Castel Béranger

[1] Guimard had undertaken the project of designing an apartment building in a traditional style for a widow named Madame Fournier before he went to Brussels and met Horta.

"[2] Describing the Castel Béranger, the architectural historian and critic Simon Texier wrote: "The Art Nouveau had as its characteristic trait a naturalist approach, which made a building or a simple object into a work which was at the same time complex, in motion, and unified by its lines.

It was suggested by the name Castel, rather than Hotel, and by its modern version of echauguettes, the overhanging turrets that were a feature on the corners of medieval castles.

[4] In the late 1890s, there was growing criticism of the identical facades of the buildings along the Paris boulevards built during the Second Empire of Napoleon III and his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann; they were described as monotonous and boring.

In the same year, Guimard was selected to design the entrances of the new stations of the Paris Metro, making him the most prominent figure in the French Art Nouveau.

Beside the Metro station, Guimard's other Paris works included a Theater/Concert Hall, the Salle Humbert de Romans, which was opened in 1901 and demolished in 1905, and the Synagogue on Rue Pave in the Marais (1913).