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Reinforced concrete and its derivatives played such a large part in the Exhibition that a classification based on the implemented materials would not ensure a clearer approach. It would be better to look at the achievements of the various projects, starting with the section’s over plans.

The French section comprised two main areas, almost perpendicular to each other: one of them marked by the Seine between the Pont de la Concorde and the Alma Bridge, the other one, leading alongside the Avenue Nicolas II, the Alexandre III Bridge, and the alley bisecting the section cutting across the Esplanade des Invalides from north to south. On the quays of the right bank of the river and the Cours-la-Reine, the visitor would successively encounter the foreign and the French pavilions, then the French Village and the colonial pavilions. On the left bank, some more pavilions, miniature toys presented in a model village, the transport gallery, and the amusement park. On the Esplanade, symmetry and variety, order and life, obtained by an extremely considered arrangement of buildings, predominantly assigned to France. Lastly, in order to connect the two parts of the Exhibition separated by the Seine and for fear the public would not be tempted to cross from one bank to the other under the summer sun, the Alexandre III Bridge was transformed, from two lines of shops into a kind of Rialto. It was, like certain bridges of the Middle Ages, a street spanning a river. Dictated by the terrain itself, the general plan mapped out by Charles Plumet left nothing to be desired in terms of clarity.

The chief architect had focused his main effort on the Esplanade des Invalides. Two contrasting but essential considerations presented themselves: to assure that the splendid view of the dome was not inhibited, but nevertheless avoid the monotony of a long, ordinary avenue. The available space was divided into two parts of unequal length, separated by the two twin pavilions of the Sèvres factory. In the first one, close to the Seine, two galleries masked the entry and the exit of the underground station of Les Invalides. One was dedicated to sumptuous boutiques: Henry Sauvage had created there a striking orchestration of black, red, and gold. The other one, reserved for the foreign sections, had been built in a simple and practical way by Leon Gaudibert and Julien Polti and decorated with discrete paintings by the decorator Camille Boignard. Between these two galleries, twelve buildings of ranging importance formed, bordering a garden, a first unit where, wedged in the four corners, four pavilions intended for the department stores stood.

The second unit comprised ten pavilions facing each other in a line along the side of the central walkway. As with the latter, it was fenced in on the right and left sides by galleries. A covered promenade skirted them, connecting them to four imposing corner towers and curved around to end at the entrance hall of the Court of Trades. To avoid a repeat of the disorder of previous exhibitions, with an excess and confusion of shadows, the façades of the pavilions were not to exceed a height restriction of 16 feet. This white herd would have been monotonous without some dominant constructions, giving rhythm to the composition. Hence, the towers of Charles Plumet were created, evidently, out of a decorative need. By assigning them as restaurants where one could enjoy the products of four provinces of France, the architect was not unaware that he was exposing himself to criticism for having exalted culinary art in an exhibition dedicated to decorative art in the most important buildings in the ensemble. But he remembered the attraction of American restaurants located on the upper floors of a skyscraper. What to place in these lookouts, if not a place for weary visitors to rest, allowing them to associate the delights of the table with the sight of an urban landscape?

Once this project was adopted, Plumet carried it out with logic. On the ground floor of each tower, a hall lit by high glass walls was used as a vestibule by the galleries adjacent to the exhibition. In the four corners, octagonal turrets neatly housed staircases and elevators. Above the hall, a service floor, then the dining area, enlarged by four projecting storeys from where the view stretched out as far as the eye could see. Each of them was supported by four impressive columns; between which lead to the kitchens and other services. Such an arrangement of supports was a concession to usual visual expectations. The whole construction was in clinker concrete, less solid than ballast concrete, which facilitated a future demolition. The projecting porches, simply carved, were made of reinforced stone and plywood, which lends itself to restoration works.

The Court of Trades was made of the same materials and presented, for a very different project, similar qualities: a low construction along the main road of the Esplanade and the dome and a refuge for meditation at ground level. The hall, flanked by two porches whose turrets mirrored those of the towers, connected at the same level with the covered walkway of the Esplanade. However, its linked pillars, without bases but widened at their top by a discrete cushion capital and with a deliberate transition between the eight columns and the lintels, indicated a greater search for elegance. Largely open, like that of the Grand Trianon, but without a curved courtyard, it owed its character to the harmony of the proportions and to the simple decoration obtained by the apparent gaps between beams and joists, with a clearly exposed firmness of the lines. As for the Court itself, it was a more modern cloister without columns or pillars, surrounding a geometrical garden with a fountain at its centre. To offer a discrete setting for the paintings and sculptures, Plumet had simply divided up the awning by the stark, projecting reinforcements. Three constructions were closely related to the composition designed for the Esplanade des Invalides: the library and the theatre which flanked the Court of Trades symmetrically and the twin pavilions of Sèvres, built across from each other on the main road.

