Posted on 03/06/2026 6:17:38 AM PST by MtnClimber
Ooo la la. . . Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Behold the Tour Montparnasse, 59-stories, 689-feet high, built in 1969-1973 during the presidency of Georges Pompidou (yes, he of the inglorious Pompidou Center across the River Seine). Note that there is nothing like it in the neighborhood. Curiously, the hidden hand behind its development belonged to American real estate poobah Wylie F. Tuttle, who enlisted a consortium of 17 French insurance companies and seven banks in the project to get Europe’s then tallest skyscraper built. Minister of Culture, André Malraux at first opposed the idea, then folded under pressure and approved a permit for the monstrosity. The joke goes that the view from the tower is the most beautiful in Paris because it’s the only spot from which the tower can’t be seen. It has also been called the box the Eiffel Tower came in.
Now, more than a half century later, the thing is getting a bit worn. The surrounding shopping mall district, spanning about 22-acres, was hemorrhaging tenants and had become the campground haunt of homeless migrants. Something had to be done! Starchitect Renzo Piano was hired to rescue it — though there was plenty of sentiment to raze the goshdarn thing altogether.
The tower itself is getting a $700-million “skin-job” — the monkeysh[--] brown original cladding changed-out for shiny mirrored glass, with an underskirt of hanging gardens on the lower ten floors in a nod to the still ongoing “green” mania. The surrounding shopping mall — a typically American-style urban blunder — is due to be replaced by a network of “typical Parisian streets” fronted by shops in the normal manner.
Hence, the tower supposedly gets a new lease on life, reviled as it may be as a freak. But then here we are on the threshold of Artificial Intelligence cutting its awesome swathe through the office workplace. After 2021, the Great Covid-19 Op savaged office occupancy in Europe just as it did in America, with so many employees working-from-home. All that vacancy played hell with commercial real estate. A-I is looking like the coup de grâce for the office skyscraper now, threatening to eliminate vast categories of corporate employment per se. Let’s face it: Europe is not doing a stellar job of anticipating what the actual future might bring. Anyway, nice try. (Below: the tower before and after its fix-up.)
Below: a close-up rendering of the “green” terrace to come. Note a couple of curious things: no fence or guard-rails at the edge. Hmmmm. . . . Also notice how thin the roof is. Do you really suppose it could support the growth of mature trees? I’d say, not a chance. What are they thinking?
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EYESORE Ping
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Not as bad eyesore as “The Barack Obama Presidential Center is a museum, library, and education project in Chicago to commemorate the presidency of Barack Obama,”
The Parisian skyline is over a hundred years old
I thought it would be the Obama library.
Many thanks!
I emailed Jim and suggested the 0bama Presential Lieberry, but he replied that he had covered that too much already.
Thanks for the chuckle. “The box the Eiffel Tower came in....”
My first thought was Hillary, but she’s eyesore of the century.
My first stop in paris in 1991. the bus station is there. I walked almost to the house i was staying, with all my baggage, not really knowing where in the 5th arrondismont it was. I was exhausted got a cab at the luxembourg and he took me the 5 blocks to house.
I was in Paris in 1994. Not a Muslim in sight.
“Paris” as it is renowed world-wide now, is itself an “artificial” government-mandated “success” because its characteristic thousands of deep blue Mansard-topped, 4-story with one 1/2 basement walkup was built from the destroyed prior hodge-podge in the 1700s.
That mandate worked, but the agony of mass destruction at the time is seldom discussed. “Because the king said so” was good enough at the time to squash dissent.
“The joke goes that the view from the tower is the most beautiful in Paris because it’s the only spot from which the tower can’t be seen.”
Clever.
The article goes on to make valid criticism of the artist rendition. I especially like the park-like setting from the tenth(?) floor. No guardrails! Dang graphic artists! And to think that we relied on those people to illustrate human evolution.
It looks as though it will be wearing a condom.
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