PRESENTATION SCRIPT

[SLIDE 1]
The Magasins Runis, Art Nouveau, and Regionalism, 1890-1914

Peter Clericuzio

By 1914, the city of Nancy, a bustling center of 120,000 people in eastern

France, had amazingly risen to challenge Paris, the sprawling metropolis of 2.9

million, as the cultural and artistic capital of the nation.1 The influx of immigrants

from the neighboring regions of Alsace-Lorraine, seized by Germany in 1871

after the Franco-Prussian War, had brought with them new capital and industry,

and awakened a staunch regional patriotism among Nancys residents. In 1901,

the citys decorative artists and architects had formed a Provincial Alliance of Art

Industries called the Ecole de Nancy, committed to Art Nouveau as the style that

embodied their love of their province of Lorraine.2 [SLIDE 2] In Nancys bustling

downtown core, few other buildings encapsulated this pride like the flagship store

of the Magasins Runis, the only French department store chain based outside

Paris, whose twin towers immediately greeted visitors arriving by train on the

Place Thiers. On the eve of World War I, the Magasins Runis stood as the

architectural incarnation of a regional brand of modernism, characterized by its

embrace of an Art Nouveau that was based on the symbiotic foundations of

Lorraines prodigious heavy industries, colorful landscape, and storied traditions

and legends. This regional modernism claimed to be artistically independent of

the dictates and fortunes of Paris, and seemed to promise vitality for this Capitale

de lEst3 for decades to come.

Ironically, however, Nancys rise to artistic fame over the closing decades

1
of the nineteenth century was in no small part due to its use of Parisian

resources, though the citys residents never admitted it. [SLIDE 3] Most of

Nancys architects, for example, had trained at Paris Ecole des Beaux-Arts, then

the foremost architectural school in the world, and studied with such masters as

Victor Laloux, Julien Guadet, and Jean-Louis Pascal, and left with a strong

appreciation for traditional French classicism.4 Nancys artists still relied in part

on the approval and distribution of the Parisian press in order to gain fame and

fortune outside of Lorraine. And in some cases the Ecole de Nancy petitioned the

central government for subventions to fund the expositions of their work in the

capital and abroad, with limited success.5

[SLIDE 4] Paris, famously, was also where the department store emerged

during the mid-nineteenth century as both a distinct architectural entity and an

unmistakable marker of modern life. In 1869 the architect Louis-Charles Boileau

finished the new Bon March store for Aristide Boucicaut and his wife, and other

retailers soon borrowed the design.6 [SLIDE 5] By the turn of the century,

department stores were so well-established as a type that Guadet included a

section on them in the compilation of his lectures called the Elments et Thorie

dArchitecture.7 In this era, department storescalled grands magasins in French

(literally, great stores)often occupied an entire city block. Their five- or six-

story faades used ample street fenestration to admit light and display wares to

entice potential customers. [SLIDE 6] Passing shoppers would be shielded from

inclement weather by an awning or projection over the sidewalk. The roof,

2
meanwhile, featured a cupola over the main entrance that served as a daymark

within the city skyline. Paul Sdille perfected this element on the Printemps in

1883 with twin egg-shaped towers, a move that invited comparisons with a

cathedral faade. [SLIDE 7] Soon the monikers cathedral of consumption and

temple of commerce came to describe a department store, and Sedilles

paradigm quickly spread from Paris to cities all over Europe.8

[SLIDE 8] The interior of the department store was no less important in

defining the type. The interior was intended to hold the newly-captured attention

of customers through an impressive display of space and structure, and to

provide them direction so as to facilitate order. The designs of department stores

were often influenced by the temporary structures at international exhibitions,

whose purposes of ordering and categorizing new products were quite similar. By

the end of the century, the new possibilities of steel and glass allowed these

buildings to be constructed on a framework of steel piers connected by beams.

The heart of the building was defined by a huge atrium that rose the full height of

the structure and was capped by a glass ceiling, sometimes vaulted, that

admitted light in a dramatic and luxurious fashion. The interior drama continued

to unfold on the grand staircases that connected the levels of the store, as well

as on the catwalks that often crisscrossed the atrium to encourage circulation

and facilitate browsing. From there, customers could not only experience the

ever-changing views of the edifice and watch the activity going on below and

around them, but also be noticed in their fashionable clothing by other patrons.9

3
The architects of department stores spared no expense in designing the interior

dcor, installing the most sumptuous glass and ironwork to instill consumers with

confidence in the company and to entice them to explore the full depths of this

wondrous space that was far more extravagant than their own homes.

