26 rue Vavin, Henri Sauvage, 1912

Adaptability is what distinguishes Henri Sauvage from his architectural contemporaries. After designing an expansive, florid Art Nouveau mansion, Villa Majorelle in Nancy (1901-2) at the age of 28 - he was quick to leave all that biomorphism behind him and by 1912 was busy designing this Parisian apartment building in rue Vavin in Montparnasse with all the clarity of purpose, elegance, simplicity and formal organisation absent from the Art Nouveau stylistic vocabulary.  All this well before the Great War snuffed out the last dying embers of the style. In the 1920s and 1930s he steered in the direction of Art Deco - a move that culminated in his redesign of La Samaritaine department store. A man who had mastered the art of staying one step ahead of the competition.

In rue Vavin Sauvage experimented with the idea of stepping back the floors of the building to leave each apartment with outdoor space for leisure or recreation.  It was progressive thinking for its time and popular with the occupants, who in the first such case in Paris were members of a cooperative formed to finance the building.  Despite being much acclaimed on completion there were few imitators - higher returns could be made with more conventional spatial arrangements. The exterior was clad throughout with gleaming white tiles, making for a contemporary uncluttered appearance.  Inspiration came from Otto Wagner and others who had been developing innovative ceramic facades in Vienna for several years.  The judicious placement of blue tiles enhances the sculpted forms beneath the balconies and emphasises the window recesses.  The last of the photos illustrates the difficulty in sensing the building as a whole thanks to a group of unhelpfully placed trees.

 

Bridge Postcards of 2021

There are 14 postcards in the 2021 survey of bridge themed cards.  Two have a story of renovation to tell.  The deck of the Union Chain Bridge that has spanned the river Tweed between England and Scotland since 1820 was removed in its entirety in March 2021 for rebuilding and although work has slipped behind schedule should be re-installed by late spring in 2022.  The Pont de Cubzac truss bridge was redesigned by Gustave Eiffel in the 1870s and crosses the Dordogne river a few miles north east of Bordeaux. It was the subject of a major restoration project in 2016-17 that extended its carrying capacity without compromising its appearance.  There’s a card from Minnesota that illustrates the consequences of careless navigation and the resulting destruction of the Interstate Bridge on Lake Superior that happened on August 11, 1906.  Other examples of American bridge building come from Portland Oregon, Poughkeepsie on the Hudson river and Davenport Iowa.  From Paris we have a card of the Pont d’Austerlitz - elsewhere in France there are bridges from Lyon, Nancy and Dinant. British examples come from the river Tyne (Newcastle Swing Bridge) and the river Teign (Shaldon Bridge, Teignmouth).  Finally, two from Germany - Holtenau is near Kiel and Höllental Viaduct is in the Black Forest.

 

Postcard of the Day No. 105, Paris - Halles Centrales

Few districts of Vieux Paris have been so frequently romanticised as Les Halles, the city’s produce market that was unceremoniously demolished in 1971 and relocated to the suburbs at Rungis.  For more than a century the market was housed in a series of twelve interconnected glass and cast iron pavilions (designed by Victor Baltard) but in the era of the vainglorious Georges Pompidou these masterpieces from the age of cast iron architecture were all too easily swept aside in favour of a meretricious and soulless shopping centre that was so unloved that it had to be replaced in less than three decades.  The exuberant vitality that had inspired Emile Zola to write “Le Ventre de Paris” (1873) was lost forever. A significant working class population would be relocated and never again would the neighbouring streets resound with the noise of thousands of heavily laden trucks, trolleys and trailers battling for space - one of the great urban spectacles would be totally erased.  These were unnerving times for Parisians who sought to defend their city from the intrusion of grossly inflated modern development. To the south the 56 floors of the Tour Montparnasse were already rising out of the ground and in the west the high-rise blocks at La Défense were taking shape.  A vocal campaign to preserve the Baltard pavilions sadly failed thanks to the prevailing infatuation with ostentatious modernism on the part of the ruling Gaullist politicians.  Minor concessions were made in the form of enhanced outdoor public space (now the rather dispiriting Jardin Nelson-Mandela) but the scheme progressed largely unamended. The black and white photographs were taken on a trip to Paris in 1974 when it seemed there would be no end to the excavation that had followed the ignoble demolition of Les Halles - it would be another 5 years before this vast hole in the landscape would be filled up with a grandiose interchange between the Métro and the RER and a depressing subterranean retail concrete box.