The library, a work of Paul Huillard, could have had the longer, yet more precise name of “showroom of the art of the book”. Readers were not envisaged there, nor their tables, their seats, the quiet atmosphere conducive to their studies, or the shelves for stacking the books. It was not a typical library. But in its hall with its visible framework and few supports, under the light which shone through the broad bay windows at the upper part of the walls, printed pages, engravings, and bindings were presented under the most favourable conditions. The theatre of the Perret brothers and Granet was precisely admired for its elegance at the same time as being “novel and natural”. Architects, such as Paul Jamot, had proposed to create, in the most simple and most economical way possible, “a meeting and contact place between drama and the public”. As at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the room was arranged in such way that from of every seat, the spectator could easily see the whole scene. Built on a square plan, its architecture encroached on the stage which, divided into three parts by two columns, lent itself to multiple scene layouts. Great care had been taken with the lighting. It fell from a glass ceiling, where the light, of many different colours, was diffused without visible hearth and could enrich the silver-grey rendering with the finest gold. A gallery for electricity, to aid the monitoring, removed “the miserable installation of projectors in the middle of the public”. Placed directly below the ceiling, all around the room, it constituted at the same time the best kind of decoration – one that fulfils a purpose. The same intelligence went into the construction process. For an ephemeral building, Auguste Perret had only implemented expensive and durable materials when they were proven to be warranted. He had taken care not to forget that the humble fir tree has the same compressive strength (40 kilograms per square centimetre) as the hardest concrete. Thirty-four wooden posts, transformed by a coating onto grooved columns, supported a reinforced concrete frame. The ceiling rested on steel beams. The architect had laid out his posts in pairs: some stood within the room, others, visible from the outside, were formed against the bare wall to which a coating of a lithogenic, or stone-forming, component was used to create the texture of stone, a far-reaching colonnade corresponding exactly to the interior framework. The peristyle decor, the main room, artists’ dressing rooms, lighting and monitoring gallery – the whole composition, viewed clearly from the outside, conferred a lively appearance to the very simple façade. Below the cornice there was a continuous frieze of narrow cylinders. This frieze, also visible from inside the room, was not part of the decoration, rather it formed a mechanical ventilation device made of a succession of half-pipes encased one inside the other, and which, in letting the air pass, intercepted the light.

Wirt Rowland, Smith, Hinchman & Grylls Associates Inc. and Thomas di Lorenzo, Guardian (or Union Trust) Building, entrance hall, 1929.

Black Belgian marble and Numidian red marble, Mankato stone, and Rookwood ceramic tiles. Detroit.

Herman Sachs, Spirit of Transportation, ceiling of the entrance hall of the Bullocks Wilshire building, 1929. Los Angeles.

John Wenrich, The RCA Building, exterior views, c. 1931.

Ink, pastel, and gouache on paper.

RCA Building (now the GE Building), Rockefeller Center, New York.

In the pavilions and garden of the Sèvres factory, Patout’s subtle art and his taste for contrasts and theatrical effects could be found. Eight colossal seven-metre tall vases, made from concrete reinforced with wood, and covered with sandstone tiles, constituted an apogee of great allure. Close to them, the low white pavilions which faced each other and were reflected in mirror-like water with blue edges, the garden, surrounded by small square plinths which connected the festoons, full of refinement and delicacy. The pavilions were made of reinforced stone, covered with sandstone until halfway-up. No window punctuated the façade, so that no wall’s inside surface was lost for the presentation of objects. The light came from the ceiling. It was a simple and expressive project of a homogeneous composition, despite its division into two parts, imposed by the site. The goal was to highlight ceramic as a resource for the interior or exterior decoration of the house and for the decoration of a garden. This goal was achieved.

Good architecture is made from the inside out. The internal plan of the Exhibition determined the place, the importance, and the character of the doors. Two of the most important ones were situated at the end of the two main thoroughfares and opened up for the visitor coming from the centre of the city. At a time when the barriers fall, when the exchanges of all kinds multiply, does not the phrase “monumental gate” awaken more than a vague idea? In fact, they were not the gates of cities, but the gates of an exhibition. Since an enclosure had been traced, it was necessary to create gates to get in and get out. For all of them, the same strategy was adopted: the entrance on the sides where the visitors waited in lines, the exit in the middle where they could come and go without obstruction, side-by-side, in small groups. The Gate of Honour opened onto the Avenue Nicolas II. Let us imagine it as we would have seen it if the projects of the architects Henri Favier and André Ventre had been carried out with permanent materials. Arranged two by two, sixteen polished granite pylons connected by openwork grids and pressed metal friezes were strongly drawn up in the plan. Bronze basins stood on them from which neon-illuminated glass flowed at night. Carried out by means of iron ribbons passed through the rolling mill, then cut, curved, and assembled in patterns of water jets which were repeated in staggered rows; the grids were to prove that the machine, subjected to human intelligence, can create beauty as well as the hand, just more economically. In fact, these materials and this work were imitated in shiny plaster. The visitor was only to assess what was in front of him as full-scale mock-up. But we could admire the elegance of the silhouettes, the equal distribution of the framework and the openwork panels, the welcoming appearance of the whole which, although starting out with a wide angled frame, gradually narrowed, guiding the visitor and his view towards the centre of the Exhibition.

