After 26 months of construction and fierce criticism from Parisian artists who called it an eyesore, Gustave Eiffel's wrought-iron tower opened to mark the 1889 Exposition Universelle. Eiffel himself climbed to the top to plant the French flag. Intended as a temporary exhibit slated for demolition after 20 years, the tower survived thanks to its usefulness as a radio antenna and became the enduring symbol of Paris.
Three hundred workers assembled 18,038 pieces of puddled iron using two and a half million rivets, and remarkably only one man died during construction, a record for the era. Gustave Eiffel had to defend his design against a public petition signed by 300 prominent artists and writers, including Guy de Maupassant, who denounced the tower as a 'truly tragic street lamp' and a 'gigantic black smokestack.'
Maupassant reportedly ate lunch in the tower's restaurant nearly every day afterward, explaining it was the only place in Paris from which he could not see the tower itself. Eiffel's original permit granted the structure only 20 years of life before scheduled demolition. It was saved when engineers realized its height made it an ideal spot for the wireless telegraphy antennas that the French military desperately needed, turning an ornamental folly into indispensable infrastructure.