"More than any other monument, the Eiffel Tower has come to symbolize the turn-of-the-century Parisian landscape, a melding of art and industry that has exerted a powerful influence, not only on the work of contemporary and twentieth-century architects and engineers but also on painters and writers. That the tower was also the result of fifty years of meticulous effort of a brilliant engineer and businessman specializing in cast iron and steel constructions and the culmination of a life of distinguished architectural output, is well documented in this study of Gustave Eiffel's career. Thanks to the detailed journalistic and photographic records kept by the architect himself, many of which have been previously unpublished, and to the archives of the Eiffel Company in Levallois-Perret, the author is able to bring to life Eiffel's genius, including early accomplishments such as his project for the Exposition Universelle of 1867. The turning point in Eiffel's career occurred with the formation of the Eiffel Company at Levallois-Perret, with which Eiffel undertook the building of bridges, viaducts, dams, factories, wharves, military camps, workshops, cupolas, cranes, and gangplanks all over the world. Major works discussed here include the main façade and domes of the Exposition Universelle of 1878, the Bon Marché stores, the Garabit Viaduct, the Nice Observatory, and the framework for the Statue of Liberty. The single work that crowned Gustave Eiffel's career was unquestionably the Eiffel Tower, in 1889, the first 'industrial' structure to be erected in the heart of Paris. The tower immediately had a profound effect on Parisians, provoking a series of debates, and in its unabashed championing of the intrinsic beauty of its technical construction, definitively altered conceptions of architectural aesthetics. A discussion o the legacy of the tower, and of Eiffel, concludes this valuable work." -- from interior flap. Includes notes, bibliography, and index. Printed in black-and-white.