The Eiffel Tower That Almost Never Came to Paris

One day in 1991, the telephone rang at the Paris-Henry County Chamber of Commerce.

Virgil Wall answered it.

Wall, then the Chamber’s executive director, probably had no reason to believe this particular phone call would permanently change the appearance—and eventually even the identity—of Paris, Tennessee.

The man on the other end was Brother Patrick O’Brien of Christian Brothers University in Memphis.

He had an unusual question.

Would Paris like an Eiffel Tower?

It sounds almost too perfect.

A city named Paris is offered an Eiffel Tower.

But Paris hadn’t ordered one. City leaders hadn’t launched a campaign to build one. There had been no grand plan to create the landmark that would eventually become one of the most recognizable symbols in Henry County.

In fact, when Paris finally brought its Eiffel Tower home, there was still one fairly important detail that hadn’t been settled.

Nobody knew exactly where they were going to put it.

The story of how Paris, Tennessee, got its Eiffel Tower is one of coincidence, ingenuity, civic pride and remarkably good timing.

And the tower standing in Eiffel Tower Park today?

That’s another surprise.

It isn’t the original.

The Story Actually Begins in Memphis

To understand why Paris has an Eiffel Tower, you have to go back to Memphis in 1990.

That year’s Memphis in May International Festival celebrated France.

At Christian Brothers University, the engineering department had a tradition of creating a structure associated with the country being honored.

For France, there was an obvious candidate.

The Eiffel Tower.

But what the CBU engineering team created wasn’t simply a vaguely Eiffel-shaped wooden tower.

Civil engineering professor Tom Morrison, professor Jim Jacobs and engineering laboratory technician Roland Raffini took the project seriously.

Brother Patrick O’Brien later recalled that Morrison located drawings of Gustave Eiffel’s original tower and adapted them to create a scale model.

The result was a nearly 1-to-20-scale version of one of the most recognizable structures on Earth.

And this was no little classroom model.

It stood approximately 60 feet tall.

The structure contained roughly 500 pieces of Douglas fir and 6,000 steel rods.

Students, faculty, alumni and supporters of Christian Brothers University contributed more than 10,000 hours of work to build it.

Think about that number.

Ten thousand hours.

All for something that was essentially created as a temporary engineering showcase for a festival celebrating France.

When Memphis in May ended, the tower remained on the Christian Brothers campus in Buckman Quadrangle.

And something unexpected happened.

People loved it.

O’Brien remembered it becoming the centerpiece of one of the university’s most popular quadrangles.

Unfortunately, some college students loved it a little too much.

They started climbing it.

There was a problem with that.

The tower wasn’t designed to support people climbing around on it.

There was another problem, too. Despite all the work that had gone into it, much of the structure was wood. Left outside indefinitely, eventually it would deteriorate.

Christian Brothers had built a spectacular Eiffel Tower.

Now it needed to get rid of it.

And nearly three hours away, a little Tennessee city had unknowingly just given the university an idea.

Paris Invites the Other Parises to Town

In April 1991, something unusual was happening in Henry County.

The Paris-Henry County Chamber of Commerce had realized that its city shared a famous name with communities scattered across America.

So why not bring the Parises together?

The result was Paris, USA.

The Chamber identified 15 or 16 American communities bearing the Paris name and invited them to Tennessee.

Representatives from five communities came.

Paris, Texas—the largest American Paris—sent the biggest delegation.

Even France was represented.

For two days, Henry County played host to a gathering of Parises.

The idea, Wall later explained, was to generate goodwill.

But the event accomplished something nobody had planned.

News of Paris, USA reached Christian Brothers University.

And someone at CBU realized there was a rather obvious solution to the university’s Eiffel Tower problem.

There was a city in Tennessee named Paris.

And Paris didn’t have an Eiffel Tower.

Not yet.

Then the Phone Rang

Only weeks after Paris, USA ended, Brother Patrick O’Brien called the Paris-Henry County Chamber of Commerce.

Virgil Wall answered.

CBU was preparing for another Memphis in May project and needed room for whatever came next.

Would Paris be interested in taking the Eiffel Tower?

Wall certainly saw the possibilities.

But the Chamber couldn’t simply accept a giant structure on behalf of the city.

So another telephone call was made.

This one went to Paris Mayor Richard Dunlap III.

Wall later remembered the mayor being elated by the idea.

Now things began moving quickly.

