Eiffel Tower Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Eiffel Tower - Essay Example This building has an amazing history of origin: in 1889 in Paris in order to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution the World Exhibition was held, so the city government instructed to erect a temporary structure, which had to serve as an entrance arch. The Common French Competition of architectural and engineering projects was launched on May the 1st, 1886. The competition attracted 107 applicants, and most of them just repeated the tower project proposed by Eiffel. Thus Eiffel project became one of the four winners, and after that the engineer made final changes to the project and found a compromise between the original purely engineering scheme design and decorative option. As a result, committee insisted on the Eiffel Tower plan, although the idea was not his, but his two employees. Such a complex structure was collected within two years, and it became possible because Eiffel applied to special construction methods. In order to match the tower to the sophisticated tastes of the Parisian public, architect Stephen Sauvestre was instructed to contribute the design and to work on tower’s artistic appearance. He proposed to add decorative arches to the base, to make a glass pavilion on the first level, to give a rounded shape to the top of the tower and use a variety of elements for its decoration. 300 workers performed construction works during two years, two months and five days. High speed of construction was provided by precision drawings and exact dimensions. And on March the 31st, 1889, in less than 26 months after the start of digging pits, Eiffel invited several more or less physically hardy officials to make the first rise on 1710 level. Construction was stunning and got immediate success. During first six months more than 2 million visitors came to see the "iron lady†. Despite its common success, from the very beginning of the construction there were also enough opponents to the building of the