"The play­wright Tris­tan Bernard is said to have eat­en lunch at the Eif­fel Tow­er every day, but not because he liked the menu in its café: rather, because it was the only place in Paris with no view of the Eif­fel Tow­er. His view wasn't whol­ly eccen­tric in the decades after its con­struc­tion, in the late eigh­teen-eight­ies, when the struc­ture had yet to become the most beloved in France, and per­haps in the world."
"Unlike the Eif­fel Tow­er, which was com­mis­sioned in part to cel­e­brate the cen­ten­ni­al of the French Rev­o­lu­tion, the Tour Mont­par­nasse projects no polit­i­cal sym­bol­ism; unlike Notre-Dame de Paris, or Sacré-Cœur de Mont­martre, it has no reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance. Its pur­pose is whol­ly com­mer­cial, befit­ting a large office build­ing with a shop­ping mall - or now, the remains of a shop­ping mall - at the bot­tom."
"But when it was first con­ceived in 1958, it embod­ied the very image of moder­ni­ty in a built envi­ron­ment that was dilap­i­dat­ed where it wasn't war-torn. A mod­ern sky­scraper would show the world, unmis­tak­ably, that Paris had stepped ful­ly into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry of indoor plumb­ing, elec­tric­i­ty, fast trains, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion. This mis­sion gained the full back­ing of none oth­er than Andre Mal­raux, then France's first Min­is­ter of Cul­tur­al Affairs."
Tristan Bernard preferred dining at the Eiffel Tower because it was the only Parisian spot without a view of the Eiffel Tower. The Tour Montparnasse stands as Paris' least beloved building and has been the only central skyscraper since its 1973 completion. The tower serves a commercial role with office space and a shopping mall now largely defunct. Conceived in 1958, the tower was intended to embody modernity amid a dilapidated urban fabric. A modern skyscraper was meant to signal Paris' embrace of indoor plumbing, electricity, fast trains, and telecommunications. Andre Malraux gave full backing to the project.
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