Paris

When thinking of France, many different images come to mind. Common images include berets, the Louvre, and(of course) the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower, or La Tour Eiffel in French, is probably the strongest image of France in the minds of Americans. But why is a large metal structure such a prominent symbol of French cultures to foreigners and why is it such a major engineering feat? The following will explore how the Eiffel Tower came to be and the difficulties it has faced throughout the years. The year is 1886. In 1889, a mere three years away, Paris will host the World’s Fair. To impress the rest of the world, they must showcase something incredible, something that the world has never before seen or thought of. France has announced a contest to create the centerpiece for the World’s Fair. Enter Alexandre Gustave Eiffel(commonly known as Gustave Eiffel), a 54 year old engineering genius, and Morris Koechlin and Emile Nouguier, employees of Eiffel. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel is the man most associated with the tower. Eiffel was born in Dijon, France in 1832. While he is best known for his work on the Eiffel Tower, most people don’t know his other works. One of these include America’s very own Statue of Liberty. While he did not design the statue, he is responsible for creating the metal interior structure. He also constructed such structures as the Maria Pia bridge in Oporto, Portugal and the Bon Marché Department Store in Paris.

Eiffel decided to enter the competition with Koechlin and Nouguier designing the tower. Koechlin and Nouguier worked with French architect Stephen Sauvestre to create a blueprint for Eiffel’s tower. The tower’s first design was rejected by Eiffel, but after a second try, the final design of the tower now known worldwide was submitted to the contest. One ornate feature that was added to the final design of the tower was names of 72 scientists. Eiffel decided to pay homage to 72 great men of science by carving 18 names into each side of the tour. These men encompassed every field of science, from mechanics and physicists to chemists and naturalists. A few of these men included Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, a French chemist who came up with two laws concerning properties of gasses, and Henri Giffard, a French engineer who invented the steam injector. The effect wind would have on the tower was a large concern of Eiffel’s, especially since a structure this large had never attempted to be constructed before. The architect’s were forced to rely on past experience instead of mathematical calculations to determine the wind’s effect of the tower. For this reason, the tower had to be designed section by section as opposed to using an overall equation. Eiffel was still unsure of the tower’s wind resistance so he “overdesigned’ the bottom section, for safety reasons.” The tower does sway slightly when windy, but is more affected by sunlight. As the sun hits the tower, the side facing the sun can move away from the sun as much as seven inches and the entire tower can grow as much as six inches. The architects’ final design was for a 984 foot tower called Tour en Fer de Trois Cent Mètres, which roughly translates to Iron Tower Three Hundred Meters. The tower was to be constructed from 18,000 pieces of wrought iron and two and a half million rivets to create the lattice framework. Eiffel decided to construct his tower from wrought iron to prove that the tower could be as strong as stone while also being lighter.

Construction began in July 1887 and Eiffel’s iconic tower was opened to the public in 1889. It costed 7,799,401.31 in French gold francs to create the tower in 1889. This converts to roughly € 1,189,011.06 or $1,611,466.69 today. But Eiffel’s tower was not constructed without it’s fair share of difficulties. One of the greatest challenges that construction of the Eiffel Tower faced was that Parisians simply did not want it in their city. Many important citizens, including writer Guy de Maupassant, composer Charles Gounod, and architect Charles Garnier, objected to the tower. They created a petition stating that, “the Eiffel Tower, which even commercial America would not have, is without a doubt the dishonor of Paris(Thomas, Vivian.).” Close to 300 artists, sculptors, writers, and architects signed the petition and sent it to commissioner of the Paris World’s Fair. They begged that construction of the tower be discontinued because the tower was “ridiculous” and “would dominate Paris like a gigantic black smokestack.

