It always amazes me that this fabulous structure was just built to be the entrance arch of the 1889 Paris Exhibition – and that it was built by people using wheel barrows!Thank you Monsieur Eiffel. I always watch the video of its building and am humbled by the genius of the inventors of this wonderful era in history when people dreamed and created follies as magnificent as this and the Crystal Palace, in London.
The tower is an engineering masterpiece - but it is also art. Just look at the detail of the supporting arch…
… and how this melds into the patterns of the rising structure of the tower itself
I was later to form a more personal connection with the tower by dancing regularly in the Red Room on St Charles Avenue in New Orleans – the structure being a former Eiffel Tower restaurant dismantled and its 11,000 pieces reconstructed in New Orleans in the 1980s. The detail was true to the original, with even the bar being a copy of the original - with a skylight above a metal and glass etched awning.George Lancelin bought the restaurant in return for dismantling it when, in 1981 engineers attributed its extra weight as the cause of the tower sagging slightly. However, his hopes of recreating the restaurant were dashed when French authorities forbad Monsieur Lancelin from erecting it anywhere in France with the name ‘Tour Eiffel’ - Eiffel Tower.
In 1982 it was bartered to Moreton Binn (I often wonder for what!), who owned the bartering company Atwood Richards Inc., in New York.
I am much taken with the concept of a bartering company. Imagine the potential. If you bought the last of the Space Shuttles, what would you barter it for?
Perhaps a recreated Tardis?...a French Country villa? … the Simplon Express? … or the Greek economy – as it is also going nowhere fast.
In any case, Mr Binn (a wonderful name for the owner of a bartering company) eventually found a buyer in John Onorio, General Manager of Century Hotels in New Orleans.
The New Orleans piece of the Eiffel Tower had a troubled history as a restaurant and, after sitting idle since a few years prior to Hurricane Katrina , has re-opened as the Cricket Club –the new home of the legendary New Orleans Culinary Institute
But back to the original: Is it worth the climb to the first platform of the Eiffel Tower?
If you can make it: Yes.
I thought the view worth the effort.
Somehow the clear cold lines of the metal structure seem a good frame for the golden dome of Les Invalides …
…the River Seine, and the city below…
Wind and cold - and the 347 steps to get there - aside, it is a heady experience to be standing there with all Paris at your feet – but the further 327 steps to the next level I declined!One of the best viewpoints from which to view the Eiffel Tower is actually from a distance - on the other side of the Seine at Trocadéro, beneath the golden limestone buildings of the Palais de Chaillot...and from the first platform you can see Trocadéro beautifully laid out below.
As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe famously said...
Architecture is "frozen music".
The tone of mind produced by architecture does approach the effect of music.
It can create harmony in the landscape - just as a memorable musician creates harmony within music.
As we look at this elegant boulevard linking both sides of the Seine, one cannot but agree.
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