


Hector Guimard

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Hector Guimard. Entrance Gate to Paris Subway (Métropolitain) Station, Paris, France. c. 1900. Painted cast iron, glazed lava, and glass, 13' 11" x 17' 10" x 32" (424.2 x 543.6 x 81.3 cm) Each vertical stanchion: 1040 lbs. Horizontal component: 460 lbs. Glazed lava sign: 100 lbs. Gift of Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens

The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, MoMA Highlights, p. 39


Paris was not the first city to implement an underground system (London already had one), but the approaching Paris Exposition of 1900 accelerated the need for an efficient and attractive means of mass transportation. Although Guimard never formally entered the competition for the design of the system's entrance gates that had been launched by the Compagnie du Métropolitain in 1898, he won the commission with his avant-garde schemes, all using standardized cast-iron components to facilitate manufacture, transport, and assembly.

While Parisians were at first hesitant in their response to Guimard's use of an unfamiliar vocabulary, his Métro gates, installed throughout the city, effectively brought the Art Nouveau style, formerly associated with the luxury market, into the realm of popular culture.

Audio Program excerpt

MoMA Audio Collection


Director, Glenn Lowry: The Paris Exposition of 1900 prompted the city to build an efficient and attractive means of mass transportation. Hector Guimard's sinuous, quintessentially Art Nouveau design won the competition.

Sculptutre Conservator, Lynda Zycherman: This was the second subway created in the world. The first was the one in London. It was Guimard's intention to advertise the subway publicly. He placed his Metro signs right in the middle of the plaza or on the sidewalk where it was visible by anyone who would come to see it, as opposed to the London subway where the entrances are more subtly hidden into a building and not in a public plaza.

His other innovation was to use modular systems to be able to create over a hundred gates in Paris. They are made of cast iron but they are painted to look as if they're bronze. Thats why they're green. The word Metropolitain is lava stone that has been ground up and re-fired to make a very impervious ceramic.

It was made to be outside. But it is over a hundred years old and it was pretty seriously rusted because the paint had failed over and over, from the time it was erected in Paris, until the French took it down in 1950-something.

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