Graineterie Génin-Louis: the steel was purple

The Genins sell grain. They want their store on a street corner, with floors above it. They turn to an uncle and his nephew, Henri and Henry Gutton. The first is a graduate of the École polytechnique, an engineer as much as an architect.

The steel is not hidden. Frédéric Schertzer, a steel-frame contractor, raises the skeleton with pieces from Pompey, and nothing covers it: posts and beams stay bare, their rivet heads lined up as on a bridge. Between them, panels of hollow brick, white today. The whole stands in 1901, painted a deep purple.

On the corner, the iron blossoms. The oriel climbs it, a glass cage hung on the façade, up to a slate spire. At its base, a wrought-iron poppy rises in each recess: a fluted stem, cut leaves, a round, pale head. Just above, Alexandre Bigot’s ceramic frieze lines up more poppies, open ones this time, modeled in relief. The poppy is a seed plant. For a seed merchant, it serves as a sign.

Higher up, the iron thins out. The oriel’s railing is nothing but slender rods, which curve into hearts, fan open and end in a diamond point. The corner posts, for their part, finish in plant ornaments.

The corner has kept its door. It is dark wood, under an arch of riveted steel. Jacques Gruber put wisteria in the stained glass of its leaves and in the transoms of the neighboring windows. Sliding grilles protected the shop windows.

The purple did not last, and it did not leave alone. In February 1902, a fire takes the attic. Threatened with demolition, the building is restored in 1975 and protected. The store’s staircase, the door’s canopy and the stenciled painted decoration on the façades are gone. The grain store has become a bank. The steel is blue.