Inside the Gare St Lazare

(Part 2: Part 1 here)

It is one of the curiosities of the Gare St Lazare that the station concourse is at a lower level than the train lines behind. To enter the station you need to find some stairs, preferably one of the twin marble staircases. Despite the impractical nature of this procedure, it does give a certain taste of the Italian renaissance, where the grand halls were situated up a flight of stairs on the first floor. Take the steps at the Gare St Lazare and you certainly find the monumental, although it’s unclear how grand it ever truly was.

It is a fascinating time to visit the station as large-scale renovations are stripping back over one hundred years of history, and the layers of time are clearly visible throughout the structure. It has been decided that the station does not currently suitably reflect its prestigious past and its role in the urban heritage of the city, and must therefore be upgraded. Naturally this means that it will shortly become a glorified glass and steel shopping centre.

The principle changes will all be in the Salle des Pas Perdus (lost steps). This curious, evocative name is used quite frequently in France, and refers to any area where you are likely to be waiting and strolling around aimlessly. It is therefore somewhat saddening to read that one of the objectives of the renovations is to ensure that people waiting for trains will be able to optimise time spent in the station, which of course means shopping. Browsing, perusing, people watching and simply wasting footsteps are leisure activities that should be encouraged!

Sit in this hall and listen carefully and you may well hear some of the ghostly footsteps that are being washed down from the walls. It is easy to imagine mustachioed gentlemen puffing on pipes, or ladies in travelling dress calling after excited children. Wander around this empty hall and you will be sure to see some of the traces of history behind the trails of exposed wiring and piping. At one end, greasy marks from an old ‘Bistrot’ sign and the remains of a barometer advertising a company which surely no longer exists. Above the old shop fronts, brown smoke-stained windows promoting various towns which were once served by this station but which have long since seen connections moved to other places.

These windows continue through to the twin hall on the other side of the wall, the ‘Salle d’Echanges’. It is in this hall that we finally see the trains, and the flood and ebb of passengers coming and going. More recently modernised, this hall seems to offer less historic interest, but look carefully and you'll find a charming mosaic water fountain. A reflection of the station as a whole, it is cracking with age and has long since stopped offering refreshment.

It is of course also in this hall that we see the impressive glass canopies that Claude Monet famously captured on canvas. Monet was also partial to Cathedrals, notably at Rouen (a one hour train ride from here!), and it is no surprise that he saw similar beauty in these light dappled structures of iron and glass. Indeed, the massiveness of these station constructions led them to becoming known as the modern cathedrals of the city.

Why did he choose this station over another though? Legend has it that he dressed up in his finest clothes and went to see the station director. On finding him, he said "J’ai décidé de peindre votre gare. J’ai longtemps hésité entre la gare du Nord et la vôtre, mais je crois finalement que la vôtre a plus de caractère" (‘I’ve decided to paint your station. I hesitated for a long time between the Gare du Nord and this one, but finally I feel that yours has more character’). Using such flattery, he was sure to get the required permission. Whether this is true or not, it was a subject that he painted 11 times.

It is perhaps also this ‘character’ which has persuaded Hollywood to use the station as the archetypal Parisian Gare. In ‘French Kiss’ Kelvin Kline takes a train to Nice whilst Tom Hanks pretends to take a train to Lille in ‘The Da Vinci Code’. It will surprise nobody to learn that neither city has ever been served from this station.

From the Salle d’Echanges, we can now drop down beneath ground level again, this time to a 1970s addition, a passageway beneath the 27 train lines, running between the Rue de Londres and the Rue de Rome. Curiously, it is this passage that today looks the most dated part of the station, with faulty strip lighting and ceiling tiles ready to fall like leaves in autumn.

It is perhaps this passageway which shows more than elsewhere how this is a station in decline. One hundred years ago it was the capital's principle station, welcoming wealthy Brits and Americans who were breezing in from cruise liners docked in the Normandy seaports. Today it is a station which has slipped behind the Gare du Nord, and which is one of only two stations in the city without prestigious high-speed TGV lines. It’s current role is to serve surburban commuters and weekend voyagers slipping out to their second homes in Normandy. An honourable and useful mission of course, but one that may take this refined old gentleman a little bit of time to get used to.

Behind, the Gare St Lazare

From the Gare St Lazare we can take a trip around Europe, through Amsterdam, London, Vienna and finally Rome. It’s a fascinating journey through art and history and the history of art, but it should only take us about 30 minutes.

