CHAPTER 2

Gustave Eiffel

Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel was born in Dijon, France, on December 15, 1832. Gustave was close to both of his parents. His father, Alexandre, was an artist, a reader, a thinker, and a dreamer.

His mother, Catherine, was much more practical. She was good at making plans, meeting deadlines, and handling money.

When Gustave was young, his parents ran a thriving business that transported coal from mines to places around the world. Gustave and his two younger sisters spent many happy days at the canal port in Dijon. He watched carts filled with coal arrive from the mines and get transferred to ships. He loved the hustle and bustle of boats being loaded and unloaded at all hours and in all kinds of weather.

As the coal business grew, his parents spent more and more time working. Gustave went to live with his mother’s mother, who was blind. His grandmother was strict, but Gustave didn’t seem to mind that much.

What Gustave didn’t like was school. He found it boring and a waste of time compared to what was happening on the busy canal. He had a hard time keeping his mind on his work, so his grades were not good. He did just enough work to keep up.

When Gustave was twelve, he took his first trip to Paris. He had never been on a train before, and he loved every minute of it.

In Paris, he went to the theater and the ballet. Gustave was determined to return to the wonderful city as soon as he could.

Back at school, he found teachers that understood his curiosity and imagination. They introduced him to literature and history. He also embraced science. His grades soared, and he was accepted at a college on the left bank of the Seine River in Paris, not far from where his tower would rise almost forty years later.

It was at college that Gustave fell in love with metal.

Paris was changing. Architects were just beginning to use metal instead of stone. Iron bridges were being built. Gustave was curious about how metal could be used. How could he bend it? How could he shape it? What could he build? There were so many possibilities. He didn’t know all the answers yet. He would need to learn how to create iron structures.

A wrought-iron bridge under construction

Gustave enrolled in engineering school. After he graduated, he worked an unpaid job in an iron foundry owned by his brother-in-law. He watched and listened.

In 1862, when Gustave was thirty years old, he married Marie Gaudelet. In need of money, he moved on to a paid job in a company that designed railway engines. He was fascinated by curving, long-distance railway tracks.

Gustave’s life was changing. His family was growing. In time, the Eiffels would have three daughters and two sons. But work was Gustave’s passion. He never wavered in his love for metal. He opened his own company and hired engineers, architects, and designers. Together, they went on to create bridges, railway stations, churches, and other buildings all over the world. Between 1882 and 1884, he created the Garabit Viaduct, the world’s highest bridge at the time. His company became most famous, however, for creating the metal framework inside the Statue of Liberty.

The Garabit Viaduct

The Statue of Liberty

From 1879 to 1883, while the artist Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the outside of the Statue of Liberty, Gustave Eiffel and his team worked on the inside. The statue would need a metal skeleton that would remain strong for hundreds of years. Eiffel’s intricate frame used flexible, flat pieces of lightweight iron to attach the inner iron skeleton to the outer copper skin.

The copper statue of the Roman goddess of liberty was a gift of friendship to the United States from the people of France. It would celebrate the freedom and independence Americans had won in the Revolutionary War.

On June 19, 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived at her new home on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor.

A cross-section of the Statue of Liberty