I wish I had received one of the invitations. The 5 letters arrived in the late spring of 1925, via special delivery, and were written on stationary of the Ministère de Postes et Télégraphes. Each letter invited the addressee to a confidential meeting with the Deputy Director General to be held after hours in a suite at the Hotel de Crillon (above), at number ten Champs-Elysees. Each recipient was warned to discuss the invitation with no one. They were surely intrigued. It was not often that scrap metal dealers are treated to meetings in such an exclusive places.
The Hotel had been constructed by Louis XV as government offices, before being bought by the Crillon family and converted into a five star hotel. Its interior was adorned throughout with 17th Century tapestries, Louis XVI gilt and brocade furniture, sculptures, paintings and other valuable art works. Government ministries held public and closed door meetings in the hotel every day. Besides, who would reject the opportunity of seeing the room where Marie Antoinette took piano lessons, or where Charlie Chaplin slept? The five 'petit bourgeois' businessmen were suitably impressed.
The guests were greeted by an officious bureaucrat who identified himself as Msr. Robert Tourbillon, personal secretary to the Deputy Director, Msr Victor Lustig. The ministry, explained Msr Tourbilliuon, was about to offer a valuable business opportunity to these five men. However, he insisted, everything said in this room must remain confidential. If the guests did not agree with this stipulation they should leave at once. None of the businessmen budged from their seats.
A few minutes later Deputy Lustig (above) bustled into the room, pompous and brusque, as you would expect any good French bureaucrat to be. After reminding his guests of the absolute need for secrecy, he quickly got down to the subject at hand. The men in the room may have read recently, explained Msr. Lustig, that the government was facing a major and expensive renovation of Msr. Eiffle’s Tower.
The tower had been controversial even before it opened on 31 March, 1888.
Three hundred workers had spent 3 years welding 7,000 tons of iron, fashioned into 18,000 pieces connected by 2,500,000 rivets into the open framework tower.
It was half a proof of concept construction and half a work of art. Completed, it stood 1,000 feet high, making it the tallest structure in the world; and one of the most despised.
The Paris press referred to it as “…a truly tragic street lamp.” Three hundred influential artists and politicians publicly protested the “…useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower”. Alexander Dumas called it a "loathsome construction". Is Paris going to be associated with the grotesque, mercantile imaginings of a constructor of machines?”
The inventor of the short story, Guy de Maupassant, asked, "What will be thought of our generation if we do not smash this lanky pyramid". When asked why, despite his hatred, he ate lunch every day in the cafe (above), located on the second level of the tower...
...de Maupassant explained he ate there because it was the only place in Paris where he did not have digest while looking at the damn thing.
Msr. Eiffel had retained ownership of the “"odious column of bolted metal” for twenty years. In 1909 possession finally passed to city of Paris. By then the tower was making a profit, as de Maupassant’s angry patronage of the restaurant proved. And to a younger generation which had never known Paris without Msr. Eiffel’s tower, it had become a symbol of France, and a massive radio broadcast tower. So the tower stayed put. But by 1925, years of defrayed maintenance were catching up with the structure.
Every seven years the tower required a year and a half of attention from dozens of workers, applying fifty tons of paint, using 15,000 brushes. That was expensive.
Worse, rust and decay required replacement of many structural supports. To pay for all of that, the city government was in need of a loan from the national government. Beginning in 1925, the politicians began to prepare the public for a monumental refurbishing bill of the monument.
Newspapers and magazines were filled with articles detailing the expense and difficulties involved. As expected, resistance surged. And now, Msr. Lustig explained to the five businessmen , the government had come to the conclusion that the tower was no longer worth the expense. The decision had been secretly made to sell it all for scrap.
The five dealers had been chosen, they were told, because of their professional discretion. And, they were warned, if word of the tower’s imminent demise were to become public ahead of time, sentimentality might prevent the sale of seven tons of scrap iron.
So, Msr. Lustig told the five men in the room, they had four days to present their sealed bids to Msr Tourbillon. The highest bidder would have the privilege of dismantling the Eiffel Tower and selling the high grade iron in the Tower, which was worth the modern equivalent of $2.8 million. Lustig said the the bids would be expected to be in the half million dollar range.
Each of the dealers left the room with their minds buzzing. There was not much time to budget the project, to figure labor, equipment and insurance costs. But only one, that we know of, was desperate enough to ask for a second, private meeting with Msr. Lustig.
An embarrassed Msr. Andre Poisson sheepishly explained that his wife had expressed concerns about the secrecy and haste. Msr Lustig smiled and said he understood completely. It was shame money concerns were always complicating the lives of decent, honorable people. Why even he, a minor government official often struggled to make ends meet.
Msr. Poisson understood immediately. In the language of bureaucrats everywhere, Msr. Lustig had just asked for a bribe. Msr. Poisson breathed a sigh of relief. He had no doubt now that the Eiffel Tower job was perfectly legitimate and that he now had the inside track. Twenty-four hours later Poisson handed over to Msr. Lustig a cashier’s check for $500,000 as his bid, and a suitcase filled with cash - the bribe. And then he returned to his office to await the public announcement of his contract to dismantle the Tower.
The announcement never came. However Msr Poisson's check was cashed. When Msr. Poisson called the Ministry of Post Office and Telegraphs and asked when the winning bid on the Eiffle Tower deconstruction was going to be announced, he was told no such contract was being considered. In fact, the government was about to announce the refurbishing of the tower,. Worse, there was no Deputy Director General named Lustig.
Slowly, Msr. Poisson came to the sickening realization that he was going to have explain to his wife that he had handed over a suit case filled with cash to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.....er, the Eiffel Tower. It seems he was so ashamed he told no one. In fact his name is a nom-de-fraud, since in French "Poisson" means "Fish", as one who is hooked - and every April Fools Day it is a French tradition to slap a paper fish on a subject's back and shout "April Poisson" So quiet was the mark that six months later Msr Lustig returned to Paris, to run the scam again.
Victor was originally a Czech, but and he had been stealing suckers' money on the Atlantic Cruise ships for a decade or more. He would never be prosecuted for his sale of the Eiffel Tower, but he would be arrested for other scams in America.
And with the publication of his photo, his days as a con man were over. He would end his days in Alcatraz prison, dying of pneumonia in 1947, at just 57 years old.
This year the Eiffel Tower is 131 years old. To the best of Parisian authorities’ knowledge, it is sold about a thousands of times every day.
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