When Paris hated the Eiffel Tower

On December 28, 1923, El Comercio published a cable from Paris, announcing the death, in that city and on that day, of the famous engineer Gustave Eiffel, at 91 years of age. Born in Dijon in 1832, he completed his higher education at the School of Arts and Crafts in the French capital, obtaining the title of engineer. From 1858 he began to work on the large metal constructions of the Bordeaux and Bayonne bridges and on the railway lines. Very soon Eiffel was the leading authority on the construction and use of metal structures. He formed several companies to attend to the numerous and incessant jobs requested from all over Europe and America. Along with his money and fame, he also received numerous recognitions. In 1878 he was awarded the Legion of Honor.

The 1889 Universal Exposition was held in Paris, which received tens of thousands of people from all over the world. Since 1887 Eiffel had begun the construction of the famous 300-meter-high iron tower that bears his surname. From one moment to the next, a violent controversy broke out between supporters and detractors of the metal monument and, for the first time, Eiffel’s talent was called into question.

The notable Spanish journalist Néstor Luján collected the main issues of this matter in that great little book titled La Belle Epoque. The most important newspapers began a furious attack against Eiffel. One of them said: “Paris is going to be disgraced. Fortunately this disgrace will not last long. It will only be a matter of a few months. When the Exhibition ends this horror will be demolished”.

The most conspicuous Parisian intellectuals met for such a “deplorable” reason and wrote a statement that was widely circulated. The text was short and lapidary. “The signatories, writers, painters, sculptors, architects, lovers of the hitherto intact beauty of Paris, want to protest with all our strength, in the name of art and the history of France, threatened with the erection in the heart of our capital of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower, which public vitriol has baptized with the name of the Tower of Babel.”

“Paris is going to be disgraced. Fortunately this disgrace will not last long. It will only be a matter of a few months. When the Exhibition ends this horror will be demolished.”

One day Paul Verlaine left his refuge in one of his favorite cafes, took a cab and ordered him to be taken to the vicinity of the tower under construction. When he saw her he stuck his face out of the window and exclaimed in horror: “Coachman, back! Turn around! It is horrendous, hateful, ignoble”. Those who thought that way were wrong. We all know the immense success of the tower that became the guardian of the eternal spirit of Paris.

Thanks to the kindness of the historian Leticia Quiñones I have brief information about the works carried out by Eiffel in Peru. The Tacna power plant (1863), a bridge in La Oroya (1874), the controversial church of Tacna (1875), the Chala dock (1876), the customs and dock of Arica (1872), and the church of San Marcos in said port, when it belonged to Peru (1875). Eiffel’s best-known construction in our country is the so-called Casa de Fierro, a prefabricated iron mansion that was exhibited at the 1889 Exhibition and was purchased during the fleeting prosperity that Loreto enjoyed due to the rubber boom. This structure, obviously disassembled, arrived in Iquitos and after multiple events that would take too long to describe, part of that house, in good condition, is currently located in the Plaza de Armas of the capital of Loreto.