I PREFER TRAVELING by train above all other modes of transportation, and arriving in or departing from a grand train station is much more exciting to me than any airport. A tour of Paris’s train stations is also a tour of the city in the years around the turn of the twentieth century. If you have time to see only one, you won’t be disappointed in choosing the Gare de Lyon, home of the beautiful and evocative Le Train Bleu restaurant.
BARBARA DINERMAN is a former resident of Paris and returns frequently. She has written regularly on interior design, travel, and art for Veranda, Robb Report, and Art & Antiques. In 1997, she won an annual journalism award from the American Society of Interior Designers. Dinerman is also the author of award-winning short stories and a novel, H (iUniverse, 2007). The following piece was originally published in 1999.
WE DON’T USUALLY think of such utilitarian buildings as train stations when we plan our explorations of Paris. But the six great stations extant today are certainly worth our inspection. They’re as much a history lesson as the noted monuments, as rewarding an architectural study as Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s façades of the Grands Boulevards, and as much fun as a visit to any of the flower-laden parks.
With the exception of the Gare Montparnasse, which soars eighteen stories in its familiar late-twentieth-century structural form, Paris’s train stations reflect the exuberant faith in industrial progress that marked the end of the nineteenth century. The great architects of the day conceived these remarkable structures, and Impressionist artists such as Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Gustave Caillebotte, Jean Beraud, and Norbert Goeneutte competed to properly record the dramatic impact of the stations on the Parisian landscape and its citizenry.
Just three years after the Paris Salon of 1874 (where Manet’s The Railway, now known as The Gare Saint-Lazare, brought down a storm of ridicule), Émile Zola took up the cause. “That is where painting is today,” he wrote in defense of new paintings by Monet. “Our artists have to find the poetry in train stations, the way their fathers found the poetry in forests and rivers.”
In fact, Monet’s group of eleven works depicting the Gare Saint-Lazare became the basis for an art exhibition titled Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare at the Musée d’Orsay last spring. The successful exhibition then moved to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. For modern-day audiences, these artistic efforts are powerful reminders that the trains, along with the cuttings and tracks that transformed their neighborhoods, were nothing less than a wondrous symbol of change.
As the stations made grand architectural statements, we can admire them today as a glimpse back at the turn of that century, and for what they still are today. Enter any station, and the crowds—not to mention the restaurant facilities and even the poster art—will amaze you. This dazzling network of railways is alive and well, despite the preponderance of air travel. Compare the SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer) with Amtrak: not exactly a contest.
Of course, the sense of nostalgia is strong, and marketing efforts have been surprisingly aggressive. Having adopted the slogan À nous de vous faire préférer le train (We’ll make you want to take the train) on its brochures, schedules, and ubiquitous ads, the company’s officials are aware of the sentimental value of rail travel. Vintage posters show the legendary trains such as the 1925 Sud Express steaming out of the Gare de Lyon for the Riviera, and the Boîte à Sel delivering elegantly dressed and coiffed passengers to the Gare d’Austerlitz from Biarritz.
With the stations recently cleaned up and vigorously updating their amenities, it can be richly rewarding to devote a few days to them. Think of them as a historical collection, a phenomenon unleashed by industrialization, and particularly as a glamorous symbol of mobility. For the first time, people could hop a train and ride in comfort to the south of France, the southwest, the north, the east. The possibilities seemed endless, and the opportunity to house these revolutionary steam railways gave architects a bold new form of expression.
At first, architects balked at the new engineering techniques, such as using iron beams or vaults to create the broad spans needed to construct the ticket halls and train sheds. As Anthony Sutcliffe notes in Paris: An Architectural History, an entirely new kind of structure was needed in nineteenth-century Paris—one that would accommodate “large-scale manufacturing, steam railways and high-volume commerce. These buildings started to appear in and around Paris in about 1840.”
Iron and glass were becoming less expensive, but architects feared that aesthetic appeal might suffer. Respected names such as Labrouste, who designed the Sainte-Geneviève Library in 1842, made efforts to build with the new materials. In the 1850s, the Les Halles food market area (designed by eminent architect Baltard) pleased the emperor with its extensive system of roofs and clerestories. Still, the first two railway stations—Gare d’Orléans (1840), now Gare d’Austerlitz, and Gare du Nord (1846)—used modest railway architects. The Gare du Nord was originally an arcaded classical design “reflecting the horizontality of the trains and looking like orangeries or market buildings in the pre-Baltard style,” notes Sutcliffe. But as the more fashionable architects showed that the new materials could be applied to fine architecture, the stations began to look like showplaces.
