Americans are too much snobs to ever touch the Eiffel Tower.

And maybe next they can modernize the Pyramids. You know, maybe add some curves, like the EMP. And after that, they could spiff up Big Ben; add some glass, like the new Seattle libarary. Yeah. That'd be cool.

Y'll is just afraid to try shit. Gustave Eiffel knew how to live, though.

B) Your reaction is similar to Parisians' reaction to the original tower. I think Monsieur Eiffel would be pleased.

When Eiffel unveiled plans for the Tower, all the "most important" artists in France drafted a petition decrying the "Americanisation of France". Once it went up for the 1889 World's Fair, everyone loved it. After the Fair, no one was quite sure what to do with it. Some thought about tearing it down, others proposed some wildly crazy alternative uses: roller coaster, geyser, lighthouse, etc. (Some of them were really ghastly.) Ultimately they left it more or less alone, but they still dressed it up from time to time. For the 1925 Art Deco Exhibit, there were patterns of lights forming stars up and down; it was really beautiful.

The lesson is that all the artists originally protested the Tower and then looked foolish afterwards. When I.M. Pei proposed the glass pyramid for the Louvre, they learned their lesson: everyone welcomed the change and kept quiet.

You'll get used to it. You'll probably even like it. But you can't expect it to remain the same forever.

(True story: I was showing an out-of-town friend around Seattle one day, and as we drove by the EMP he asked, "Oh, what are they tearing down here?")

Mobile. Sans serif. Tres bien.

Et exactemente ou est qu'on trouve les croques monsieurs?

The Space Needle is just having a midlife crisis. It's too old to look sparkling new but too young to be revered as a masterpiece like the Eiffel Tower. As someone who predates the opening of the Space Needle to Worlds Fair revelers by less than a week I know the feeling...

(caveat - I've been there four times since I was 16, and love the post office at mid-section)

Gonna be fun ...

"When I.M. Pei proposed the glass pyramid for the Louvre, they learned their lesson: everyone welcomed the change and kept quiet."

Really? I spent the summer of 1989 in Paris, and I heard nothing BUT complaints and bitching about the Pei pyramids.

And while I'm hardly a Francophile, I had to agree with what seemed to be at the time the popular opinion: I think the Pei pyramids are butt-ugly and a horrid stylistic clash with the Louvre surroundings.