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Secrets of the Dead
A Revolutionary Use of Iron
The designs for the competing tower projects represented to different visions for the future: On one side, tradition, as embodied by Jules Bourdais’s stone tower in the academic style as taught at the Beaux-Arts. And on the other side, innovation, exemplified by Gustave Eiffel’s tower that used iron as not just a structural element, but as the central aesthetic.
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