Banque Charles Renauld: honesty in the hall

The banker Charles Renauld had his bank built on a street corner between 1908 and 1910. He split the work between two architects: Émile André designed the façades, Paul Charbonnier the interior. Both their names are carved in the stone, to the left of the entrance.

The corner is a tower. It rises in canted faces, pale stone and tall windows, up to a deep overhanging eave, like the brim of a hat. Above it, a spire of dark slate, studded with dormers and green-weathered ornaments, ends in a point. Lower down, a stone balcony with balusters wraps around the corner.

The way in is under the tower. Three arches open onto the sidewalk, carried by thick round piers of gray stone. Each is clasped by a dark ring modeled with ginkgo leaves. About ten steps climb to a door with an iron grille. The grille that once closed off the porch itself has been destroyed.

The whole façade is a herbarium. Apples form a frieze on the first level, ferns climb the tower, daisies line the cornices. The ginkgo of the porch returns at the very top, on the dormers. Louis Majorelle supplied the ironwork and the furniture.

Behind the herbarium, the construction is modern. The floors are reinforced concrete, poured using the Hennebique system, and the structural shell was finished by the winter of 1909. The roof frame is metal. The elevator came from Paris.

The hall has lost its sky. Jacques Gruber had covered it with a glass roof; it was destroyed, and Majorelle’s fittings suffered from successive alterations. The façades and the hall are now classified as monuments historiques. The honesty has stayed on the banisters. The sign over the door has changed: it is still a bank.