Some suggestions for the Journées du Patrimoine

The Journées du Patrimoine (heritage days), being held this weekend, need not just mean long queues to the city's principal political and cultural institutions. The event, featuring over 300 sites across Paris, also offers many out of the ordinary locations where access is only given during this weekend.

You can find my suggestions on the Paris Weekends blog.

If you are elsewhere in Europe, don't forget that the heritage days event now extends to 50 countries across the continent. The full list of events per country (as well as the local dates) can be found here: http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/heritage/ehd/National_Events/map_en.asp

A Concrete Château

In Bourg-la-Reine almost by accident, I spot a building that makes the detour seem worthwhile. As I pull out my camera and start taking pictures, a window opens behind me and out pops a head. “Do you know what that building is?” it asks.

The head belongs to an ancient lady, perhaps as old as the building itself. I shake my head, and she begins to tell me its story.

The house was built by an entrepreneur called François Hennebique at the beginning of the 20th century, and was possibly the first such private residence to be built using reinforced concrete. It was designed to be not only a home to his extended family, but also to act as a showroom highlighting the many possibilities offered by concrete constructions (and therefore by Hennebique's own company).

Hennebique was passionate about the material, famously declaring that ‘on peut tout demander au béton armé, et il peut tout reproduire’ (you can ask anything of concrete, and it can reproduce everything). He may not have been the original inventor of many of the procedures he employed with concrete, but he was most certainly the best businessman in the field and also a fine marketing man.

As will become quickly clear, he was also a man of many snappy catchphrases, and this house was the key to one of those – “Travailler en ville, se reposer à la campagne” (work in the city, relax in the country) he said, describing his reasons for building a home outside of the city in which he worked (nb – a future post will deal with the Paris offices of his construction company).

Difficult as it is to imagine today, this house was indeed originally a country residence, albeit one which – importantly – was situated close to a train station, and thus accessible in less than 30 minutes from Paris. Built alongside the railway line, it also acted as a permenant advertising structure for people passing by on trains.

Despite Hennebique’s claims about wanting to relax in the countryside, perhaps his real reason for building a house in Bourg-la-Reine was to escape the rigid and restrictive planning reglementation in Paris. Hennebique wanted to build something extraordinary, and this house is certainly an eccentric construction.

The rule he most wanted to bypass was the one restricting a building’s height, principally to incorporate the 40 metre high water tower that still stretches above the building today (known locally as ‘the minaret’). The tower was not just an extravagant folly, but also a fully functional feature, and was used to water the crops on the various terraces which would supposedly help the home to become partially self-sufficient.

Along with the tower, other features such as the curved terraces and cantilever beams seem to exist only to show off the possibilities of concrete. The rest of the design is in accordance with Hennebique’s motto – and another catchphrase - "fleurs, lumière et aération" (flowers, light and ventilation), with the large windows and rooftop terraces bringing it into line with other hygienist constructions of the era.

“There, you’ve had a personal guided tour” says the old lady, before carefully shutting her window. She’ll return to her quiet life, waiting for the next curious visitor to stop outside, whilst I’m left to ponder on what has become of the building today.

In truth, though striking, the building is not a complete success, and is even ugly in parts. It is of course no longer a single home, and has been divided into apartments, apparently some of the most sought after in the town. To give an idea of the scale of the original property, one article reports that an entire family today lives in what was Hennebique’s dining room, and another is lodged in his living room.

The building was finally given protection in 1972, but not before a shamefully ugly extension was added at the front in the 1960s. Perhaps this addition, more even than the decline of Hennebique’s own construction business, shows how low the stock of concrete had fallen at the time. His house still remains to show the heights it can attain.

La Maison Hennebique
1, avenue du Lycée-Lakanal
Bourg-la-Reine, 92340
RER B, Bourg la Reine

What happened on the Quatre Septembre?

France is a country of many significant dates, but only one is commemorated in both a street name and a Metro station in Paris. On this September 4th, I ask this question - what happened on the quatre septembre?

This particular date is not as well-known as July 14th, November 11th or May 8th in the country's history, but it is still a fondly remembered date in some circles. Of course though, there is also a certain controversy attached to its remembrance and celebration.

This particular September 4th was in 1870, and it marked the moment that a group of individuals in Paris proclaimed the beginning of a new Republic (the third) following the capture of Napoleon III by the Prussians in Sedan.

This proclamation brought to an end France's second empire, but as it also coincided with the invasion of France by the Prussians, its constitutional laws weren't actually voted until 1875. The September 4th date is therefore a purely symbolic one.

So why is it a controversial date to remember today? Firstly the third Republic ended in failure 70 years later in 1940, when once again France was invaded by a German army. Today France is under a 5th Republic, but nobody celebrates the date this one was proclaimed (October 4th 1958). More importantly, the third Republic began with the overthrowing of the Commune in Paris in 1871, when around 20,000 people were killed in Paris by Government forces. Many people today believe therefore that the country should not celebrate a date which is linked to such violent repression of a popular uprising.