Wall and Paris City Manager George Moore traveled to Memphis carrying a letter from Mayor Dunlap supporting the donation.

They were joined in discussions with CBU by Paris businessman Harold Plumley, owner of the Plumley Division of Dana Corporation.

O’Brien later remembered Wall, Moore and Plumley as the men who championed the project.

The Paris City Commission approved the donation.

Paris, Tennessee, was getting an Eiffel Tower.

There was only the small matter of moving it.

How Do You Move an Eiffel Tower?

You take it apart.

In early 1992, employees of the Paris Public Works Department went to Memphis.

The tower was dismantled.

Its hundreds of pieces were loaded onto a flatbed truck.

Then Paris city employees hauled their new landmark across West Tennessee and brought it home to Henry County.

And this is where the story gets particularly good.

Paris had accepted an Eiffel Tower.

Paris had gone to Memphis and picked up an Eiffel Tower.

Paris had transported an Eiffel Tower all the way home.

Paris still hadn’t decided where to put the Eiffel Tower.

Wall later confirmed that the tower was brought back before its permanent location had been chosen.

The Chamber originally hoped to place it somewhere that could also accommodate its headquarters. The Chamber itself was preparing to move out of Paris City Hall.

But officials couldn’t find a location that worked for both.

So somewhere in Paris sat the pieces of a 60-foot Eiffel Tower while local officials worked out what exactly to do with their enormous new gift.

Eventually, they found the answer.

Memorial Park.

There was still work to do.

The wooden pieces received fresh paint. Paris Public Works employees had to reconstruct the enormous puzzle they had hauled home from Memphis.

Even the landscape had to cooperate.

Trees were removed so motorists traveling along Volunteer Drive could see the tower.

In November 1992, it finally went up.

Paris had its Eiffel Tower.

The landmark was formally dedicated on January 29, 1993.

Brother Patrick O’Brien came from Christian Brothers University for the ceremony.

The temporary engineering project that had become a problem in Memphis had found a permanent home in Paris.

Or at least everyone thought it was permanent.

There Was One Problem Nobody Could Stop

Rain.

Sun.

Wind.

Humidity.

Time.

The original Tennessee Eiffel Tower may have contained thousands of steel rods, but its primary structural material was Douglas fir.

Paris city crews maintained it for years.

Eventually, however, nature began winning.

By 2002, the landmark that had become part of Paris’s identity was deteriorating.

The city could have allowed it to disappear.

Instead, Paris built another Eiffel Tower.

And this time, it would be made in Paris.

The Eiffel Tower You See Today Is a Henry County Creation

Local businessman Keith Jackson, owner and operator of Precision Grinding and Machine, and his company took on the task of recreating the tower in steel.

That means something many people who have stood beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris may not realize:

The tower standing there today did not come from Memphis.

The original did.

Today’s tower was built locally.

Jackson’s company fabricated the replacement in three large sections.

Each section was placed on a trailer, transported to the park and erected there.

The old wooden landmark had essentially been reborn in steel.

Jackson, who died in 2015, spent 21 years as owner and operator of Precision Grinding and Machine. His obituary specifically noted his company’s role in building the Eiffel Tower replica in 2002 to replace the deteriorating wooden version.

So there are really two chapters to the Paris Eiffel Tower story.

Christian Brothers University gave Paris the original.

Henry County made sure it survived.

It Became Bigger Than Anyone Expected

Remember what this thing was supposed to be in 1990.

A temporary university engineering project.

Nobody at Christian Brothers could have known that more than three decades later people would travel to another Tennessee city specifically to photograph it.

Nobody in Paris could have known that a tourism experiment called Paris, USA would indirectly lead to a giant landmark arriving on a flatbed truck.

And nobody could have known how thoroughly the tower would become woven into the identity of the community.

Former City Manager George Moore later described bringing the tower to Paris as one of the accomplishments of his years in city government that made him particularly proud.

There was a personal reason.

His children and grandchildren knew that he had helped bring it here.

The tower began appearing on local letterheads and logos.

Chamber officials made sure visitors saw it during tours of Henry County.

Weddings took place around it.

People stopped for photographs.

Ramay Winchester, who served as assistant executive director of the Chamber from 1990 until 1998, remembered how tourism officials promoted the landmark.

For years, she said, telling someone she was from Paris usually produced one response:

They knew Paris as the home of the World’s Biggest Fish Fry.

