Boutique art nouveau, 45 rue st. Augustin (2e arr, 1904–05).
Despite being reasonably familiar with Eugène Atget’s celebrated photos of Paris, this picture of a very elaborate Art Nouveau façade is something I’d not seen until now. The photo is part of the George Eastman House collection of Atget prints, and is unusual for showing a very contemporary shopfront. Atget generally preferred premises redolent of an older, pre-Haussmann Paris, like the window full of barometers at Au Griffon, 39 Quai de l’Horloge. The Rue St. Augustin façade is an especially baroque example of Art Nouveau excess with a flying fish, a large butterfly (or moth) supporting the window, and the ubiquitous fin de siècle female floating above it. Naturally I had to know if the decor had survived but a quick look at Google Maps revealed the mundane scene below. The apartment entrance next door is pretty much unchanged but the wine shop that’s there now shows no traces of its delirious past.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Hector Guimard elevations
• Infernal entrances
• Hector Guimard sketches
• Temples for Future Religions by François Garas
• Elizabetes Iela 10b, Riga
• Atelier Elvira
• Louis Bonnier’s exposition dreams
• The Maison Lavirotte
• The House with Chimaeras
I, too, am an Atget fan but don’t recall having seen that particular image. Delirious indeed! It’s a shame that such a wondrous creation is gone. C’est la vie…
Here’s an interesting Then and Now photo done by the groups I’m working with at the moment.
Sorry the link is so long
http://attach.10941289.uid11686538.historypin.com/map/#!/geo:-33.867739,151.207698/dialog:12256006/zoom:20/tab:more_tab_content/equiv:12370048/
Being able to fade from one to the other is a good idea. There’s a whole Flickr pool devoted to these kinds of juxtapositions:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/avantapresthennow/