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The railways station of Orsay was born from the need, commun run to all the large railroad companies, to bring their terminal closer to the center of the city. The Company of the Railroads of Orleans was particularly underprivileged by the offset situation of the station of Austerlitz. It will become purchaser at the State the day before the World Fair of 1900, in 1897 exactly, of a ground located on the quay of Orsay and occupied by the ruins of the Palace of Orsay, old the Court of Auditors set fire to at the time of the Commune in 1871.
The new station, exclusively intended for the service of the travellers, was to cover a particularly comfortable and luxurious aspect, in agreement with the beauty of the site and the elegance of the district.
A restricted consultation will be organized between three famous architects, Lucien Bénard, Lucien Magne and Victor Laloux This last, Great Price of Rome in 1878 and professor of architecture at the School of the Beaux-Arts, will gain the contest. He will mask the industrial aspect of construction, outside under a pompeuse eclectic stone frontage of style, and inside by a second ceiling furnished with staff boxes.
The metal pinion of the large hall of the machines hidden by the frontage of the hotel terminus joined at the station, which will deploy its shows and 370 rooms on the street of Bellechasse and the street of Lille. This ultimate triumph of the academic architecture, of which hones and stucco come to hide the metal structures of an often amazing boldness, will be also that of Petit and especially Grand Palais, also built for the World Fair.
The architect, who will design his building site in depth, will appoint the official artists, painters and sculptors for the majority, who will take part in the decoration of the building. They will retain in particular Jean Hugues, Laurent-Honore Marqueste, Jean-Antoine Injalbert (for the statues of cities of the frontage), Fémoral Cormon (for paintings in the departure room), Pierre Furet, Adrien Moreau-Neyret, Gabriel Ferrier and Benjamin-Constant (for the rooms of the hotel).
Built in less than two years, the station will be inaugurated on July 14, 1900. It will serve during more than forty years the South-West of France and will attend on departure and the arrival of more than two hundred trains each day. It will be the first designed for the electric traction.
The electrification of the lines, which allowed the startup of longer trains, will make quickly the station platforms too short. The traffic broad outline will cease in November 1939. The interruption of the traffic of the suburban trains, replaced by the RER, will involve the permanent closure of the lines. The monument of Laloux, given up by the SNCF, will accomodate the theatre of the Renault-Barrault company, then the auction-room to the biddings during the rebuilding of the Drouot Hotel in 1974.
The idea of the creation of a museum devoted to arts of second half of the XIXème century, in the old buildings of the station of Orsay, will see the day in 1973 pennies the government of George Pompidou. Judged a long time like the last misadventure of the bad fine taste "of century" and threatened of demolition to leave the place to a gigantic hotel, the station will profit from the revival of the interest for the XIXème century. The Markets of Baltard, destroyed in 1973, will not profit from such a lenient fate.
The project of museum, supported by new president Giscard d' Estaing, will give rise to a Publicly-owned establishment in 1978 to conclude the operation. A first contest will designate team ACT Architecture (Renaud Bardon Pierre Colboc Jean-Paul Philippon) at the end of 1979. The interior architecture and installation museographic will be entrusted, in 1980, with the architect Italian Gae Aulenti in whom one also owes the interior rehandling of the national museum of Modern art in Paris and of the Grassi Palace in Venice.
The new architecture of the nave will largely release the vault and will provide, on both sides axial course (in the direction of the old railways), of the rooms of museum, surmounted terraces. Rooms and terraces will communicate themselves with parts arranged on two levels. The roomy galleries built in the roofs of the station and the hotel will benefit all from the zenith daylight. The rooms of reception will be intègreront in the circuit, the restaurant of the hotel becoming that of the museum. Everywhere the pillars and cast iron beams of Laloux, its decorations of stucco will be respected, restored and released. Unified by materials and the color of the coatings (stone of Burgundy, clear painting of the partitions, metals brown dark or blue), the designed showrooms according to works presented will offer multiple architectural solutions. The museum will be inaugurated on December 1, 1986 by President François Mitterrand, at the end six years of work. |