Antoine and Eugne Corbin and the Magasins Runis

[SLIDE 9] Founded in 1885 by the Nancy merchant Antoine Corbin, the

Magasins Runis was, significantly, the only department store chain to originate

and be based in the provinces. In 1890 Corbin hired Lucien Weissenburger, the

first of Nancys architects to graduate from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, to

combine into one space the cluster of storefronts that Corbin owned on Nancys

Place Theirs, opposite the train station. As Antoine and his son, Jean-Baptiste

(Eugne), who took over the company in 1901,10 bought up all the other lots on

the block over the next two decades, they repeatedly called upon Weissenburger

to enlarge and remodel it. [SLIDE 10] The store began to take its final antebellum

form in 1894, with the construction of a grand faade that enveloped the entire

block and required the import of a huge steam derrick from the United States.11 It

was finally completed in 1907.12

[SLIDE 11] The new Magasins Runis was a demonstration of the

principles that Weissenburger had digested at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under

Laloux and Guadet. It was a five-story building with rows of glazing on each level.

The ground floor consisted of a series of large arched windows, and an iron and

glass canopy ran around the entire block, though it was interrupted in the center

4
of each faade. [SLIDE 12] There it was bent into a segmental arch over the

entrances, much like Frantz Jourdain would later do at his famous Samaritaine

store in Paris. [SLIDE 13] On the west side of the building, closest to the train

station, the faade was framed by two corner towers, each of which was crowned

by a high ovoid wrought-iron dome, lit with skylights and topped by a cupola and

balcony. Below that, each tower was emblazoned with a huge panel celebrating

the commercial activity inside,13 while their bases housed the stores grand

entrances. The exterior dcor mirrored the eclectic neo-Baroque or Rococo-

revival styles then popular in Paris, with escutcheon-shaped attic window frames

and domes decorated with motifs of garlands. [SLIDE 14] The interior likewise

reflected Weissenburgers intimate knowledge of Parisian department store

design. It was anchored by a large central atrium encircled by upper-level

galleries fronted with intricate iron railings and connected by catwalks. The floors

were vertically joined at one end by grand iron staircases, and the atrium was

capped by a brilliantly-colored glazed ceiling designed by Nancys leading Art

Nouveau stained-glass artist, Jacques Gruber.14

Most of the exterior detail of the Magasins Runis was not Art Nouveau,

but the addition of many Art Nouveau features over the first fifteen years of the

twentieth century helped add to the stores regional symbolism and uniqueness,

especially in Nancy. [SLIDE 15] The Magasins Runis eventually grew so large

that Corbin opened an annex just across the rue Mazagran from the main

building (reachable by underground tunnel). For its corner ground-floor entrance,

5
finished around 1912, Weissenburger collaborated with the engineer Frdric

Schertzer (a frequent designer of Art Nouveau metalwork in Nancy) on a vast iron

and glass structure,15 whose underlying frame frankly exposed the rivets of its

construction on the steel piers, like thorns on a stem or burls of a tree. It carried

stained glass panels depicting leaves, probably of gingko trees or the spiky

thistle, a defiant symbol of Nancy found on the citys coat of arms. The structures

crown, resembling a pair of butterfly wings,16 was inset with stained-glass panels

that also depicted thistle plants. Alternately, one could read the composition

anthropomorphically, with the butterfly wings as eyes, the trapezoidal clear panel

below as a nose, and the entrance opening for a mouth. In this interpretation, the

store became a huge beast devouring the customers who nourished it with

revenue. This impressive entrance, along with the dcor visible just inside, no

doubt functioned as a curious advertisement.17

[SLIDE 16] The interior of the main store used Art Nouveau much more

frankly. The great Nancy furniture designer Louis Majorelle, who executed all the

decorative ironwork, modeled the staircase lamps into wiry plantlike forms that

recalled the mysterious entrances to Hector Guimards Mtro in Paris. They

enticed visitors to ascend the stairs, and explore the upper levels of this jungle of

merchandise, which most people had probably only imagined. [SLIDE 17] The

ironwork around the balconies was emblazoned with pine-cone motifs, a symbol

of wealth and prosperity as well as a tree commonly found in the mountains of

Lorraine. Art Nouveau stained glass signs by Gruber announced the names of

6
the various departments, adding to the luxurious character of the store.

Customers were reminded of the economic strength of Corbins enterprise by

panels around the base of the ceiling bearing the names of all the cities where

branches of the Magasins Runis could be found, especially those in Lorraine.18

[SLIDE 18] The uppermost level of the store was specifically set aside by

Jean-Baptiste Corbin for the Lorraine art that he patronized. There, the visitor

could find refreshment in a tea room entirely furnished by Louis Majorelles

company, and explore exhibitions of the latest work by leading local designers.

