It had to do with seeing pure, efficient, well-engineered structures as works of art.
His notion of beauty had to do with economy and structural efficiency, with achieving the greatest strength with the least possible material. If you are planning to be among them during your trip to Paris, you've probably heard horror stories about long waits in the ticket lines - up to 4 hours and even longer during the busiest times.
Eiffel was going after a deeper kind of beauty, a kind that wasn't just skin deep. The Eiffel Tower - le Tour Eiffel - symbolizes Paris to the world, and the 7+ million visitors who visit each year prove its enduring popularity. The tower represented a new kind of aesthetic, and it took people a while to appreciate this. But to contemporary critics it was a monstrosity. To modern eyes, the tower's shape is elegant and graceful, perhaps even timeless. "a half-built factory pipe, a carcass waiting to be fleshed out with freestone or brick, a funnel-shaped grill, a hole-riddled suppository" (Joris-Karl Huysmans)" "this giant ungainly skeleton upon a base that looks built to carry a colossal monument of Cyclops, but which just peters out into a ridiculous thin shape like a factory chimney" (Maupassant) A 14-step chunk of the Eiffel Towers spiral staircase was sold for 274,475 euros (US328,427) in Paris on Tuesday, 1 December 2020, nearly 10 times. "this mast of iron gymnasium apparatus, incomplete, confused and deformed" (François Coppée) Since its construction in 1889, more than 250 million people have visited Paris iconic Eiffel Tower. A 14-Step Chunk of Eiffel Towers Spiral Staircase Goes Under the Hammer.
"this truly tragic street lamp" (Léon Bloy)