Paris architecture of the Belle Époque

Notable buildings and structures of the period include the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Gare de Lyon, the Bon Marché department store, and the entries of the stations of the Paris Metro designed by Hector Guimard.

The new railroad stations, office buildings and department stores often had classical facades which concealed resolutely modern interiors, built with iron frames, winding staircases, and large glass domes and skylights made possible by the new engineering techniques and materials of the period.

Usually built of reinforced concrete in rectangular forms, crisp straight lines, with sculptural detail applied to the outside rather than as part of the structure, it drew from classical models and stressed functionality.

Other innovative buildings in the new style were built by Henri Sauvage, using reinforced concrete covered with ceramic tile and step-like structures to create terraces.

The central building, the Palais de Trocadero, was constructed in a picturesque neo-Moorish or neo-Byzantine style by architect Gabriel Davioud, whose other notable works, built for Napoleon III, included the two theaters on the Place du Chatelet and the Fontaine Saint-Michel.

The architects of the tower, including Stephen Sauvestre, who designed the graceful curving arches of the base, the glass observation platform on the second level and the cupola at the top, remain nearly unknown.

[3] An equally significant building constructed for the fair was the Galerie des machines, designed by architect Ferdinand Dutert and engineer Victor Contamin.

[7] As the end of the 19th century approached, many architectural critics complained that the uniform style of apartment buildings imposed by Haussmann on the new boulevards of Paris under Napoleon III was monotonous and uninteresting.

The facade of his own house, at 95 boulevard Murat in the 16th arrondissement, is remarkably modern; it is almost all windows, framed by concrete columns, discreetly decorated with colored ceramic tiles.

It was inspired largely by the houses of the Italian Renaissance, but Girault added modern touches in the curving windows, the floral wrought-iron decoration, and a series of terraces in the rear facing the garden.

He used an abundance of enameled tiles and a brightly colored interior and exterior, using yellow and orange panels to contrast with the vertical blue columns, which ended in a Gothic-inspired top story.

The Galeries Lafayette store on Boulevard Haussmann, finished in 1912, combined skylights over courtyards with balconies with undulating railings, which gave the interiors the rich roccoco effect of a baroque palace.

Since the firm had been founded under Louis XIV in 1665, the facade of the building, designed by architect Paul Noël, was perfectly modern on the inside, but had architectural touches from the earlier century; colossal columns, a square dome, and beautifully detailed sculptural ornament.

They followed the example of the central book storeroom of the Bibliothèque Nationale by Henri Labrouste in 1863 and the skylight of Bon Marché department store by Louis-Charles Boileau in 1874.

The architect Jacques Hermant (1855–1930) had a purely classical training; he won the Prix de Rome from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1880 but he was also fascinated by modern ideas.

[16] The headquarters of the bank Crédit lyonnais, built in 1883 on the boulevard des Italiens in 1883 by William Bouwens Van der Boijen, was classical on the outside, but inside one of the most modern buildings of its time, using an iron frame and glass skylight to provide ample light to large hall where the title deeds were held.

[19] Most of the churches in the early period of the Belle Époque were constructed in an eclectic or historical style; the most prominent example was the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur on Montmartre, designed by Paul Abadie.

It replaced a smaller church in the parish, and was designed for the large numbers of construction workers who had come to Paris to work on the 1900 Exposition and who settled in the neighborhood.

It was built for the Union of Orthodox Jews, as a place of worship for the large number of Jewish refugees coming from Russia and eastern Europe at the turn of the century.

Like the residential building designed by Lavirotte, the reinforced concrete facade is almost completely covered with decoration made by the ceramics studio of Alexandre Bigot.

The rules of the competition required that the new edicules "should not make ugly or impede the public way around the stations; on the contrary, they should amuse the eye and decorate the sidewalks.

Guimard's entrances, with their color, material and form, were in harmony with the stone buildings of the Paris streets, and even, with their vegetal curves, fit well with trees and gardens.

The Gare Saint-Lazare featured a grand shelter for the trains forty meters high, built between 1851 and 1853 by Eugène Flachat, and memorably captured in the impressionist paintings of Claude Monet in 1877.

The Gare de Lyon, originally built for the line Paris-Monterau in 1847, was completely rebuilt between 1895 and 1902 by architect Marius Toudoire (1852–1922) and the engineering firm of Denis, Carthault and Bouvard.

Toudoire chose to give the Gare de Lyon a facade different from other public buildings; it had a series of monumental arches with doorways opening to arcades within the station.

[30] The most elegant and famous of the Belle Époque bridges is the Pont Alexandre-III, designed by architects Joseph Cassien-Bernard and Gaston Cousin, and engineers Jean Résal and Amédée d'Alby.

The counterweights supporting the bridge are four massive masonry columns, seventeen meters high, which serve as the bases for four works of beaux-arts sculpture, representing the four "Fames"; the Sciences, the Arts, Commerce, and Industry.

The bridge combined a graceful double arc anchored to four classical buttresses, and richly decorated with iron and stone sculptural details, to harmonize with the other monuments in the center of the city.

The owner, Gabriel Astruc, then commissioned the Belgian art-nouveau architect, Henry Van de Velde, painter Maurice Denis and sculptor Antoine Bourdelle.

The interior was decorated by a remarkable collection of artists; besides Maurice Denis and Bourdelle, they included Édouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel, inspired by classical and mythological themes, as well as by the music of Debussy.