 

Bridges of Paris: 2 Pont de Bir-Hakeim

Pont de Bir-Hakeim links the Parisian districts of Passy (16th.) and Grenelle (15th.) and carries Métro line 6 over the Seine on one of two such crossings on its circuitous arc from Charles De Gaulle - Étoile in the west to Nation in the east. Approaching the Passy Métro station on rue de l’Alboni ends in a deep visual dive over the river Seine as if poised at the top of a ski slope.  From the railings at the end of the street the view takes in the platforms and canopies of Passy station and the ribbons of steel rail leading to the next station and beyond, deep into the 15th. arrondissement. Less obvious are the bridge abutments that mark the passage over the Seine which is the reason for this spectacular view opening up. 

The bridge itself is a two tier viaduct for road and rail (Métro) - in the centre of the roadway a pedestrian walkway and cycle route runs underneath the rail bridge.  The railway runs on a concrete deck supported by tall slender steel columns, each formed from four plate sections that taper and flare to make them easier on the eye. There’s more beautification in the form of Classical reliefs representing Electricity and Commerce on the stone built central arch. Additional sculptures grace the steel substructure where it rests on the stone pier of the Île aux Cygnes.  The bridge designer was Jean-Camille Formigé whose work can be seen all over the city on Métro infrastructure and the Viaduc d’Austerlitz. When the bridge was completed in 1905 it was known as the Viaduc de Passy – in 1948 it was renamed in honour of the Free French military victory at Bir-Hakeim in 1942.

The colonnade is a popular location for fashion photo-shoots and the bridge has made many appearances on screen, most notably in Zazie dans le Métro and Last Tango in Paris. The photos conclude with images of the elevated platforms at Métro Bir-Hakeim (formerly Quai de Grenelle).

 

Paris Métro 1931

Every decade in the first half of the 20th. century one or other of Europe’s colonial powers would mount an exhibition to celebrate and legitimise their imperial dominions and plunder.  The principle audience was a domestic one but it also offered an opportunity to remind rival powers of France’s global reach.  Years of planning and a purpose built exhibition building was essential to do justice to the scale of the colonial project and L’Exposition Coloniale opened in May 1931. A subsidiary aim of the exhibition was to portray the French colonial presence as enlightened and benign as if colonial subjects were almost equal partners in a global French nation.  We may look back and see a shaming exercise in imperial condescension and national self-aggrandisement but that’s not how the French public would have seen it.  For them it was a powerful reminder of France’s high standing as an international player.  Reinforcing patriotic values at a time when a gathering economic crisis was threatening the stability of a nation rapidly fracturing into political extremes of Right and Left.  Outdoor exhibits were displayed in the Bois de Vincennes and a more scholarly presentation of indigenous arts and crafts was housed in the newly constructed Palais de la Porte Dorée, about which we posted in February 2015.

The public relations staff at the Paris Métro got swept along in the general fervour and marked the occasion with a lavish presentation book proclaiming the wonders and achievements of Parisian public transport, expensively packaged within a metallic finish board cover.  Inside were tipped-in reproductions of specially commissioned paintings of Métro-related subjects and tables of statistics demonstrating the superiority of the Métro over its international rivals. The endpapers were graced with air-brushed Art Deco-styled imagery of the Métro in action that added to the air of luxury the publishers were striving for.  It was not something to be casually handed out to the general public but almost certainly reserved for honoured guests, foreign diplomats and senior officials as a corporate souvenir gift.