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".Imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack.."

It's hard to believe that these words were once used to describe what today is considered to be the world's best-known monument-an icon that brings historic, exotic Paris to life in the minds of people everywhere. But in a letter published in the newspaper Le Temps in 1887, the gigantic black smokestack in question was indeed the Eiffel Tower.

Protest and controversy surrounded Gustave Eiffel's tower from the moment the creator proposed his ambitious project. Certainly at the time of its construction, the Eiffel Tower seemed incongruous in a city adorned with some of the world's finest, stone architecture. But the tower was being built for the 1889 World Fair, intended to showcase the significant progress France had made in engineering and technology in the 100 years since the French Revolution. For an event dubbed the "Universal Exposition of the Products of Industry," the exhibition committee had considered the edgy, iron monument to be entirely appropriate.

Many of the citizens of Paris disagreed. Among the most vocal of the detractors was a group of 47 self-proclaimed defenders of the city's cultural standards, including artists, writers, poets and sculptors, who joined forces to prevent the construction of Eiffel's tower. The critics initially doubted the design could actually be brought to reality, so their protest did not reach fever pitch until ground was actually broken.

On February 14, 1887, with construction barely begun, the Artist's Protest was officially launched with the publication in Le Temps of the "Protest against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel." The letter was addressed to M. Alphand, the director of works for the World Fair, and was signed by numerous artistic luminaries of the time, including Charles Garnier (designer of the Paris opera house), Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Gounod and Francois Coppée.

The opponents counted among France's most creative minds, and as such, Eiffel's beloved design was pelted with every manner of insult. The proposed tower would be a "belfry skeleton" (Paul Verlaine), "a truly tragic street lamp" (Leon Bloy), "a half-built factory pipe, a carcass waiting to be fleshed out with freestone or brick, a funnel-shaped grill, a hole-riddled suppository" (Joris-Karl Huysmans), a "mast of iron gymnasium apparatus, incomplete, confused and deformed" (Francis Coppée). According to the protestors, were the tower to be constructed, it would undoubtedly make Paris and its residents the laughingstock of the entire world.

The war being waged was one of art versus engineering. In the late nineteenth century, engineers were considered uneducated, crass-certainly not possessing of any aesthetic sensibilities. The artists were therefore taken aback when Eiffel granted Le Temps an interview, in which he articulately and passionately defended his design against the onslaught from France 's cultural elite.

In his rebuttal, Eiffel expressed surprise that the artists had waited so long to make known their concerns-nearly two years after his design had been submitted to the Centennial Exposition Committee. The artists had undoubtedly been acquainted with the proposed tower, as one of their number, M. Charles Garnier, had been a member of the exposition committee. And at the time, Garnier had posed no objections to the project.

Eiffel also defended the aesthetics of his tower, saying, ".The curves of the four arrises (arches) of the monument.will give an impression of beauty because they will demonstrate to the viewer the boldness of the conception."

As for the protestors' argument that the Eiffel Tower would overshadow the other historic monuments of Paris, Eiffel threw M. Garnier's own words back at him by asking if his Opéra did not appear crushed by the houses surrounding it, rather than vice versa. This had been a persistent complaint of M. Garnier, referring to the apartment buildings that encircled his masterpiece.

Finally, Eiffel touted the scientific utility his tower would serve, arguing that it was just as important for France to be viewed by the world as a nation of technical accomplishment and progress, as it was to be lauded as a cultural and artistic Mecca.

His case well made, Eiffel won the first round. The exhibition committee stood firmly behind Eiffel, and despite the artists' eloquent protest, construction of the tower proceeded.

However, the controversy was soon re-ignited when citizens living close to the worksite expressed fear that pieces of the tower might come crashing through their roofs, and one resident sued the city of Paris to halt the project. Construction was suspended for several months until Eiffel, desperate to get back to work, agreed to personally assume all liability should anything go wrong during construction-even agreeing to destroy the tower at his own expense should it prove to be dangerous in any way.

The embattled tower finally opened in 1889 to significant popular success. But by the early 1900s, Eiffel's tower was once again the center of debate. Demanding the tower be destroyed, opponents argued that since the 1889 World Fair was long over and the tower had lost its novelty, there was no justification for allowing an "industrial" construction to remain in Paris. At the time, there were very few who would defend the tower on the basis of aesthetics, and it was only due to its exceptional suitability for scientific research that the Eiffel Tower was once again spared.

For the rest of his life, Guy de Maupassant would declare that the reason he left France was to get away from the Eiffel Tower. But today, millions of people travel from all over the world just to get a glimpse of M. Eiffel's much-maligned tower.

Sources:

Green, Meg. The Eiffel Tower. Lucent Books, Inc., 2001.
Loyrette, Henri. Gustave Eiffel. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1985.
The official website of the Eiffel Tower: www.tour-eiffel.fr.

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Karen Plumley is a regular contributor to Paris Eiffel Tower News and other tourism websites. Should you want her to write for you, please reach her at .