorama of Paris. The tower still serves as a lofty stage for all manner of stunts and derring-do, the starting point for the Tour de France bicycle race, and the ultimate launching pad for Gallic celebratory pyrotechnics. 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.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Working on Eiffel’s Tower has been a pleasure from start to finish. So many people have been helpful in so many ways. As ever, I have enjoyed working with Rick Kot, my delightful editor at Viking, and my always wonderful agent, Eric Simonoff of Janklow & Nesbit.

  In Cody, Wyoming, home of the excellent Buffalo Bill Historical Center and McCracken Research Library, I first met Paul Fees, world expert on Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley. We spent a lovely day visiting Yellowstone and various Cody sites, as he answered innumerable questions. Subsequently, Paul Fees graciously continued to share his knowledge, and kindly reviewed my manuscript. Thanks to his efforts, collector Michael Del Castello generously lent me Buffalo Bill’s personal Paris scrapbook.

  At the McCracken Research Library, Juti Winchester shared her files and enthusiasm, while Ann Marie Donoghue helped with photos.

  In Cody, Jim and Mary Crow at the Lambright Place Bed and Breakfast could not have been kinder, serving not only breakfast but evening cocktails and dinner, too.

  Before I traveled to Paris, our family friend Harold Lubell engaged in advance research in the Eiffel Archives at the Musée d’Orsay. Madame Caroline Mathieu, chief conservator at the Musée d’Orsay, was most welcoming and helpful, as was archivist Fabrice Golec. There, fellow researchers Pascale Co-part and Mirek Malevski were amusing companions whom I thank for a memorable champagne lunch.

  While I do not know the names of the research librarians who assisted me in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, their help was invaluable. My Paris research sojourn was made especially enjoyable by the comings and goings of family and friends. I thank them for all the meals together and treasured memories.

  Once again, I had the pleasure of working with Thomas Edison expert Paul Israel. This time I
finally met him in person while visiting the archive at Rutgers, which he supervises. Over the course of this book, Israel answered multiple queries, and again helped me navigate the vast collection of Edison material in the extraordinary online Edison archive. And finally, he kindly read the whole manuscript and offered very useful criticism. I feel fortunate to have worked on two books with such a generous scholar.

  Much of my day-in and day-out library work is accomplished at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University, where I received my Ph.D. So, once again I am very indebted to the dedicated librarians there who over the years have always gone out of their way to secure books, articles, and information. Librarian Paul A. Espinosa helped me time and again when I was working at Hopkins’s magnificent Peabody Library.

  Many first-class librarians at the Library of Congress exerted themselves on my behalf in the newspaper room, the Prints and Photograph Division, the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, and the reading rooms. Likewise, at the University of Pennsylvania Dental School’s Leon Levy Library, librarian Patricia Heller went above and beyond as I researched Dr. Thomas Evans, dentist to royalty.

  My old friend Judith Weinstein came to my rescue when I needed articles from 1889 French newspapers available only at the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago. Gioia Diliberto, another Chicago friend, offered advice garnered from research for her Parisian novels. Anne Bolton, old friend and expert on French sculpture, educated me on the world of animalier art. Steve Showers, corporate archivist at Otis, was very helpful with materials concerning their Eiffel Tower elevators, including many old photographs. At the Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio, Brenda Arnett kindly provided one of their Annie Oakley photos. My friend and neighbor Cyndy Serfas generously helped organize my many digital photos. I deeply appreciated this act of efficiency and kindness, as did Laura Tisdel, the Viking editorial assistant whom I thank for keeping all things running smoothly as the manuscript became a book.

  I’d like to thank another friend and neighbor, artist Ellen Burchenal, who read an early version of Eiffel’s Tower and offered advice. Eiffel scholar Professor Miriam Levin of Case Western Reserve also critiqued the first draft, and I much appreciated her suggestions. And, of course, my husband, Christopher Ross, read the manuscript, and made me happy by laughing quite a bit as he did. When Eiffel’s Tower was in a near final form, Jenna Dolan was its able copy editor.

  And final thanks to old friends Bob and Peggy Sarlin, who continue to be gracious hosts when I go to Manhattan.

  I should also note that I have translated the French articles and books into English.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER ONE: We Meet Our Characters, Who Intend to Dazzle the World at the Paris Exposition

  1 “The sitting-room”: “The Woman Rifle Expert,” Chicago Tribune, Jan. 13, 1888, p. 6.

  2 “I rolled under an iron gate”: Ibid.

  2 “She looked innocent”: Shirl Kasper, Annie Oakley (Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), p. 22.

  2 “I will practice”: “The Woman Rifle Expert.”

  2 “We will show our sons”: Joseph Harriss, The Tallest Tower (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1975), p. 10.

  2 “an advertisement for the Republican”: Jean Gatot, “The Magnificent Exposition Universelle of 1889,” World’s Fair (Winter 1984): 16.

  4 “You elected me”: Stanley Weintraub, Whistler: A Biography (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1974), pp. 318-19.

  5 “The few works I have sold”: Gauguin by Himself, Belinda Thomson, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), p. 75.

  5 “Not Greek, not Gothic”: Michel Carmona, Eiffel (Paris: Fayard, 2002), p. 296.

  6 “ frictionless floating ring”: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, p. 10.

  6 “one of the most extraordinary”: Daniel Bermond, Gustave Eiffel (Paris: Perrin, 2002), p. 249.

  6 “Politics have done much”: “The Paris Exhibition,” Engineering, May 3, 1889, p. 415.

  7 “as an abomination”: “The French Exposition,” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 6, 1888, p. 4.

  7 “as educator, benefactor”: Gatot, “The Magnificent Exposition Universelle of 1889,” p. 14.