The managers of the project decided to continue with their original plan, despite the amount of protesting from around the city. Construction continued, along with more difficulties. After Eiffel won the design contest, there was much procrastination in creating a contract on the commissioners part. In fact, the contract was put off for so long that Eiffel was afraid he would not be able to finish in time for the World’s Fair. The 200 plus workers involved with construction faced a punishing work schedule and legitimate safety concerns. Construction workers labored for hours on end, often in freezing weather on small platforms incredibly high off the ground. Fortunately, but unfortunately for him, only one man was killed during construction of the tower. Eiffel’s Tower was finally opened to the public on March 31, 1889, two years after construction began, just in time for the World’s Fair. The citizens of Paris put up with what they believed would only be a temporary eyesore, as “Eiffel only had permit to keep the tower for 20 years” I believe this is what makes the Eiffel Tower such an incredible engineering feat. The tower was built to be temporary, lasting only 20 years if even that, but has now remained standing for 124 years with few complications. Eiffel’s Tower was allowed to remain because “proved valuable for telecommunication purposes.” Eiffel hated to see his hard work go to waste after just 20 years, so he decided to make the tower an essential part of Paris. After the completion of the tower, Eiffel created a meteorology laboratory on the third floor, about 900 feet in the air. When the laboratory was completed, Eiffel invited scientists from all around to visit the tower to complete research. The lab was used to study anything and everything, ranging anywhere from gravity to electricity. Aside from Eiffel, many other scientists studied in the tower’s laboratory. Some of these scientists include Jean Bernard Léon Foucault and Eugène Ducretet, who both made important discoveries with the help of the tower. Foucault is, of course, known for the invention of the pendulum. The invention of the pendulum was important because it proved the theory that the Earth is moving at incredibly high speeds.

History has not been as kind to Eugène Ducretet as it has been to Foucault, although Ducretet’s discovery was equally as important. On November 5th, 1898, Ducrete successfully performed the first wireless telegraphy trial. The trial was completed between the Eiffel Tower and the Pantheon, which were four kilometers apart. Only one year later, in 1899, Ducrete successfully sent the first telegraphy waves across the English Channel. Eiffel’s tower is one of the world’s most incredible engineering feats. It was not planned over a long period of time, but rather designed fairly quickly so as to have a shot for everyone to marvel over it at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Even though the design won the contest, that was not the end of the struggles. The fact that the tower was completed in time for the World’s Fair is astonishing, and the fact that it still stands today is even more so. Structures that are meant to stand only 20 years rarely, if ever, end up standing 124 years almost completely unharmed. If this does not qualify Eiffel’s tower as an incredible feat of engineering, I don’t know what does. The Eiffel Tower is an incredible feat, it was an engineering risk to carry out the construction of it, especially with most of Paris objecting the creation of the tower. Gustave Eiffel and his team of engineers took a leap of faith to do something that had never been done before and there leap has now become one of the most, if not the most iconic images of France. The incredible thought that went into every little detail of the tower makes the entire project incredibly beautiful and unique. Finally, here are Gustave Eiffel’s thoughts on his tower: “Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long lasting structures? Aren’t the genuine functions of strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony? Besides, there is an attraction, a special charm in the colossal to which ordinary theories of art do not apply.

In these poems, the poets use a range of techniques to present feelings and emotion from the point of the speaker. Ghazal is in the style of a traditional Persian love poem, which puts forward powerful imagery and metaphors, in an attempt to summarise the emotion of love, while In Paris With You is a playful attempt to woo a previous lover in a more informal, colloquial way. Ghazal, as mentioned before, is written like a love poem. However, one may consider it an example of role reversal- unusually; it is written from the point of view of a woman, not a man.

Although it is not a sonnet, the form of poem is a Ghazal- this is a type of song, of mystical love poetry: we can thus compare it to a sonnet in the way that love is explored as a theme. It is structured in rhyming couplets- these can be described like poems themselves, as they capture the speaker’s strong feeling of attachment. These also contain refrain words, which help to drive in the points being made, such as “me”, which forms part of the weak rhyme scheme.

