Steve in the Archives

View from the Archives

Les Invalides

Jardins de Luxembourg

Dead Ends

Tomorrow, I plan to visit the Archives of the Ministry of External Affairs. It is dimly possible that they may have some records of the Eiffel and Company’s activities in Peru, Chile and Bolivia. I also have to look at South American history. I believe that when Eiffel was working there in the early 1870s, Arica belonged to Bolivia. Lelièvre, Eiffel’s agent in Peru seems not to have been involved in the Bolivia projects but that isn’t all that clear.

Follow-up – the Ministry requires a 2 week prior registration before accessing their archives. I’ll follow that trail some other year. Meanwhile, this morning I tried to locate Eiffel’s factory. As expected, the neighborhood had changed considerably – now full of 1960s apartments. But, I found a park and shopping mall named after the great man, possibly on the site of his factory – street names had changed.