The Eiffel Tower Celebrates Its 125th Anniversary With An Entirely Renovated First Floor

What’s 324m tall, 125m across, weighs over 10,000 tons, has 1,665 steps, sparkles with 20,000 light bulbs every night on the hour and has 2.5 million rivets to hold it all together? The Eiffel Tower, of course. The tallest edifice ever raised by man at the time (it maintained the world record until 1929 when New York’s Chrysler building topped it), by 2002 it had reached the 200 millionth visitor mark and today welcomes 7 million visitors per year. For its 125^thanniversary this year, its entire first floor has been modernized with a spectacular transparent glass floor and railing, which offers visitors a plunging view of the ground below and the opportunity to walk above the void at 57 meters up. The facilities of the Eiffel Tower’s first floor have also been totally transformed to better host visitors: a new pavilion housing a welcome center, services (information point, boutique, restaurant) and an exhibition on the Eiffel Tower revealing the history and secrets of Paris’ most famous monument. The tower’s first floor is also now accessible to people with disabilities.

The Eiffel Tower was the result of the vision and technical genius of engineer, Gustave Eiffel. After studies in chemistry, Eiffel embarked on a career in metallurgy, then worked for a builder of steam machines and railway equipment before starting his own company in 1867. He was responsible for the Maria Pia bridge over the River Douro in Portugal, the Garabit Viaduct in central France, Budapest station in Hungary, the metal framework of the Bon Marché department store in Paris, the cupola of the Observatory of Nice and even the internal structure of the Statue of Liberty, but his crowning achievement was the construction of the Eiffel Tower, created in time for the opening of the 1889 World’s Fair, exactly one century after the French Revolution.

The Eiffel Tower seen from the Champ de Mars (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Big bridges inspired the tower’s design. Two years in the making, 50 engineers and designers produced 5,300 drawings, over 100 workers built more than 18,000 different parts in a workshop just outside of Paris and another 132 assembled them on-site. Foundation work began in 1887, with the workers using only shovels, and rubble was removed by horse-drawn carts and steam locomotives. The deepest foundations extended just 15 meters underground, and the four feet of the tower, standing in a square, were set into each of these foundation ditches.

In assembling the first floor, the most difficult aspect was to position the truss frames at a slanting angle to meet the horizontal beams. The engineers resorted to using hydraulic jacks to move each foot and mounted a unique scaffolding system, on top of which lay boxes of sand that emptied to regulate the slant of the truss frames. The tower was erected like an oversized Meccano with extreme precision, and subsequently inaugurated in 1889, amazingly without any fatal accidents during construction.

As with all major architectural projects, the construction of the Grand Iron Lady on the Champs de Mars esplanade was the subject of heated debate and the target of violent protests. The brainchild of Eiffel, recognized as a builder of iron structures and an inventor ahead of his time, whose project proposal was selected from among 106 other contenders, the entrepreneur was not one to be easily swayed, sticking to his guns while detractors were calling him a machine-maker who was bringing dishonor and ugliness to the city.

Eiffel Tower; construction view in 1889 of the girders of the first story (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But Eiffel chose to follow his convictions. Paris at the turn of the 20^th century marked an age of new revolutionary inventions that have forever changed our lives, a time when millions flocked to the city of light to see the latest in industrial, scientific, technological, architectural and artistic achievements from around the globe, attending the world fairs that showcased structures such as the Grand Palais, developments such as the Paris metro, the telephone, escalator, electrical lighting and talking films, and a period when aviation was literally taking off. The belle époque was characterized by relative peacefulness and booming trade, a period in constant evolution. Everyone was building bigger, higher, faster, better and the Eiffel Tower was to be his contribution to the capital.

But why is it that a structure initially built to last for 20 years is still around today? Why is it that all visitors to Paris have the Eiffel Tower on their must-see lists and that it maintains the record as the world’s most visited entrance-paying monument? What has contributed to its enduring success? Visitors are left speechless by its colossality, the immensity of the effort that went into its construction and the splendor of the result, much like the Pyramids, the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Acropolis.

Eiffel showed that a piece of modern engineering could also incorporate an aesthetic design, that strength and beauty weren’t mutually exclusive. He wrote: “Do people think that because we are engineers, beauty plays no part in what we build, that if we aim for the solid and lasting, that we don’t at the same time do our utmost to achieve elegance? The first principle of architectural aesthetics is that the essential lines of a monument should be determined by it fitting perfectly into a setting.”

The Eiffel Tower from below (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By the 1920s, the Eiffel Tower represented progress and modernity, and its image became inseparably associated with Paris. The fate of the monument and the city became inextricably intertwined. Today, it is the beacon of Paris that shines its light across the world, a temple to which poets, painters, singers, choreographers, actors, filmmakers, photographers, heads of state and royalty pay homage: Rajiv Gandhi, Dwight Eisenhower, Hu Jintao, Queen Sirikit of Thailand, Marc Chagall, Nicolas de Staël, Jean Cocteau, Le Corbusier, Edith Piaf, Luc Besson, Ron Howard, Jackie Chan and Michael Jackson. It is an inspiration for people from all walks of life, including aviators, ice skaters, mountain bikers, bungee jumpers, golfers, firemen, tightrope artists, parachutists, orchestras, singers and even the Pope, on which they performed sporting, religious and artistic feats and stunts.

Additionally, it was because of its scientific contributions that the tower was able to increase its life span. Eiffel always had in mind that it would be an observatory and laboratory dedicated to science. And so from 1889 onward, it became a station for meteorological and astronomical observation, physics experiments, a strategic observation post and a communications base for signaling, housing equipment like barometers, wind gauges, lightning conductors, a wind tunnel and a giant antenna for the earliest radio broadcasts. It was also the site of the first wireless telegraph link and played an important role in the launch of French television.

One of the most impressive feats the tower are the lifts that run up and down it, a great technical achievement for the era, as this was the first time engineers had tackled such constraints of height and elevator loads. Some lifts from the early days even continue to be used today. The greatest challenge, however, was wind resistance – that’s why the four enormous feet that taper up to the peak, the tower’s curved shape and numerous empty spaces within the structure, leaving fewer surfaces exposed to the natural elements that would adversely affect its stability. And so the tower continues to be the sentinel of Paris, proving over and again its capacity to stand the test of time.