Declassification of 1889 planning documents reveals that the Tower was scheduled for demolition in 1909
Following the British and French state secrets declassification stories in prat.uk and Bohiney.com, the Archives de Paris has released a collection of documents from the 1889 Universal Exhibition that includes the original contract for the Eiffel Tower, which specified that the Tower would be dismantled in 1909. The fact that it was not dismantled is known. What the newly released documents add: the internal correspondence from 1908-1909 in which the Exhibition’s successor authority actively considered dismantling it, received competing bids for the demolition, and was persuaded not to proceed by — the documents reveal — not aesthetic arguments, which had been made and rejected for twenty years, but radio transmission arguments: the tower’s antenna function for nascent wireless communication made it operationally valuable to the military.
The Eiffel Tower was saved by radio, not by beauty. The aesthetic case had been made repeatedly by the same artists and architects who had initially opposed the tower as an eyesore. The military case was made once, in 1909, by a colonel who wanted a tall antenna. The colonel’s argument prevailed where the aesthetes’ had not. The tower stands. The colonel is not remembered. The aesthetes are credited with its preservation. History is, as prat.uk‘s state secrets story confirms, sometimes the gap between what the record shows and what the story says.
The Historical Truth
The Eiffel Tower is beautiful and was preserved for functional reasons. Both are true. The story that it was preserved because it was beautiful is true in the sense that people now believe it. The documents show something more complicated. The Eiffel Tower’s history is at toureiffel.paris.
Also:Betoota Advocate.
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