Paul from Paris

Factory

This is a short detective story.

The city of Paris awarded architect Paul Friesé for the 1903 facade of the Métropolitain (subway) factory at 179 rue de Bercy. For the award jury, “This factory entrance is almost monumental.”

Viewed from the street, the factory brings to my mind the Museum of Natural History, in New York, or turn-of-the-century university buildings.

The facade was part of a large factory complex. To my eyes, what it most brings to mind is a mosque, complete with minarets. The entrance is a giant arch.

Factory

The Métropolitain factory has been demolished. The Paris transit authority has offices on the site, in part of a nondescript line of postwar office buildings that would be equally in place in Birmingham or Tulsa as in Paris.

Paris is receptive to industrial techniques –the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, even the Grande Arche de La Défense– but not to actual industry. I’m left with the impression that Paris –city leaders, planners and architects, ordinary citizens– think factories and industry are embarrassments, better forgotten. What else could explain the oblivion into which the Métropolitain factory has fallen?

In addition to the factory on the rue de Bercy, the Métropolitain commissioned numerous electrical plants or sub-stations that are scattered throughout Paris. Some of these were also designed by Paul Friesé and are still standing. They bring to my mind armories, tiny forts.

Architect Paul Friesé was a remarkable figure. I’d recommend Hugues Fiblec’s Paris Friesé 1851-1917: Architectures de l’âge industriel, published by Norma; and the French architecture institute’s biography, from which I’ve borrowed the uncredited photo and illustration to show the Métropolitain facory.

Friesé was born in 1851 in Alsace. When he was 19, war broke out between France and Germany. Friesé enlisted, but France soon lost the war, and Alsace. Friesé moved to Paris and studied architecture. His architectural practice featured superb industrial buildings, few of which survive today. In keeping with his time, Friesé brought artistry to industry. He traveled extensively, and seems to have participated actively in architectural exchanges on design and materials.

France’s loss of Alsace to the Prussians nourished many hopes for revenge or re-taking. When war broke out in 1914, Friesé enlisted. He was 63 years old. From frequent visits to Alsace, Friesé had many contacts. He also had a command of German and equestrian skills. With this background, Friesé served as an interpreter. Paul Friesé died in 1917, while visiting his son, Jean-Paul, on the front. (I’m sure that there’s a superb story behind this fact, befitting of a W.G. Sebald tale, and I hope some day to look into it further.)

43 rue des Couronnes

The apartment building on the rue des Couronnes by Charlet and Perrin is out of the way but well worth a trip.

The building won a prize from the city of Paris for its facade in 1905. This is what the jury had to say then:

“The jury was very interested by the combination of the most ordinary materials with stone. This gives an overall effect that is both simple and recherché, and makes it possible to achieve good-looking streets in modest residential neighborhoods.” (my very rough translation)

By “the most ordinary materials”, the jury meant brick. Among Paris building facades that won prizes in the early 1900s, many used brick, which compared to an all-stone building would have lowered construction costs and allowed for artistry.  Prizewinning architects often used brick to achieve structural or visual effects that wouldn’t have been possible in stone.

This having been said, for this reader the operative word in the jury’s comments is: combination. What interested the jury was not only how “the most ordinary materials” were used, but especially how brick was combined with stone. In this building, stone is used to frame the entry door, to frame windows, and as ornamentation. For this visitor, what’s remarkable is how stone is used merely to suggest the idea of an apartment building, or to signal to passersby that this is a proper apartment building.

The jury also made a comment that seems to have been pressing and prominent in 1905: architecture –good architecure– is for everybody. Whether moved by égalité or fraternité, the best-facade jury sought out and rewarded modest buildings situated in popular neighborhoods.

The rue des Couronnes is in the 20th arrondissement, usually thought of as working class and lacking tourist attractions. When I first saw the building at 43 rue des Couronnes, I thought of Amélie Poulin: it looks like a holdover (or transplant) that time forgot. The building is alone, bordered on one side by a park and on the others by groups of postwar buildings. Whereas number 43 is on the street, with a sidewalk and stores, its neighbors seem embarrassed or ashamed: they huddle at a remove from the street.

Of all the buildings that won a prize from the city of Paris for their facade, I think this one was most worth the trip.
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The city of Paris gave an award to Henri Adolphe Auguste Delgane for one of the best building façades built in 1906.

I love this building, because to my eyes, it’s a poor man’s building set in a rich man’s neighborhood. Put differently, it’s a building that I find democratic or egalitarian.

Viewed from the street, the corner building is modest compared to its neighbors. It’s made mostly of brick. The ground floor has some boutiques but otherwise keeps quiet.

What makes this building special? What makes it stand out?

Two points come to the mind of this spectator.

First, the architect puts creative use of stone and sculpted elements a few floors above street level.

Second, the architect reserved his most exuberant treatment for the building’s corner. Delgane departs from the neighborhood convention (corners at a 90° angle) with a rounded corner, with large windows and balconies on upper floors.

sober storefronts

corner

facade details

199 bis, bd St-Germain

Compared to the exuberance of Lavriotte’s apartment house on the avenue Rapp, Pasquier’s building at 199 bis boulevard Saint-Germain looks sedate.

The city of Paris awarded prizes for the facades of both buildings in 1901. What is it about Pasquier’s stately and low-key building that pleased the jury?

I have a couple of hypotheses; right or wrong, they underscore what makes this building special:

• Pasquier’s boulevard Saint-Germain building has a door. A real door, made of heavy ironwork, framed by stonework. As the century wore on, Paris architects seem to have forgotten about doors. Post-war buildings are especially egregious offenders in this respect, as they often have swinging glass panes as doors.
  There’s glass in the entry to Pasquier’s building, but it separates the entry from the courtyard. It features an art nouveau vegetal motif; it’s visible from the street but contributes to separating what’s in the building from the street outside.
• Pasquier respects the alignment, style of adjacent buildings, and a limited ornamental palette, while showing an extraordinary attention to detail. I’m especially taken by how the architect treated a north-facing, first-floor window. The window practically invites light in, and its canopy segues into a different treatment reserved to the second-floor balcony.

29 av Rapp (Paris)

“It’s not likely that Paris will witness a proliferation of this kind of construction.”

These were some of the selection jury’s comments when it awarded a prize in 1901 to Jules Lavriotte for the façade of the apartment house at 29 avenue Rapp, in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.

Years ago, I had the good fortune to study art history, and the greater fortune to study this building. (Thank you, Martha Ward.) Befitting American students prone to afternoon somnolence, examination of the building focused on its entrance, most aptly described as labial, and at its sculpted door, with a phallic motif.

When I return to look at the building today, I see all of that, but I notice a lot more:

• Lavriotte plays with symmetry, or rather an absence of symmetry: the entry is off-center. A balcony on the third floor is centered, but the structure on either side of it is not; and examined vertically, one side of the facade has continuity, while the other has an interruption.
• Inside or outside? Lavriotte toys with facade viewers by alternating projections and indentations to the facade. The second, third, and fourth floors take flights of fancy, while floors above and below adhere to strict conventions.
• Rich art nouveau ornamentation is everywhere! As a repeat spectator, I’m especially drawn to the balcony on the third floor. There’s great attention to detail in the stonework, the iron grillings, ornamentation (with vegetal art nouveau themes) on the facade surface, and on the underside of the balcony, where there are colored ceremics, including a pair of cows.

entry

facade

balcony detail