After the Gare du Nord’s modest beginning as a railway-company design in a then remote area of the city, railway chairman Baron James de Rothschild took another look at the neoclassical structures that dotted the city—notably Jakob Ignaz Hittorff’s nearby church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. Rothschild commissioned the German-born architect to give the Gare du Nord a facelift in 1859. Hittorff created a neoclassical frontage with giant Ionic pilasters that define the central pavilion; the gables on the end pavilions reflect the wide pitched roof of the train shed. Huge statues stand on the façade, so that the structure “combined a practical design for a railway station and the classical features of a self-conscious Parisian public monument.”
The interior is considered cathedral-like in its vastness, the original green columns supporting the roof of the train shed. Hittorff complained about a lack of “monumental street access,” though Haussmann supplied two short approach streets. Access has further improved with the recent addition of a service road and drop-off area at the front entrance. From the upper level, you can see the bullet-shaped TGV trains to northern towns and the Thalys line to Belgium, Holland, and Germany waiting to speed away.
The Gare du Nord is also the starting point for Eurostar, the Channel Tunnel (Chunnel) line, and the upper level has been transformed into a plush service-area-cum-waiting lounge. To inaugurate the Euro Tunnel in May 1994, François Mitterrand commissioned a sculpture. Europa Operanda’s futuristic bronze figures of an adult and child dominate the parapet overlooking the Grandes Lignes.
Built three years after the original Gare du Nord, this station inspired all the others. As Sutcliffe notes, the stations “offered the chance to create completely new spaces and circulation systems, using iron and glass in a more creative way than was normally possible in Parisian architecture.” Stations also had “monumental potential at the head of the approach streets.” Architect F. A. Duquesney emphasized the semicircular vault of the train shed, “which sprang above an arcaded frontage and was flanked by two three-story pavilions, topped by a balustrade, in the formal style of railway offices of the day.” The large, glazed arch had radiating iron tracery and glass that formed a striking wheel symbol. As in the Gare du Nord, statues graced the façade, each representing a town served by the network.
The boulevard de Strasbourg, linking the Gare de l’Est and the Grands Boulevards, would not be completed until the early 1850s, but Duquesney designed the structure with the future vista in mind. Although—or perhaps because—the immediate neighborhood today is a bit down-at-the-heel, the station makes an imposing sight as it dominates Place Napoléon III.
What is perhaps most striking about the Gare de l’Est, however, is its haunting history as the point of departure for the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. If you don’t have this history in mind at first (as you contemplate such eastern destinations as Strasbourg and Bâle, plus the newly completed TGV line to Strasbourg and Germany), you will soon be reminded by at least four large plaques. “N’oublions jamais,” the plaques implore visitors. “De cette gare partirent des milliers des patriotes français pour le tragique voyage.” Let us never forget …
Farther west and serving the western region of the country, including Normandy as well as extensive Paris suburbs, this more centrally located station didn’t stand at the head of a great vista. Sutcliffe dismisses the Gare Saint-Lazare as “a conforming Parisian façade architecture, virtually unrecognizable as a station.” However, in its newly sandblasted state, connected by a blue filigreed skywalk from the Hôtel Concorde Saint-Lazare, this mid-nineteenth-century structure has a definite glamour; its neighbors include the splendid Second Empire department stores Printemps and Galeries Lafayette.
The Gare Saint-Lazare was redesigned in the 1860s as the Second Empire made its mark under Napoléon III. Haussmann’s street improvements were in full swing, and the Hôtel Terminus (now the Concorde Saint-Lazare) coincided with the remodeling of the station. Today, this bustling area is entertaining. The 1895 seafood restaurant Mollard is across the street, decorated with fabulous mosaic murals, and the posh 1889 Paul boulangerie is located at boulevard Haussmann and rue Tronchet (where lines form for turtle-shaped loaves and gourmet sandwiches).
