Gare du Nord

1866 · Cast Iron Columns with Arched Trusses · Work 51 of 1,871

Gare du Nord, 1866, Cast Iron Columns with Arched Trusses

The Gare du Nord in Paris, cast iron columns carrying the shed trusses over the platforms, the stone facade above crowned with twenty-three statues personifying northern cities.

What it was used for
Terminus of the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Nord, serving northern France and Belgium. Its 1846 predecessor was above all a goods station for coal and steel from the northern French coalfields. Hittorff's replacement went up from 1861 over eight platform tracks; the shed is about 200 m long, its trusses span some 35 m, and the cast-iron columns came from a Glasgow foundry (Alston & Gourlay, 1862). The 23 female statues on the stone facade stand for the cities served, from Amsterdam and Brussels to Berlin, Vienna and Warsaw; the statues alone cost 82,000 francs. The station was perpetually too small: enlarged to 13 tracks in 1877, 18 in 1889, 28 in 1900. The old station's stone facade was not demolished but taken down and re-erected in Lille, where it still forms the Gare de Lille-Flandres.
What was new
The truss span of about 35 m clearly exceeded its Paris predecessors: the Gare de l'Est of 1852 managed some 30 m, King's Cross in London 32 m. What was new was less the structure than the division of roles - a stone facade modelled on a triumphal arch as a city gate in front, the bare iron shed behind. Hittorff did not invent the motif of city statues; the Gare de l'Est already carried figures for Strasbourg and Verdun. Contemporaries found the juxtaposition of classical facade and industrial shed awkward.

Further reading