The love in the poem can be seen in the first stanza- “If I am the grass and you the breeze, blow through me/ If I am the rose and you the bird, then woo me”. These examples of natural imagery mean we can see how the idea of the speaker and the person they address being together is beneficial- in fact, drawing from the imagery, we could go further and say that the idea is a natural (good) thing. Another emotion present is longing. This is the feeling of desperation to be with the other person talked to.

Focusing on the language used, Ghazal makes extensive use of metaphors to explore the relationship between the speaker and the person they feel love for. Many of the metaphors are in the form of pairs of items or objects that complement each other, reflecting the way in which the speaker sees the relationship. For example, “what shape should I take to marry your own, have you- hawk to my shadow, moth to my flame – pursue me? ” showcases the idea that the speaker is willing to transform to suit the other, in “…what shape…”. This could also be a cue to the reader that the writer is perhaps lacking in some confidence..

Another example is “If you are the rhyme and I the refrain don’t hang/ on my lips, come and I’ll come too when you cue me”: using enjambment to keep the poem flowing like a song. Also, the two sides of a relationship are likened to being like the “rhyme” and “refrain”, which suggests a sense of the two people being one unit together. This refrain could be the word “me”: because it appears so frequently in comparison, it could be a representation of the lover showing inferiority to the one she loves, and desperation. In Paris with You is a poem with a theme of longing also.

The speaker is this time a man recounting a relationship he had moved on from. Perhaps this could have been partly due to a certain partiality to drinking alcohol, which we are told about in “And I get tearful/when I’ve had a drink or two”. “I’m on the rebound” shows that it must have been rather long-term, if he is describing a recovery from it. Unlike Ghazal, which is less clear about the outcome, In Paris with You suggests that the relationship is a reality. The poem, unlike Ghazal, is made up of two stanzas of about 5 lines, which deal with the run-up to the situation, and then a longer one in the middle,.

It could be argued that this represents a pause for thought, as then the mood, or tone, of the poem changes, as in the next two stanzas, the speaker focuses on enjoying the present, such as “that crack across the ceiling/ and the hotel walls are peeling/ and I’m in Paris with you”, which shows that the speaker does not care for the surroundings when he is with the woman he loves. Indeed, this could be described as the summary of the poem, or meaning- us being together is far more important than being in traditional romantic and beautiful locations, such as the Notre Dame (more beautiful than romantic), which he promptly tells to “sod off”.

In terms of language, the opening is not like Ghazal’s in the respect that it starts with the negative “but”, to discourage the person he is talking to from “talk(ing) to me of love”. This is an opportunity to recognise the colloquial nature of the poem, such as the use of the phrases “an earful”, and “sod off to sodding Notre-Dame”. This contrasts heavily with the more formal, overwritten tone present in Ghazal. We can also see this as the speaker makes words to carry on his rhyme scheme, such as “wounded/ marooned”, which brings a playful nature.

Similarly, the final stanza draws heavily on the phrase “in Paris with you”, to show the importance of being with the person he wants to be with, and then “am I embarrassing you? ” is used to add to the teasing nature of the tone. Looking to the tone, which we have just looked at, I believe that another emotion brought forward is playfulness, in the way that more orthodox methods of seducing people are turned down in favour of just being with each other, albeit in a way that uses references to “embarrassing” ideas about romance, and love poems.

In conclusion, the two poems Ghazal and In Paris with You deal with the same topics of love and longing, using techniques such as imagery, contrast, and metaphor achieve these pictures, but the latter feels more like a pastiche to the first in the way that its colloquial and abrupt humorous tone is a juxtaposition to the comparatively formal of the first.

