Galerie des machines
As a machine shop or French Galerie des Machines a total of three exhibition pavilions of iron and glass were called, made on the occasion of the Paris World's Fairs of 1867, 1878 and 1889.
The best known of these halls was from 1889, a joint effort of the architects Charles Louis Ferdinand Dutert ( 1845-1906 ) and the engineer Victor Contamin ( 1840-1893 ), which was dismantled in 1910.
As the site of the square in front of the Military School was in the south of the Campus Martius, which was the exhibition ground, was elected. At the same time, built on the banks of the Seine, at the opposite end of the Champ de Mars, the Eiffel Tower.
The hall had a rectangular floor plan of 422.49 m × 114.38 m and was divided into a wide nave and two narrow aisles. Your powerful, resting on stone plinths forty columns made an extraordinary effect size. The transverse arches rose without intermediate supports free-floating up to the 46.67 m high vaulted apex. This surpassed the " Galerie des Machines " all the time imaginable size of a column-free space spanned (total area of the three ships 47324.9 m²).
In contrast to eg Labrouste Bibliothèque Sainte -Geneviève (1843 ) or the Paris Ostbahnhof (1849 ), whose glazed iron constructions were both still covered with conventional stone walls, the girder ( riveted, crossed profiled bars ) were visible not only in the interior, but dominated the facades, where, apart from a slight embellishment of the main entrance to one of the gable ends, was waived any decor.
Since the function of a World's Fair pavilion required the quick and easy assembly and disassembly, all items were completely prefabricated. The preparation of the binder made of steel and the other components of iron was carried out at the Compagnie de Fives Lille and the Societé des anciens établissements Cail in Paris.
The hall was after the Crystal Palace (1851, London) by Joseph Paxton, the Palais de l'Industrie (1855, Paris) of frequent, and the two previously built machine halls (1867 and 1878, Paris) - the first work of Gustave Eiffel and Krantz, the second by Henri de Dion - provisionally the final link in the chain of Einraumbauten. It remained the largest in the true " race to progress," in the Paris London sought to outdo through ever more spectacular works. The wingspan of 22 meters (Crystal Palace ) on 48 meters (Palais de l'Industrie ) was increased, reached in the Galerie des Machines of 1889 115 meters.
Inside, a rolling bridge allowed it to visitors, to let go of one end of the gallery to the other and to gain a comprehensive overview of all the machines, most of which were in operation. On some days, the rolling bridge carried 100,000 visitors.
The Vélodrome d' Hiver
From 1902 to 1909 was in the hall a velodrome. Henri Desgrange, editor of L'Auto and later founder of the Tour de France, had initiated the construction of the 333 meter track. The Vélodrome d' Hiver (winter car) itself took only a third of the huge hall.
Judging by the contemporaries
The Galerie des Machines was completed structurally and aesthetically, and called forth an equally great enthusiasm, as the time of the Crystal Palace. Although most of his contemporaries probably only the constructive power, the desirability of the size etc emphasized, the experts said it quite well beauty and elegance to:
"The ' Galerie des Machines ' with their fantastic span of 115 meters [ ... ], her bold emergence, its magnificent proportions [ ... ] is just as beautiful, pure, just as original, as well as high-level work of art like a Greek temple or a cathedral "
" [ A ] branches of iron, just as elegant as the stone ribs which aspire of the pillars of a Gothic cathedral in the height"