Eiffel Tower (Paris, Tennessee) to Memorial Park where it was finally erected. Eiffel Tower (Paris, Tennessee) Tennessee's Eiffel Tower is a landmark in the city of Paris, Tennessee. Built in the early 1990s, this structure is a model of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. Engineering students at Christian Brothers University originally constructed the tower to commemorate the 1990 Memphis in May festival. Each year, the festival honors a country, and 1990 focused on France. According to Brother Patrick O'Brien, a public relations official for the university at the time: "[the tower] was the centerpiece of one of our most popular quads." Regardless, the
Eiffel Tower selection of Eiffel's design a foregone conclusion, as entries had to include a study for a four-sided metal tower on the Champ de Mars. (A 300-meter tower was then considered a herculean engineering effort). On 12 May, a commission was set up to examine Eiffel's scheme and its rivals, which, a month later, decided that all the proposals except Eiffel's were either impractical or lacking in details. After some debate about the exact location of the tower, a contract was signed on 8 January 1887. This was signed by Eiffel acting in his own capacity rather than as the representative