HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE V | S.

Gayathri 00706142017

THE CONSTRUCTION OF EIFFEL TOWER

The assembly of the supports began on July 1, 1887 and was completed twenty-
two months later.

All the elements were prepared in Eiffel’s factory

located at Levallois-Perret on the outskirts of Paris.
Each of the 18,000 pieces used to construct the Tower
were specifically designed and calculated, traced out
to an accuracy of a tenth of a millimetre and then put
together forming new pieces around five metres each.
A team of constructors, who had worked on the great
metal viaduct projects, were responsible for the 150 to
300 workers on site assembling this gigantic erector Figure 1: Bolting the joint of two
set. crossbowmen

All the metal pieces of the tower are held together by rivets, a well-refined
method of construction at the time the Tower was constructed. First the pieces
were assembled in the factory using bolts, later to be replaced one by one with
thermally assembled rivets, which contracted during cooling thus ensuring a
very tight fit. A team of four men was needed for each rivet assembled: one to
heat it up, another to hold it in place, a third to shape the head and a fourth to
beat it with a sledgehammer. Only a third of the 2,500,000 rivets used in the
construction of the Tower were inserted directly
on site.

The uprights rest on concrete foundations

installed a few metres below ground-level on
top of a layer of compacted gravel. Each corner
edge rests on its own supporting block,
applying to it a pressure of 3 to 4 kilograms per
square centimetre, and each block is joined to
the others by walls.

On the Seine side of the construction, the

builders used watertight metal caissons and
injected compressed air, so that they were
able to work below the level of the water.

The tower was assembled using wooden

scaffolding and small steam cranes
mounted onto the tower itself.

The assembly of the first level was

achieved by the use of twelve