Even the World’s Architectural Wonders Once Had Their Critics

black and white photograph
Frank Horvat’s ‘Stern, Chaussure, a Shoe and Eiffel Tower, Paris’, 1974, sold for $3,585 in a November 2011 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

When we lived in Central London in the 1990s, #10 Walton Street became a convenient place to host our American friends and family. We had plenty of room, one block from the world-famous Harrods department store, and the Walton Street restaurants were some of the finest in London. Our neighbor in #12 owned the superb Osteria San Lorenzo restaurant that Lady Diana claimed was her favorite, perhaps because it was three doors down from her exclusive couturier and go-to designer Bruce Oldfield. Michael Caine shopped at our Italian bakery, and Ringo Starr sightings were frequent.

However, it soon became de rigueur to tack on a side trip to Paris via the new Eurostar high-speed trains that attained 180 mph under the English Channel that connected France and England. Once there, a pleasant lunch awaited visitors to the Eiffel Tower and the elegant Le Jules Verne, a one-star Michelin restaurant on the second level. It had a dedicated lift some 240 feet (thankfully).

The 360-degree view of Paris is wonderful at lunch and spectacular at night. “The City of Light” (La Ville Lumiere) derives from the city’s role in the Age of Enlightenment and the extensive use of gas lights on streets (56,000) and monuments. Located on the Champ de Mars, the Eiffel Tower was built as the entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair. It was named for the man who designed and built it. Gustave Eiffel had started working in a family vinegar factory owned by an uncle. When the business failed he switched to engineering, which proved to be quite rewarding.

He built bridges, viaducts and railway concourses that were awe-inspiring in addition to burnishing his reputation. It worked so well he won the commission to build the interior of the remarkable Statue of Liberty in 1884 that ended up being a gift from the French people to celebrate the founding of the young United States.

Sculptor Frederic Bartholdi generally gets credit for “Liberty Enlightening the World” and, of course, it was his design. However, without the ingenious interior engineering to hold it aloft, it was a hollow structure of beaten copper one-tenth of an inch thick. What Eiffel contributed was the ability of the 150-foot structure to withstand the wind, rain, snow, heat, cold and all the other physical weather assaults 24 hours, seven days a week year after year. These were all engineering challenges that Eiffel solved with a skeleton of trusses and springs that support the copper skin and is worn like a suit of clothes. It marked the invention of curtain wall construction, the most important building technique of the 20th century, but with little credit to the man who conceived it.

This new technique enabled the building of skyscrapers and the design of wings for airplanes. Eiffel’s contributions were about to be recognized for this breakthrough when he received the commission for his big project in Paris that we now call the Eiffel Tower. There were over 100 other proposals submitted, including a 900-foot-high guillotine, presumably as a tribute to France’s contribution to popularizing decapitation during the French Revolution.

Then, predictably, many scoffed at Eiffel’s design since it was so enormous and, on the surface, useless. It appeared to be an oil derrick but without any oil. Many people detested it, and unfortunately that included artists, architects and other high-profile notables. This highly influential group wrote a scathing petition on Feb. 14, 1887, denouncing “the grotesque mercenary invention of a lowly machine builder” and signed it “Artists against the Eiffel Tower.” Today we know just how totally wrong they were as 20 million people actually pay admission to tour what is probably the world’s most recognizable landmark-monument.

A similar controversy was roiling San Francisco in 1969, when we moved to San Jose, over the new Transamerica Pyramid. One critic called it “the most portentous and insidiously bad building in The City.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s architectural critic simply called it an abomination, while the Los Angeles Times called the spire gratuitous and compared it to a dunce cap. Angry mobs demonstrated by Mayor Alioto’s office to protest, but it was all in vain. The building was finished in 1972 and has gradually become a cherished, iconic symbol of the SFO skyline.

I wonder if the pyramids had to suffer through similar periods of rejection or ridicule? Retract that musing — I totally overlooked the presence of the Pharaohs. It is much easier to gain consensus when decision-making doesn’t involve others.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Let’s Not Forget What Colonists Created 400 Years Ago

This 1976 Gold Bicentennial Medal, graded PR64 NGC, sold for $23,500 at a July 2017 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

We live on a landmass currently called North America that is relatively young in its present incarnation with most estimates in the range of 200 million years. In periods before, a large portion of it was called Laurentia, which drifted across the equator joining and separating from supercontinents in various collisions that shaped it. There are thick layers of sedimentary rocks that are up to 2 billion years old. Eventually, it was surrounded by ocean and anti-passive margins (i.e. no boundaries by tectonic plates). Then an island chain slammed into it, raising mountain ranges. For perspective, the Appalachians were as tall and majestic as today’s Himalayas.

For tens of millions of years, there was not a single human being in North America, primarily because it was covered by a thick sheet of ice and it was before mankind had evolved. As the Ice Age ebbed, adventurous souls began walking across land bridges as glacial movements changed the landscape. There were multiple migrations in and out of other areas of the world, but people who moved into the Americas were generally on a one-way ticket. In modern times, there is no consensus on who “discovered” America first.

North American exploration spans an entire millennium, with the Vikings in Newfoundland circa 1000 A.D. through England’s colonization on the Atlantic Coast in the 17th century. Spain and Portugal squabbled over the discoveries of Juan Ponce de León and Vasco da Gama, as France and the Netherlands had their own claims to litigate. But our America is really a British story starting with Jamestown, Va. (1607) that gradually grew into 13 colonies. They grew tired of the English yoke and declared independence in 1776 and conquered the British Army in a well-known story of revolution. They formed a somewhat imperfect union called the United States of America, with a constitution and a smallish national government that is still struggling with the line between states’ rights.

French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi attended the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Bartholdi had a strong personal passion for the concepts of independence, liberty and self-determination. He became a member of the Franco-American Union organization and suggested a massive statue to commemorate the American Revolution and a century of friendship between our two countries. A national fundraising campaign was launched that included traditional contributions, as well as fundraising auctions, lotteries and even boxing exhibitions.

Bartholdi collaborated with engineer Gustave Eiffel to build a 305-foot-tall copper and iron statue, and after completion, it was disassembled for shipment to the United States. Finally, on June 17, 1885, the dismantled statue – 350 individual pieces in 200-plus cases – arrived in New York Harbor. It was a fitting gift, emblematic of the friendship between the French and American people. It was formally dedicated the following year in a ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland, who said, “We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected.” The statue was dubbed “Liberty Enlightening the World.”

In 1892, Ellis Island opened as America’s chief immigration station and for the next six-plus decades, the statue looked over more than 12 million immigrants who came to find the freedom they were seeking and the “Streets of Gold” in NYC. A plaque inscribed with a sonnet titled “The New Colossus” was placed on an interior wall in 1903. It had been written 20 years earlier by the poet Emma Lazarus.

Gustave Eiffel was given little credit, despite having built virtually the whole interior of what would become the Statue of Liberty and he vowed not to make that mistake again. Perhaps that is why his magnificent Paris landmark is simply an incredible skeleton framework with none of the conventional sheathing of most tall structures of that era.

One thing is certain: We may not know who discovered America first, but there is little doubt that whoever follows us will be aware of what those few people huddled along the East Coast 400 years ago were able to accomplish. Maybe Elon Musk will have a colony on Mars that is still functioning when the ice or oceans envelop Earth again.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].