The narrow streets were catch-alls for chamber pots that were emptied into the streets from windows, the sewer system was inadequate, for a city with a million inhabitants, and prompting extremely unhealthy conditions that bred disease and only one out of five households had running water. This statement from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher depicts a snapshot picture of Old Paris, “Entering through the faubourg Saint Marceau, I saw only small, dirty and stinking streets, ugly black houses, an air of filth, poverty, beggars, carters, sewing women, women hawking tisanes and old hats”. All of these issues would be “history” with the city’s modernization done at an unprecedented pace by Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann.

Baron Haussmann was born, in Paris, on March 27th, 1809. He was educated at the College Henry IV, studied law, while simultaneously taking classes at the Conservatoire de Paris, because he was a good musician. He diverted from being a lawyer, turning his focus on architecture, becoming a civil engineer and career administrator. Mr. Haussmann was appointed sous-prefet (state representative) of Nerac, a commune of the Lot-et-Garonne department in southwestern France, in l830. He advanced quickly in the civil service venue; in l853 he was appointed the prefet of the Seine Department, (department in France is similar to a county) and remained in that position until l870.

During this time period, Baron Haussmann was made senator in l857, grand cross at the Legion d’honneur, a premier order of France, in l862, and a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in l867. (wikipedia) He died on January 11, l891 in Paris, leaving a continuous and evolving legacy. The Baron’s name is preserved on the Boulevard Haussmann and in the very core of the “City of Lights. ” Now that I have given a brief, biographical summary of Mr. Haussmann’s life, here is a detailed look at his accomplishments, historical impact on urbanism and constant influence in today’s society.

Emperor Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the last monarch to rule France, wanted to be acknowledged as a great communal engineer. He was partial to helping the poor, working class people of Paris and desperately wanted to shape the city in to a progressive, healthy environment. There was also a safety issue, the Emperor needed to address; it was imperative that he reduce the ability of future revolutionaries to defy the government, by benefiting on the medieval maze of streets to easily form barricades. Devising wider streets for logical maneuvers, would allow battalions and artillery to circulate effortlessly.

Napoleon III rightly chose, the best civil engineer in Paris, Baron Haussmann to implement the reconstruction of his capital. The Emperor let Haussmann maintain substantial executive power and extensive finances with this project. Ultimately, over a decade and a half he spent 2,115,000,000 francs, the equivalence of 1. 5 billion in today’s currency. Napoleon also protected Haussmann from the myriad of critics, this was fundamental for his success. Paris would undergo a major transformation and people had two different views of Haussmann; one as a man who would demolish “old” Paris , and the other as a man who would create a “new” Paris.

Haussmanization is what this massive undertaken was dubbed, its actual definition being, “the creative destruction of something for the betterment of society,“ (wiktionary). The criticism the Baron received was that specific, Parisian’s were troubled by the destruction of buildings, including whole neighborhoods. In they’re opinion, there was no “betterment,” the wide streets had a diminutive purpose, except for being anti-riot streets, and all Haussmann did for the poor areas was to build encompassing boulevards from which they could be subjugated.

Another, subject he was disparaged for, was his methods of financing the projects, which included using his connections with realtors. Haussmann would allow them to purchase property along the new boulevards in exchange for an exuberant profit. This issue ignited an intense political controversy and even though the allegation were never proven , it eventually led to the Baron’s dismissal as the prefet, on January 5, l870. Napoleon III had no choice if he was to increase the approval rating of this regime.

Parisians who viewed Haussmann’s modernization of Paris as positive, and new he would be providing a much needed service to the city, far out numbered the opposition. Most of the people perceived the streets as they actually were; unsanitary, with garbage and waste left by a faulty sewer system, crowded, damp, shanties covered in mud, and confusing. The narrow streets, with no sidewalks, discouraged prospective customers from going to shops, and during Paris’s recurrent spates of civil disorder, made it easier to form barricades. Haussmannization would deliver a “new” Paris, a healthy, more organized, safer city.

