The History of World Expositions

The Paris World Exposition 1889
A Permanent Feature of the Paris Skyline: The Eiffel Tower


Year: 1889
City: Paris
Country: France
Duration: 6th May - 31st October 1889
 1 

 2 

 3 


Copyright: L'Exposition de Paris de 1889. Journal hebdomadaire, S. 113
Symbol

The true architect of the Eiffel Tower was not in fact Gustave Eiffel. In 1883, when it was first rumoured in Paris that the French capital would host a great international exhibition to commemorate the centenary of the Revolution, two engineers who worked for Eiffel, Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nougier, presented him with plans for a 1000-foot high tower. Architects and visionaries had been playing with the idea of such a tower for decades, beginning with a scheme to construct a tower using the ironwork salvaged from London's Crystal Palace of 1851. In the meantime, however, the two French engineers had amassed so much practical experience in the construction of giant wrought-iron bridges that their design could not be dismissed as a flight of fantasy. At first Eiffel declined to take up the scheme himself, but he did allow his two engineers to carry on working on the project with the aid of the architect Stephan Sauvestre.


EXPOSEEUM - The Museum of World Exhibitions, Hanover, Expo Plaza 11
Open every Sunday from 11 to 16