  7 “We will celebrate”: Gustave Eiffel, “The Eiffel Tower,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1890), p. 736.

  8 “For a long time”: Max de Nansouty, “Centenaire de 1789,” Le génie civil: Revue générale des industries françaises et étrangères 6, no. 7 (Dec. 13, 1884): 108-9.

  8 “eight thousand kinds of chemicals”: Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 315.

  8 “Have nothing to do with them”: Ibid., p. 318.

  9 “The ‘talking machine’ ”: “Another Edison Triumph,” New York Times, May 12, 1888, p. 8.

  9 “New Shirt yesterday devoured”: “Where Dogs Are Disappearing,” New York Times, June 28, 1888, p. 2.

  9 “I am tired out”: Letters from Buffalo Bill, Stella Foote, ed. (Billings, Mont.: Foote Publishing, 1954), p. 14.

  10 “fine equipages”: A. A. Anderson, Experiences and Impressions (New York: Macmillan Co., 1933), p. 21.

  11 “Draw a thousand pounds”: Charles L. Robertson, The International Herald Tribune (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 15-16.

  11 “down the aisle, yanking”: Richard O’Connor, The Scandalous Mr. Bennett (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), p. 153.

  12 “Beneath his thin veneer of civilization”: Don Seitz, The James Gordon Bennetts (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1928), p. 270.

  13 “a national exhibition as the world ”: “The Paris Exhibition of 1889,” Engineering, Dec. 16, 1887, p. 627.

  13 “finds Europeans very ignorant”: Henry James, “Americans . . .” The Nation, Oct. 3, 1878, p. 209.

  13 “to put American ideas”: Al Laney, Paris Herald (New York: Appleton-Century, 1947), p. 19.

  14 “France has neither winter”: Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain (New York: Harper and Bros., 1912), p. 642.

  14 “I think that you should make a display”: Letter from Francis Upton to Thomas Edison, dated Aug. 1, 1888, Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition, D8842AAK, Rutgers University.

  CHAPTER TWO: Gustave Eiffel and “the Odious Column of Bolted Metal”

  15 “magnificent panorama”: Gustave Eiffel, “The Eiffel Tower,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1890), p. 734.

  15 “infinitesimally out of plane”: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, p. 60.

  16 “an inartistic . . . scaffolding”: Bermond, Gustave Eiffel, p. 256.

  16 “a man of taste”: Ibid., pp. 258-59.

  18 “nothing more nor less than a German Jew”: Ibid., p. 267.

  19 “Please be good enough”: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, p. 60.

  19 “I would be satisfied with a girl”: Ibid., p. 37.

  20 “Just in two or three days”: Bermond, Gustave Eiffel, pp. 135-36.

  20 “Our poor Laure”: Ibid., p. 136.

  20 “Marguerite is”: Ibid., p. 193.

  21 “a distinctive character”: Henri Loyrette, Gustave Eiffel (New York: Rizzoli, 1985), p. 116.

  21 “The interior was richly”: Robert H. Sherard, Twenty Years in Paris (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1906), p. 166.

  21 “A program has already been”: Eiffel, “The Eiffel Tower,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents, p. 735.

  22 “Was it sensible”: Loyrette, Gustave Eiffel, p. 119.

  22 “These foundations”: Gustave Eiffel to Édouard Lockroy, Dec. 22, 1886, ARO 1981 1253 (5) Eiffel Archives, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

  23 “anti-artistic”: Bermond, Gustave Eiffel, p. 263.

  23 “an extraordinary thing”: Ibid., p. 265.

  23 “wild only about the giddy”: Rastignac, “Eiffel,” L’Illustration, Nov. 13, 1886, p. 3.

  23 “She holds that the building”: “To Cease Building the Tower,” New York Times, Nov. 29, 1886, p. 2.


  25 “Today I must tell you”: Gustave Eiffel to Édouard Lockroy, Dec. 22, 1886, ARO 1981 1253 (5) Eiffel Archive, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

  25 “showed that the subsoil”: Eiffel, “The Eiffel Tower,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents, p. 731.

  26 “I watched an army”: The Eiffel Tower: A Tour de Force, Its Centennial Exhibition, Phillip Dennis Cate, ed. (New York: Grolier Club, 1989), p. 28.

  26 “a lighthouse, a nail ”: “La Tour Eiffel,” L’Illustration, Feb. 5, 1887, p. 3.

  26 “dizzily ridiculous tower”: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, p. 21.

  27 “I believe that the tower”: “The Big Tower for Paris,” New York Times, March 3, 1887, p. 2.

  28 “may be used as a pretext”: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, p. 24.

  28 “each pier would rest”: Ibid., p. 58.

  29 “The descent is a strange experience”: Gaston Tissandier, The Eiffel Tower (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1889), p. 27.

  30 “By means of these”: Eiffel, “The Eiffel Tower,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents, p. 731.

  30 “Soon the elephant’s”: Loyrette, Gustave Eiffel, p. 138.

  31 “250 workmen came”: Rene Poirier, Fifteen Wonders of the World (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 252.

  31 “The position of each”: William A. Eddy, “The Highest Structure in the World,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1889, pp. 726-27.

  31 “When we approach it”: Tissandier, The Eiffel Tower, p. 94.

  32 “there was virtually no experience”: Robert M. Vogel, “Elevator Systems of the Eiffel Tower, 1889,” United States National Museum Bulletin 228 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1961), p. 2.

  32 “Young man, your future career”: Robertson, The International Herald Tribune, p. 19.

  33 “Who but Chamberlain”: O’Connor, The Scandalous Mr. Bennett, p. 209.

  33 “I want you fellows”: Robertson, The International Herald Tribune, p. 20.