Baron Haussmann’s first task was to create a detailed map of Paris, this would be the basis of his work. He then installed wood towers throughout the city, taller than surrounding buildings to serve as triangulation points in the surveying process. This was an advanced engineering process, theory is still use today. Triangulation is finding coordinates and the distance of a point by calculating the length of different sides of a triangle. Devising the towers, for this purpose, was ingenious. The transformation was now underway, using 1500 architects and over 60,000 workers.

Paris was deemed the “largest construction site in the world,” and would hold that title for two decades (France monthly). Three quarters of the Ile de la Cite, was destroyed to construct a central area for the Palais de Justice, police headquarters and barracks. Ile de la Cite is one of two islands in the Seine River, the other is Ile Saint-Louis, is the center of Paris and where the city was founded (wikipedia). Approximately 15,000 homes were pulled down and the only buildings untouched were; Notre Dame, the Saint-Chapelle, Conciergie and the Palais de Justice.

Haussmann’s beautification of Paris, includes the star-shaped Place de l”Etoile, which is a large urban junction with a meeting point of twelve straight avenues, around the Arc de Triomphe, several new parks, gardens and the planting of over 100,000 trees. The Baron admired the large and central London parks, such as the Hyde and Regent Parks, and decided to created two comparable ones, most notably the Bois de Boulogne, and the Bois de Vincennes. The Baron built or rebuilt several market, the most famous redesigned market was the Les Halles, the first major building project to use iron-frame construction.

This material allowed for improved control of the city’s food supplies and lessening of health hazards (SafariX). Another famous redesign was the Palais Garnier, commonly known as Opera de Paris, and named after its architect, Charles Garnier, who was chosen by the Baron to supervise the project. Mr. Garnier was instructed to build a 2nd theatre for the famous Parisian Opera and Ballet Companies. Legend says that Napoleon III’s wife asked Garnier if it would be built in Greek or Roman style and he replied, “It is in the Napoleon III style, Madame! “.

Haussmann imposed a regulation that required all new buildings to have a standardized height and design, this gave modern Paris characteristic landscape. Haussmann’s plan continued with organizing the city by numbering districts and houses. Parisian’s lives were made easier with the numeration. Wide, straight, new boulevards with commanding facades, converging at major junctions, marked by monuments, public buildings and points of significance such as city gates or railway stations, were made to facilitated traffic movement, eliminate cramped streets, and provide proficient access for army troops from the provinces to come into the city, if needed.

Baron Haussmann’s implemented a railway network, with six new railroads stations, operating outside the city, improving transportation and directly contributing to a flourishing economic environment. The railways contributed to the development of coal mining and the steel industry in France, bringing they’re economy into a contemporary age of large scale free enterprise. The design of the streets combined with the new public transportation allowed Parisians an easy access to the city and its shops, museums, theatre etc., encouraged people to flaunt their new wealth.

Probably the most imperative part of the “modernization” of Paris was the purification and decontamination of their ancient sewer system. A complete renovation was imperative to instill healthy conditions in the city. Haussmann named engineer Eugene Belgrad, Director of Water and Sewers of Paris, who attacked the problem by creating “sort of a city under the city,” The system harnessed underwater springs, some over 100 kilometers from Paris, then brought fresh, clean water by aqueducts to flush out the waste (France Monthly).

The sewer system, although underground, didn’t go unobserved, Haussmann ensured that it became a showpiece, even providing transportation for their viewing, the system, to this day, is considered a tourist attractioin. Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III’s architectural strategy for the modernization of Paris is largely responsible for the city’s present appearance and for the groundwork of current and almost certainly, future designs. The Baron’s vision of a city came into fruition, making Paris one of the most magnificently beautiful cities, a formidable economic power, with much healthier living conditions.

Haussmann still continues to inspire architectural design. One example is the City Beautiful Movement, a progressive reform movement in North American architect, in the1800’s and 1900’s, its primary objective was to revamp poverty-stricken urban environments. “Haussmannian Revolution,” a term used because, for the first time in history, under an emporer, a single man systematically modernized a city on such a mammoth scope.