However, given the fact that this date is known mostly today as being the name of a city-centre Metro station, it is unlikely to disappear from Paris street maps anytime soon!

A street for servants

A narrow staircase snakes its way between the blank facades of several towering bourgeois buildings. Here there is little in the way of decoration and embellishment, and walls are of the most basic brick.

According to the nomenclature of the city of Paris though, we are standing in a street. Technically this is a continuation of the Rue des Eaux, a road that wraps itself around both the Rue and Square Charles Dickens in the 16th arrondissement.

But when does a passage become a road? In the 16th arrondissement of Paris, territory of many private parcels of land, the difference isn’t always entirely clear. This particular passage offered only private access until the 1980s when it was opened up to the public, but who used it and who was it designed for?

The answer can be found half-way down. This rather sinister passage is situated in one of the wealthiest parts of the city, but where there are rich people, necesarilly there are also those that serve them. An iron sign alongside a door indicates firmly that this is the ‘Service’ entrance, the access point for deliveries and for the staff who worked in the large apartments in this district.

Above and below are the broad and richly decorated entrances for the residents of the apartments and their guests, but an important consideration in the design of these buildings was to ensure that there was as little contact as possible between the owners and their staff. We can imagine the housekeeper standing at the door, checking the quality of the goods that the tradesmen had just carried up the hill, but it is unlikely that the employers would have ever passed by here and witnessed the scene.

Challenge 5: A mysterious white cross

Sometimes the city slips past us so quickly that we don’t have time to pick up all of its tiny details. Even if we take the same routes each day, there are parts that never become entirely solid to us, and we forever wonder what role they play in the overall fabric of the place.

On a train journey this is even more true. A reader of this blog, Richard, was travelling between Bagneaux and Bourg la-Reine (a few kilometres to the south of Paris) on the RER line B when he saw something that appeared to be a grave near the railway line.

“It takes the shape of a white cross with what appears to be a name plate where the arms of the cross join; there also is a small brick surround at the foot of the cross” he explained, before going on to ponder just what significance it has; “Is it the grave of someone killed by a train, a railway worker who loved his job so much that his wish was to buried near his workplace? Or is it the final resting place of a French resistant executed for sabotage during the war?”

This is exactly the kind of challenge I like. Online research leads nowhere and there is no alternative but to go out and discover the object for myself.

Richard positioned the cross quite precisely, but on a moving train I feared that it would still be a tricky job to locate it, and even more difficult to read any words written on its arms. Fortunately, two things helped me. Firstly, the cross is situated just outside of the Bagneux train station meaning that the train didn’t have time to pick up much speed, and secondly I have very good eyes! In the fraction of a second I had to make sense of the object, I was able to read the inscription – André Ox, FFI.

With a name, everything becomes easier, although some aspects of the story will seemingly forever remain mysterious.

André Ox, was born in Moscow in 1925, but soon afterwards his family moved to France. They lived in Bagneux where André later began work as an ‘ouvrier’ (a vague term that could mean factory worker, construction worker or even a craftsman). At the beginning of his adult life though, the overriding fact of his daily existence was that he was living in a city occupied by Nazi forces.

As a young man he had three choices; collaborate, keep his head down or join the resistance. He chose the third option and became the interpreter of a Russian captain who had arrived in the area after escaping from a German prison camp. Although risky, it is likely that his daily existence was quiet until the allied forces began to march towards Paris in the summer of 1944, and the local resistancy cells began their own uprisings.

On August 24th 1944, a clash between a group of German soldiers and a barricade manned by a group of resistants (calling themselves the FFI) in Bagneux led to two soldiers being shot dead and another being seriously wounded. The situation was apparently calm following this, and Ox, perhaps the youngest or the most daring of the group, was sent from the barricade to go and collect the weapons from the soldiers.

Appearences were deceptive though, and when Ox arrived allongside the bodies, shots rang out from another hidden group of soldiers, and the young resistant was hit in the head by a bullet. He was picked up by other members of his group and taken to a nearby school, but the situation was hopeless and he died shortly afterwards – apparently the last person from Bagneux to die before the town was liberated. He was just 18 years old.

Two elements remain mysterious though; exactly where André Ox was struck down, and who built his commemorative cross and placed it alongside the railway line. Some reports place the incident a couple of streets away from the tracks, but if this were the case, why would the cross be positioned in this unusual spot, particularly as André Ox seemingly had no links to the railway?

Most sources seem to confirm that the cross was originally the work of an employee of the railway, and that this person continued tending the site until his retirement many years later. The cross was originally a simple dark one with no inscription, as this photo, from as late as 2004, confirms. Clearly it has recently been renovated and is still being looked after. Although André Ox was not buried at this spot, it manifestly marks an event that was of great significance, and continues to play an important role - that of making travellers reflect during their daily commute!

Challenge me!
Seen something in Paris that has caught your eye but remains a mystery, or ever wondered about obscure people or events in the city's past? Challenge me to find the answers!