A Sky of His Own

Gustave Eiffel built a tower all of Paris despised — and then calmly moved into an apartment at the very top.

Nearly a hundred square meters tucked below the third level: a living room, a dining table, a piano, bookshelves, potted flowers — and a lab full of instruments right through the wall. Outside, thousands of rivets, raw steel, the whole structure humming in the wind. Open the door, though, and you step into a quiet, buttoned-up parlor floating above the clouds. Pure surrealism.

Wealthy Parisians, naturally, lined up to buy even a single night at the top. Offer after offer came in — and Eiffel turned down every one. You could own a mansion along the Seine if you had the money. But a night above all of Paris was not for sale. The city's elite had signed petitions against this "monstrous factory chimney," and then turned around and begged to sleep in it. Which, one has to admit, tells you everything about them.

Thomas Edison climbed up here once, in person, to hand Eiffel his brand-new phonograph. Two icons of the industrial age, sitting in that sky-high parlor, talking about the future. Their wax figures are still frozen there behind glass today — look to your right when you reach the third level.

The tower, by the way, was only ever meant to stand twenty years, then come down. What saved it were the very experiments run from that apartment — weather readings, radio transmissions, telegraph lines. Science, in the end, made a stronger case than the architects protesting against it.

The Iron Lady has welcomed millions of visitors over the years — yet she's kept her own small, private heart up top hidden behind glass, open to little more than a passing glance. Which, perhaps, is the very definition of class.

What should we tell you about? Your own street would do. moygid dot online.