But gradually Winchester noticed something changing.

More people were beginning to recognize Paris for something else.

The Eiffel Tower.

One Photograph Says Almost Everything

Of all the stories accumulated around the tower, perhaps the best involves a grandmother visiting from out of town.

She brought several of her younger grandchildren to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tennessee, to have their photograph taken.

That alone wasn’t unusual.

Her reason was.

Some of the children’s older siblings or cousins were in France.

And on that very same day, they were having their photograph taken at the real Eiffel Tower in Paris.

So one part of the family stood beneath Gustave Eiffel’s enormous iron landmark in France.

Another stood beneath its little Tennessee relative in Henry County.

Two Parises.

Two Eiffel Towers.

One family.

Thousands of miles apart.

That’s the kind of story no tourism committee could manufacture.

And Then There’s Paris, Texas

Of course, Tennessee isn’t America’s only Paris with an Eiffel Tower.

Paris, Texas, has one too.

That helped create a friendly rivalry over which American Paris could boast the taller Eiffel Tower.

Texas eventually found a particularly Texan solution.

Its tower got a giant red cowboy hat.

So America now has at least two very different interpretations of France’s most famous landmark.

One says Paris, Tennessee.

The other essentially says Paris, Texas—with a cowboy hat large enough to remove any doubt.

Claims about the exact heights of various replicas have bounced around tourism literature for years. Some sources have listed Tennessee’s steel tower at 70 feet.

But the City of Paris currently identifies its Eiffel Tower as 60 feet tall, which also agrees with the detailed historical account of the original.

And really, arguing over ten feet misses what makes Tennessee’s tower special.

Its story is far more interesting than its measurement.

From a Tower to a Destination

Today, Memorial Park has become Eiffel Tower Park, and the tower is no longer simply an odd attraction sitting by itself.

The park has grown around it.

There are playgrounds and a splash pad, a three-quarter-mile walking track, trout pond, swimming pool, soccer field, sand volleyball court, tennis and pickleball courts, an 18-hole disc golf course and rentable pavilions.

That’s remarkable when you remember how this began.

Not as a Tennessee tourist attraction.

Not as a city monument.

Not as the centerpiece of a park.

Not even in Paris.

It started as a college engineering project in Memphis.

The Tower That Wasn’t Supposed to Be Here

Perhaps that’s what makes the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Tennessee, worth stopping to see.

The original tower wasn’t supposed to last.

It wasn’t supposed to come to Henry County.

Paris wasn’t searching for an Eiffel Tower when Christian Brothers University needed somewhere to send one.

It happened because two completely unrelated events occurred at almost exactly the right time.

Memphis celebrated France.

Christian Brothers University built a tower.

College students started climbing it.

Paris invited America’s other Parises to Tennessee.

Someone at CBU noticed.

A telephone rang.

Virgil Wall answered it.

Mayor Richard Dunlap III liked what he heard.

George Moore, Harold Plumley and others helped make it happen.

Paris Public Works employees drove to Memphis, dismantled a 60-foot tower, loaded it onto a truck and hauled it home before the city had even settled on where it would stand.

Then, when the wooden landmark began deteriorating a decade later, Keith Jackson and Precision Grinding and Machine built it again—this time in steel and this time right here in Paris.

More than thirty years after that first tower arrived, its successor still stands over the park that now bears its name.

People who have never been to Henry County recognize it in photographs.

Travelers stop to see it.

Families pose beneath it.

Children play around it.

And a structure that began as a temporary college project has become one of the most recognizable landmarks in Northwest Tennessee.

All because of a festival in Memphis, a gathering of towns named Paris…

and one very well-timed phone call.

Sources

Rob York, “Local leadership, donation helped Paris get Eiffel Tower,” The Paris Post-Intelligencer, March 31, 2005. Historical account based on interviews with people directly involved in bringing the tower to Paris, including Virgil Wall, Brother Patrick O’Brien, George Moore and Ramay Winchester. Paris Post-Intelligencer historical article

City of Paris, Tennessee — Eiffel Tower Park. Official city information confirming the present landmark as a 60-foot steel Eiffel Tower and documenting the park’s current amenities. City of Paris — Eiffel Tower Park

Official Eiffel Tower website, Paris, France — “The World’s Biggest Towers.” The official French Eiffel Tower site recognizes the Paris, Tennessee reproduction and identifies it as a 60-foot replica. Official Eiffel Tower website