Favier and Ventre only had to raise a gate spanning an avenue lined with constructions to house exhibits. More complex was the problem Patout had to deal with at the entrance of the Cours-la-Reine. Obliged to treat the trees with care and to only use the gaps between their main branches, he was required to build constructions high enough to attract attention from far away and stable enough to resist the wind, but without being able to use foundations; moreover he had to take into account the fact that the gate was shaped like a spire, that could be seen from different directions. He thus arranged his piece in a circle, the only non-deformable figure: ten square columns, crowned with basins out of which beams of light would spout. Between these pylons, the outgoing flow of visitors would go out, leaving in all directions. The entrances were to the right and to the left: four lines, arranged in a circle of square bases, connected by chains, channelled the crowd towards the turnstiles.

Each pylon measured 72 feet in height, 11 and a half feet in width and weighed approximately 100 metric tons. They were built out of reinforced clinker concrete. Their walls, three inches thick, were coated on the outside in a lime mortar. An open door located nearly ten feet above the ground, and a hook-on ladder placed on the inside, gave access to the top to service the lighting. Due to the impossibility of digging the ground because of the sewers, of the tramlines, the gas and water pipes, and the electric cables; Patout had built some of the pylons on reinforced concrete bridges, others on concrete plinths or stone slabs which distributed the load in low pressure over the loose ground. Lastly, to ensure their stability, he ballasted them at the base by piling up paving stones between their walls to a height of ten feet above the ground. Despite being very interesting from the point of view of the technical challenges, with simple lines, and an original and well-conceived design in order to catch the eye from afar, the merits of the work were, however, much discussed. We acknowledge the fact that, on one point, the criticism is deserved, specifically on what was not done. At certain times, a door must be closed, even if it is called “monumental entrance”. However, no means of closure having been planned, it was necessary, in order to comply with the rules of the customs warehouses, to put up a wooden barrier with full doors behind the pylons, of little monumental effect.

The architect was not to blame for having disturbed the peace of the beautiful decor to which many eyes were accustomed. Any other construction in a new style, in its place, would also undoubtedly have appeared just as discordant. Another gate, the third most important, gave a merry welcome to the crowd: the Porte d’Orsay, built from the designs of the architect Boileau. Its two pillars, with a geometric design, supported a large beam on which a decorated metal banner was suspended, on one side with large typeface, on the other by a semi-cubist painting by Voguet. However, the visitor, passing under this banner, did not get the impression of a “sword of Damocles” because the banner was hidden from him by a circular plate which connected the two pillars, 11 feet above the ground, which sheltered the turnstiles of the rain and the sun. The four symmetrical gates of the Rue de Constantine and Rue Fabert, works of Lucien Woog, Pierre Ferret, Marrast, and Herscher, were used at the same time as entrances to the Exhibition and galleries: hence their deep porches and pylon surrounding. At the site of the Victor-Emmanuel-III, Albert I, and Grenelle gates, the architects Guidetti, Adolphe Thiers, and Levard carried out a project already simple in itself with further simplicity.

Arthur E. Harvey, Spring Arts Tower, terracotta and black and enamelled gold cladding (detail), 1931.

Spring Arts Tower (formerly the headquarters of the Crocker National Bank), Los Angeles.

Located near the Gate of Honour is the tourist information pavilion. In spite of its rather strange design, it comprised an element which, as with the pylons, served only to attract visitors. It was a kind of tower, or rather mast, formed by two thin walls with sharp edges, coated with a rough mortar, and cut at right angles. It housed, at a height of a little over 100 feet, the rectangular case of an electric clock, the elegant and spiritual nature of a sculptor as much as of an architect. If the small canopies of the clock case could be louvres, three small planks of concrete placed horizontally and equidistant of one another, the one below seemed to have no other purpose but to create recalls of forms, contrasts of light and shade: a decoration in the same capacity as the garlands of the past but of a more severe aspect. This new type of mast had four vertical posts of reinforced concrete as its framework, connected by beams forming standoffs, with the space between them which was bricked up. They went down 21 feet below the ground where they drowned into a reinforced concrete footing. Thus, the lowering of the centre of gravity had ensured the stability of the ensemble. In the hall, the entrance of which was announced by this mast, Mallet-Stevens used reinforced concrete with such skill, but without compromising the decoration. The work could not have been better conceived to suit its purpose. Outside, there was an almost full and rather mysterious wall. Inside, a room, 66 feet long, surrounded by exchange and information services. The great light which lit them up fell from the ceiling and poured through stained glass windows, set in a bay window which measured only 20 inches in height, but which circled the whole hall with a continuous band of images of the most beautiful monuments of France toppling over one another, like scenery whizzing past the window of a car travelling at top speed. The part of the wall which surmounted this translucent frieze seemed, paradoxically, to be leaning on it. In fact, it was supported by strong reinforced concrete beams, placed on pillars so thin that one did not notice their presence.

