Gustave Eiffel Born: Builder of Paris's Iron Icon

Gustave Eiffel is most famous for his tower, but before the tower he built the interior structure of the Statue of Liberty. The iron skeleton that allows Lady Liberty to hold her arm up, that distributes the statue's 225-ton copper skin across a flexible framework designed to sway in Atlantic winds without breaking, that is Eiffel's engineering. Born in Dijon on December 15, 1832, Eiffel graduated from the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures and specialized in metal construction at a time when iron and later steel were replacing stone as the primary structural materials for large-scale projects. He built bridges, viaducts, and railway stations across Europe, South America, and Asia. His Garabit Viaduct in southern France, completed in 1884, was the world's highest bridge when it opened and demonstrated his mastery of large-span metal arch construction. His tower for the 1889 Paris World's Fair, built to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution, was supposed to be temporary, a twenty-year structure to be dismantled after the exhibition. It was 300 meters tall, the highest man-made structure on earth, surpassing the Washington Monument by more than 180 meters. It held that record for forty-one years until the Chrysler Building in New York surpassed it in 1930. Parisians were initially outraged. A petition signed by leading artists and intellectuals, including Guy de Maupassant, called it "a metal asparagus" and "a dishonor to the city." Maupassant allegedly ate lunch at the tower's restaurant daily because, he said, it was the one place in Paris where he couldn't see the tower. Public opinion shifted as the structure was completed and visitors began ascending it. Nearly two million people visited during the World's Fair alone. The tower was saved from demolition because it proved useful as a radio transmission antenna. It has since become the most visited paid monument in the world and the most recognizable symbol of France. Eiffel himself used the tower's top platform for meteorological and aerodynamic experiments. He died on December 27, 1923, at 91, in Paris.