But where should we meet? The Gare St Lazare is the most historic station in Paris, but certainly not the easiest to navigate around. Perhaps by the Hotel Concorde St Lazare (Terminus), the street-facing extension of the station, and the first such hotel to be part of a railway building. Maybe a more atmospheric starting point would be under the disused passerelle which previously connected the two buildings. However, beside this great, stone muse, an artistic meeting place would be best, so why not next to one of the artist Arman’s twin statues, the clocks of ‘L’heure pour tous’ (above), or the piled up luggage of ‘Consigne à Vie’, positioned on the station concourse.

As we head north up the Rue d’Amsterdam past the grafted on 60s and 70s office blocks, we can reflect on how trains and train stations have inspired generations of writers, photographers and painters since they first started appearing in the city landscape. Emile Zola was amongst the first to notice this switch from naturalism and modernism, writing that "artists have to find the poetry in train stations, the way their fathers found the poetry in forests and rivers". He was writing in 1877 about the series of paintings the artist Claude Monet had produced in and around the Gare St Lazare.

It is easy to see why 19th and early 20th century artists were inspired by the train station. We can look at the Gare St Lazare from the Rue de Londres, across the 27 lines, towards the zig-zagging roof canopy and central clock tower, and we will see an almost unchanged vision of the iron and steel revolution that cut into the heart of the city. The vista is perhaps unaltered, but today’s quiet diesel and electric trains are certainly less romantic. Edouard Manet, who had his studio within earshot of the station (4, rue St Petersbourg) famously captured the age of steam, in his ‘Chemin de fer/Gare St Lazare’ painting, a portrait of woman, child and dog positioned before iron railings at the end of a friend’s garden above the rail lines near this spot. Behind them, steam from unseen trains rises skywards. This symbol of a naissant industrialisation was roundly criticised at the time, but Manet knew that he had captured a new reality. “Faire Vrai Laisser Dire” (Be truthful, let people say what they will) he wrote when later inviting sceptical critics to his studio.

Walking onto the Pont de l’Europe, we’ll arrive at the heart of our trip. It was Gustave Caillebotte who best captured this scene with perhaps his most famous painting being situated here (Le Pont de l’Europe, 1876). Living nearby on the Rue de Miromesnil, Caillebotte saw and painted the changing face of this Europe district from his studio window, defining the new city order and man’s interaction with his changed surroundings. On this bridge Caillebotte painted a couple of flaneurs walking alongside the vast iron structure, but also more tellingly, a man in working clothes looking down towards the revolution beneath him. Caillebotte had transported the peasant away from his traditional agricultural environment and placed him in his new, radically changed situation.

Zola himself later captured the schizophrenic sentiments that existed around the subject of trains in his novel, ‘La Bête Humaine’ (1890). Set largely in this part of Paris, particularly at the Gare St Lazare, his machines are murderous, as they had been in Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ 10 years previously. Perhaps it was this sense of impending danger coupled with a fear of the creeping dehumanising industrialisation that attracted large quantities of walkers and flaneurs to the Pont de l’Europe. The city pedestrians were clearly fascinated by the new sights and sounds, but perhaps secretly terrified of the great, noisy iron beasts.

The Pont de l’Europe next cropped up in a 1932 photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson, ‘Derière la Gare St Lazare’. He captured a moment when the bridge was being transformed from an imposing iron structure into a smoother concrete form. The station backdrop is identical, but the narrower bars give a softer view. A puff of smoke is just visible, and workmen still feature in a scene which finally is not far removed from Caillebotte’s vision.

It is a bridge that is indeed worthy of celebration. Captured from above in a Google maps satellite image, it is easy to appreciate the elegant X design, and see how it is in fact the meeting point of six different roads (or European cities). It also manages to house several elegant buildings each with tree lined, lawn gardens and the Europe Metro station.

Step across to the Rue de Vienne and we see the station as it finally became in 1889. The site saw several major developments from 1837, when it was a simple wooden structure and the first station in Paris, to 1889, when it was celebrated as the largest and busiest in the country. On this western side it incorporated brick, today housing train company offices, and curiously some interesting decorative touches. The most prominent is a miniature lighthouse which is tagged on to the end of the roof canopy, and which seems to serve no purpose other then perhaps to recall the sights seen at the seaside destinations of many of the trains that leave from this station.

What is left to inspire artists today? It may now be the age of the train, a cleaner, slower form of transport, but their powerful symbology has diminished over time. Outside though in the Rue de Rome, there is a sight that could well inspire surrealists or absurdists – a staircase and pair of handrails descending into solid set concrete. This is surely a blocked up under-road passageway, but the visual aspect is surprising.

Finally, turn the corner and I'll return you back to 21st century Paris and the station concourse. If you have some more free time, I’ll take you inside the station. There’s plenty more to see!