Lady Liberty and Paris pinnacle

12-16-2001

In 1874, the citizens of France commissioned a gift for the people of the United States to commemorate the centennial of American independence.

	It was envisioned as an immense project, a 150.9-foot-high, copper-clad statue of a standing woman clad in flowing robes holding a torch aloft in her right hand and a book in her left.

It was envisioned as an immense project, a 150.9-foot-high, copper-clad statue of a standing woman clad in flowing robes holding a torch aloft in her right hand and a book in her left.

Titled "Liberty Enlightening the World," the design was the creation of the French sculptor Frederic Bartholdi. Bartholdi had conceived the idea of the colossal statue a decade earlier. He'd sketched the first drawings during an 1871 visit to New York, imagining it on Bedloe's Island in the harbor.

When a lottery raised $400,000 for the project, Bartholdi started working in earnest. He developed an innovative design technique, one that involved attaching sheets of molded copper around a sturdy, wrought-iron frame.

Once he had the commission, Bartholdi set his team of artisans to the task of hand-shaping some 300 sheets of copper for the shell. He assigned the job of designing the supporting framework to Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, an obscure 40-year-old French structural engineer whose previous work included bridges across the Garrone River at Bordeaux and the Douro River in Portugal.

By the 1876 Centennial, however, only the statue's torch-bearing arm had been completed, and it was sent to Philadelphia, where it was assembled at the Centennial Exposition there.

Completing the statue took Bartholdi and company the better part of a decade. Although the French covered the cost of the statue, Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, started a subscription campaign to raise money for a stone and concrete pedestal base.

Transported to New York City on a battleship, the great statue was officially inaugurated by President Grover Cleveland at a ceremony on Oct. 28, 1886.

Since then, of course, the Statue of Liberty has lifted her lamp to millions. It has been an enduring symbol of the United States, through our triumphs and trials, even as a silent witness to the horrific events of Sept. 11.

But Lady Liberty wasn't the last monumental construction project of that French engineer, Eiffel.

A year later, he unveiled a radical idea for a tower 984 feet high and weighing 7,000 tons. It consisted of a graceful iron latticework of four arched pylons that came together 600 feet above the ground.

Despite considerable scoffing, he was able to convince the French government to cover one-third of the estimated $1 million cost. The rest he raised through private investments that were to be reimbursed over the next 20 years from admissions receipts to the tower that bears his name.

An expert on the aerodynamics of high frames, Eiffel calculated the curve of the iron pylons so that the shear and bending forces of the wind were transformed in forces of compression. This pioneered the braced, tubular cantilever construction of many modern skyscrapers, most notably the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.

Another innovation was the use of elevators, which were designed by the Otis Elevator Co. Open-air carriages rise 189 feet along two of the curving pylons to the tower's first level. The elevator cars and original lifting equipment are still in use today.

Originally, the Eiffel Tower was of no practical use other than to demonstrate the capabilities of modern engineering. In fact, numerous notable Parisians considered it an atrocity. A petition signed by some 300 artistic luminaries read, "We, the writers, painters, sculptors, architects and lovers of the beauty of Paris, do protest with all our vigor and all our indignation, in the name of French taste and endangered French art and history, against the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower."

The tower was almost torn down in 1909 at the expiration of its 20-year lease but was saved primarily because of the antenna used for telegraphy at that time.

Eiffel's tower ranked as the tallest structure in the world, until the Chrysler Building in New York City eclipsed it in 1929.

However, it remains an enduring tourist attraction, as well as Paris' most recognized emblem.

And so it was that one man's ingenuity provided the world with two of its most visible travel monuments, the Statue of Liberty and the Paris landmark that bears his name.

Yesterday was the 169th anniversary of Eiffel's birth.

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