Gustave Eiffel
Gustave Eiffel (December 15, 1832 - December 28, 1923), French architect.
He is most famous for building the Eiffel Tower, built from 1887-1889 for the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition in Paris, France, as well as the armature for the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, USA. He also designed characteristics ironwork for bridges.
Unwittingly, Gustave Eiffel designed a second site in Paris that would also become a city landmark. A three-storey circular structure that looked more like a large beehive, it was created as a temporary structure for use as a wine rotunda at the Great Exposition of 1900. When the exposition was over, it was dismantled and re-erected as low-cost studios for artists. Relocated in the "Passage Danzig" in Montparnasse, it would be called La Ruche.
At La Ruche, the rent was dirt cheap and no one was evicted for non-payment. In the history of mankind, like Montparnasse itself, few places have ever housed such talent . At one time or another in those early years, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ossip Zadkine, Moise Kisling, Marc Chagall, Nina Hamnett, Fernand Leger, Jacques Lipchitz, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani, Constantin Brancusi, and others, called the place home. First promoted by art dealers such as Henry Kahnweiler, today works by these desperately poor residents of Gustave Eiffel’s creation, sell in the millions of dollars.