Why the Eiffel Tower, Meant to Be Demolished After 20 Years, Is Still Standing

Building Wonders #1

The Takeaway

The Eiffel Tower was originally a building with a lifespan of just 20 years. What saved it from demolition was not its popularity — it was that the tower proved useful as “a giant wireless antenna.”

Here is the story of this building, in brief.

The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. Today it is the very symbol of the city, but at the time of its completion in 1889, its future had already been decided.

The permit to use the land lasted only 20 years. On 1 January 1910, the tower was to revert to the ownership of the city of Paris.

In other words, the Eiffel Tower was not built as “a building to be kept forever.” It was a temporary structure, put up for a world’s fair.

Why It Was Not Demolished

Its designer, Gustave Eiffel, had thought this through from the very beginning. To keep the tower standing, he reasoned, it would need a “use” beyond its appearance.

So the tower began to be used as a site for science, hosting meteorological observation and physics experiments. And the decisive factor among them was wireless communication, a technology that had only just been born.

The sequence of events went like this:

• 1898: The first wireless contact succeeds, between the Eiffel Tower and the Panthéon, some 4 kilometres away
• 1899: Wireless communication with England also succeeds
• 1908: The range of communication has stretched to some 6,000 kilometres
• 1909: A permanent wireless station is built beside the tower

By this point, the tower was no longer “a building to be looked at.” For the military, it had become a piece of strategic communications equipment that could not be given up.

As a result, from 1 January 1910, the land-use permit was extended by a further 70 years. The tower that was scheduled for demolition had survived — thanks to radio.

The Tower Today

The tower’s “job as an antenna” continued after that. During the First World War it served to intercept enemy wireless transmissions, and in 1921 radio broadcasting began from it.

Even now, antennas line its summit, still sending out television and radio signals. And each time the antennas have been renewed, the tower has grown a little taller.

• At completion (1889): about 312 metres
• 1957: 320.75 metres, with a television antenna
• 2000: 324 metres, with a new antenna
• 2022: 330 metres, with a radio antenna

Its current height is 330 metres. Its most recent growth, too, came courtesy of a broadcasting antenna.

The wonder of the Eiffel Tower is this: the world’s most famous “building to look at” actually survived by being “useful equipment.”

What stopped the demolition was not popularity but practicality. And that practicality continues today, at the very top of those 330 metres.

References

• Eiffel Tower official site (Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel), “How radio saved the Eiffel Tower from destruction”
• Eiffel Tower official site (Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel), “The Eiffel Tower and science”
• Eiffel Tower official site (Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel), “Why does the Eiffel Tower change size?”