Pavilions of cities or regions, of department stores, of an individual or a group in the French section numbered around a hundred. On one of the sites, under the shade of the Champs-Élysées and decorated with flowers, Paris wanted to exhibit the work of its schoolchildren. Two long, symmetrical, robust, and elegant wings were connected by a hall which was used as a reception room for the Municipal Council. Full and empty, projections and recesses were learnedly balanced by the architect Roger Bouvard. Each wing ended in a three-part projection, pierced by three high bays. This semi-hexagonal form which was repeated, high up, at the crowning of each window, showed firm lines without stiffness. With the ceramics vases which decorated the front steps and the stucco-marble frieze which was located under the cornice, this Trianon of schoolchildren was brightened by a discrete polychromy.

The pavilions built for other cities raised the very delicate question of regionalism in architecture. Undoubtedly the walls were the same, though the same roofs are not suitable for different terrains or different climates like the ones of Brittany, Alsace, Picardy, or Provence. But local traditions, reflected in the style of building, are also due to habits, ways of life, working methods which were no longer valid. In a centralised country, in a time when the progress of the means of transport shortened distances, these traditions disappear. Isn’t the architect who maintains them, with a tenderness for the past, likely to create an anachronistic decoration? At the Exhibition, the problem became even more complicated. The aim was to present, under favourable conditions, various productions in the area of arts, born in such or such a region, but intended for many others.

Were they not settling for an easy picturesque style, which puts them in a category from before they were born? A few architects deliberately freed themselves from local traditions. Rather, they built for cities whose characters were not so strongly marked. In the pavilions of Lyon, Nancy, and Limoges, there was nothing particularly typical. On the contrary, Mulhouse, Roubaix and Tourcoing, the Alpes-Maritimes, Normandy, Berry, Alsace, and Brittany invited the visitor on a tour of the provinces. The long blind façade of the pavilion of Lyon and Saint-Etienne, its three-tiered octagonal crowning, with 120 windows, reminded the visitor of Tony Garnier’s fancy for grand-scale works. But the powerful city, which was at the cutting edge of French urban design, offered a vast space to the talent of its architect. He seemed to be cramped with the meagre portion of the Esplanade des Invalides allotted to him. The building, well laid out, seemed to be designed for greater dimensions.

The Maharaja’s bathroom, early 1930s.

Umaid Bhawan Palace, Jodhpur.

Jean Dunand, Project for lacquer panels for a pair of doors, c. 1930.

Jean Dunand, Folding screen with two panels, c. 1925.

Lacquer and ivory. Presented at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs (Convention of Artist-Decorators) in 1928.

Of equal surface area, the pavilion of Nancy and the East, work of Jean Bourgon and Pierre Le Bourgeois, was less original, but of a more satisfactory scale. Its flattened dome on top of an octagonal tambour crowned a steel hall. The rectangular bay windows of its wings would illuminate a conference room and auditorium on one side and a museum of the region of Lorraine on the other. Everything, up to the frieze of the entrance, screamed for a propaganda and information office for the Eastern regions. Under the trees of the Cours-la-Reine sat the pavilion of Limoges, by Pierre Chabrol, which had a vast shop window of harmonious proportions where enamels and the porcelains shimmered of their own will. One can find, in the camp of picturesque portrayals of the regions, capped with three floors of attic windows, the highly-steeped, sloping roof designed by André Ventre and Jean Launay, architects of the pavilion of Mulhouse. On the walls, reinforced concrete beams replaced the old timber frame. In composing the pavilion of Roubaix and Tourcoing, De Feure remembered the brick frontages and tiered gables of the North of France. The pavilion-smallholding of Berry-Nivernais by Gauchery and Dreyer, the “Clos Normand”, or enclosed flower garden, by Victorien Lelong and Pierre Chirol, and the pavilion of Franche-Comté by Boutterin all showcased beautiful framework. The traditional farmhouse of Provence by Dallest, Castel, and Tournon, and the delightful pavilion of the Alpes-Maritimes of Charles and Marcel Dalmas could, on rare occasion, give the illusion of this privileged land where the rough-cast ochre or pink walls, the Genoese roof cornices, and the terraces with tiled balustrades form, along with large flowered earthenware jars, the most pleasant decoration.