Old expositions and world’s fairs are a persistent obsession over at Coulthart Towers. Many of the 20th century manifestations of these events fashioned visions of a science fiction future made of gleaming Modernist architecture, geodesic domes and monorails. The 19th and early 20th century, by contrast, was all about weird extrapolations of historical pastiche which too our eyes look like the dreams of Winsor McCay‘s Slumberland become real for the briefest moment. What follows is a few recent posts from { feuilleton } concerning the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, reproduced here at the request of Monsieur Babcock. JC.

La porte monumentale.

Was the Paris Exposition of 1900 the most gloriously excessive of them all? Judging by these photos it certainly looks it. The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 exposition (and was famously intended to be a temporary structure) but became the centrepiece of the 1900 fair. Wikipedia has a large plan of the entire layout and two of the halls, the Grand and Petit Palais, are still in existence and used as exhibition spaces.

Le palais des illusions.

La salle des fêtes.

The Palais du Trocadéro was designed by Gabriel Davioud for the 1878 World’s Fair and until its demolition in the 1930s faced the Eiffel Tower across the Seine. The 1900 Exposition included the Trocadéro among its buildings which makes it one of the more unusual exposition structures, having survived several of these events and seen off many of the temporary buildings that were raised around it.

The Trocadéro was something of a heavy-handed confection, ostensibly “Moorish” in that Orientalist fashion favoured by 19th century architects. The numerous photographs of the place give it the same quality of ghostly grandeur that so many these long-demolished buildings possess; we’re able to look at a very real place which has now vanished utterly. The bridge in the picture below still stands, however, and the balcony of the Trocadéro’s replacement, the Palais de Chaillot, gives great views of the Eiffel Tower and the river.

Globe terrestre by Louis Bonnier.

The Exposition Universelle would have been more grand/fabulous/excessive (delete as appropriate) if architect Louis Bonnier had been given free reign. The building above was intended to stand before the Palais du Trocadéro and house a huge globe which visitors could peruse from surrounding galleries. Bonnier also designed a series of kiosks (below) for different exhibitors which look more like over-sized Art Nouveau ornaments than pieces of architecture.

Three of these pictures are scanned from a book; the only site I found with examples of Bonnier’s work was this one which unfortunately spoils the pictures with enormous watermarks.

Exposition kiosks.

The Palais Lumineux.

And lastly, a piece of pastiche that looks like Satine’s boudoir on the back of the elephant in Moulin Rouge. The Palais Lumineux was a work of period Chinoiserie built for the Exposition in the Champ de Mars close to the Eiffel Tower. I forget where I found this tinted view but Wikipedia has what appears to be the same photograph coloured so as to resemble a night scene.