The most striking feature of the Gare Saint-Lazare is the range of its amenities. On the ground floor is the vast Galerie Marchande. This ultra-mall sells everything from fresh vegetables to Swarovski crystal. You can get your umbrella repaired at Maroquinerie à la Pierrette. (“Même les plus malades,” a sign promises—even the worst of them.) And when was the last time you were in a station that had an antiques shop? Oh, yes, you can get glasses in an hour and your photos developed at the same time.
The Galerie Marchande has undergone a massive renovation. This is also now the site of the new RER Haussmann-Saint-Lazare commuter rail station. Up the escalator to the main ticket hall, two huge brasseries are doing a brisk business, and the hot-dog-shaped stainless-steel stands on rubber tires—a whimsical presence in every station—serve all sorts of refreshments to go. Meanwhile signs boast of on-time performance and wagons-lits posters exhort us to “discover the new cuisine on board—for the pleasure of the taste and the trip.”
After our virtual journeys to the north, east, and west from these Right Bank stations, let’s move south to the Left Bank for the southern routes. If the Gare Saint-Lazare and its environs recall city life in the late nineteenth century, the Gare d’Austerlitz reflects the era of travel to the posh watering holes of the southwest, notably Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
Though the station itself is rather nondescript due to its early origins, it offers a fine glimpse into a leisurely era, when travelers disported themselves in the formal restaurant upstairs, seen from outside as a row of bright blue awnings over flowered window boxes. In the restaurant, Le Grenadier, you will be given its history (named for a neighborhood soldier in Napoléon’s army) and a daily changing menu offered with private-label wine. Salons display paintings of the campaigns.
In the ticket hall, banners announce a new link with the city of Bourges. Travelers can buy packages that include guided visits to the Cathédrale Saint-Étienne and other sights; in the early 1990s, Jacques Chirac launched the Seine-Rive-Gauche project, a pleasant riverside strip that runs southeast from the station.
Many Parisians dismiss the Gare d’Austerlitz as architecturally dull. However, the sight of the Métro trains entering on an overpass (the huge archway on the upper level of the station) is compelling, like watching a train disappear into a mountain.
Just across the Seine (technically the Right Bank), the station’s fanciful clock tower dominates the rue de Bercy area, which has been revitalized, particularly with the opening of the new Bibliothèque Nationale de France in the late nineties. But when the Gare de Lyon was being built, in 1902, the area was poor and the site awkward.
The Paris Exposition of 1900 had created a climate for change. Railway companies felt “a strong obligation to enhance the cityscape,” notes Sutcliffe. Both the Gare de Lyon and the Gare d’Orsay (now the Musée d’Orsay) were “variants of the classical style, though the Gare de Lyon, standing at the gateway to the east end, was more daring, using symbolism, the picturesque, expressionism and height.… [It] epitomizes public architecture in Paris at the height of the Belle Époque.”
Architect Marius Toudoire created, says Sutcliffe, “languorous sculpture springing directly from the walls, and the colorful decoration recalled the architecture of luxury hotels and casinos on the Côte d’Azur.” For present-day visitors, the legendary Train Bleu restaurant is “the world’s most palatial station restaurant in a lush neo-rococo.” Lunch or dinner is a feast for the senses, and though reviews of the cuisine vary, I found the food to be delicious, and the service elegant (pommes gaufrettes served in a silver bowl, for example.) My rack of lamb arrived on a Christofle slicing trolley, which had a hood of embossed silver.
Le Train Bleu’s fabulous murals of high society enjoying themselves in Lyon and the Riviera, its richly carved moldings, crystal chandeliers, and velvet drapes make even a cup of coffee memorable in the adjoining bar, Le Club Américain. The restaurant is listed as a historic site. In an elegant glass case are mementos, from the signature china to the Train Bleu watch.
This startlingly modern station on boulevard Montparnasse was rebuilt to serve the TGV to the Atlantic coast, including Nantes and Quimper as of 1990. It forms a glass and concrete complex with the 1973 Tour Montparnasse, which soars to fifty-nine stories over the once-Bohemian district. Sutcliffe calls the Gare Montparnasse nothing more than a “modest practicality,” but it appeals with its broad arched views of the surrounding area, its restaurants judiciously placed on the perimeter of the upper level.
Whether or not the charms and unexpected comforts of the train stations persuade you to “préférer le train,” you can savor the pleasures of the journey—past and present—simply by visiting the stations themselves.