These included the painter Emile Friant and Victor Prouv, the president of the

Ecole de Nancy.19 In a manner similar to Wertheims department store in Berlin,

which projected a heroic National Romanticism then popular in Germany,20 the

Magasins Runiss architecture and dcor were conceived with the goal of

redefining the regions taste and identity. It helped to instill Lorrainers with pride

in the industry that underpinned their provinces vitality and its symbiotic

relationship with the local artistic scene, an alliance that contributed greatly to the

beautification of the citys central core.21

The Magasins Runis Regional Empire

[SLIDE 19] The Corbins were not content with a purely local operation,

however: between 1897 and 1914, they established no fewer than eighteen other

branches of the Magasins Runis in northern and eastern France. These

included larger centers like Troyes (1894), Toul (1905), Longwy (1905),

Charleville, Pont--Mousson (1901), Lens, Lunville (1910), Alenon, and Epinal

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(1908-09), as well as tiny hamlets like Vaucouleurs (1897), Saint-Mihiel,

Charmes, Neufchteau (1898), [SLIDE 20] and Joeuf (1910), the last of which

was strategically located just across the Franco-German border from the city of

Metz.22 From this location, the Magasins Runis could serve a clientele in

Alsace-Lorraine without having to establish a branch in foreign country. The

Corbins also gained control over two other department stores, in Chlons-sur-

Marne (in Champagne)23 and Paris, on the Place de la Rpublique.

The Corbins again commissioned Weissenburger to design most of these

branches. In some cases, such as in Lunville or Joeuf, Weissenburger

remodeled unremarkable two- or three-story buildings, usually attaching a

storefront to the ground floor. [SLIDE 21] The more ambitious branches of the

Magasins Runis, however, chronicle the evolution of Weissenburgers personal

style, which allowed him to tinker with the character of the companys image. His

earlier designs from the 1890s, like the branch at Troyes, reflect the strong

influence of his Parisian training, with a tall mansard roof, a long set of repetitive

bays, stone faade, and egg-shaped corner tower and cupola. The interior used

an exposed steel structure around an open-plan central atrium lit by a skylight.

[SLIDE 22] The appearance of the rationalist current of Art Nouveau,

however, among such architects as Hector Guimard, Frantz Jourdain, and the

Belgian Victor Horta changed Weissenburgers mind, and many of his designs for

branches of the Magasins Runis after 1900 suggest that he had grown much

more comfortable with Art Nouveau. The branch he built in 1905 at Toul, just

8
fifteen miles west of Nancy, demonstrates a firmer commitment to the style, with

earlike frames outlining the dormers, delicate curved iron brackets studded with

the forms of oak leaves, vegetal motifs carved into the cornice, and iridescent

panels between each bay of the faade that recall the peacock motifs used by

many Art Nouveau architects in Nancy. Nonetheless, the Toul branch retains

more than a whiff of traditional Beaux-Arts design: the prominent mansard roof

and repetitive bays of the main faade, with its central pavilion, are elements of

French Second Empire architecture. It should thus be read as a paradigm of

Nancys conservative strand of Art Nouveau, making use of floral and vegetal

designs but retaining the reserved stately essence of nineteenth-century French

classicism. The increasingly favorable attitude that Weissenburger developed

towards Art Nouveau also became evident in his post-1900 work with other

Nancy artists on the main store there.

[SLIDE 23] A few Magasins Runis branches outside of Nancy by other

architects demonstrated an even bolder use of Art Nouveau. One was the branch

at Epinal, called the Grand Bazar des Vosges and designed in 1908-09 by

Joseph Hornecker. This store carried an elaborate wrought-iron frame-and-

bracket structure above its cornice, shaped into vegetal forms and bearing flag

poles and sign panels that advertised the multitude of items for sale in Art

Nouveau lettering. [SLIDE 24] This latter device had been used by both Victor

Horta on his famous Maison du Peuple in Brussels in 1895-9924 and the Nancy

architect Henry Gutton in 1906 on his Grand Bazar de la Rue de Rennes in Paris,

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an affiliate of Corbins chain. [SLIDE 25] The masonry surfaces of Horneckers

building were ornamented by an elaborate and colorful set of stenciled floral

patterns that could have derived from a number of contemporary sources:

[SLIDE 26] the wallpaper produced by Nancy Art Nouveau artists such as

Charles Fridrich, the flattened designs devised by Csar Pain for the faades of

working-class Art Nouveau housing in Nancy, [SLIDE 27] and the decoration

used by Otto Wagner for his Vienna Majolikahaus. The extensive use of metal

can probably be explained by Horneckers time as the protg of the Nancy

engineer Henri Gutton (Henrys uncle) beginning in 1901, whose practice

Hornecker inherited when Henri Gutton retired in 1906.

As Catherine Coley has argued, the use of Art Nouveau on these

branches of the Magasins Runis did not constitute a unified company style per

se, but a strategy to make Corbins brand regionally recognizable.25 Indeed, there

were no official Art Nouveau elements or logos that architects used consistently

on every store branch. [SLIDE 28] On the other hand, the Magasins Runis

identified itself with Nancy at each of its locations. On many branches, the main

sign announced the enterprise as the Maison des Magasins Runis de Nancy.

The tower of the Troyes branch, for example, was emblazoned with the names of

its major locations in Nancy and Paris.26 Turn-of-the-century French

geographers, [SLIDE 29] such as Paul Vidal de la Blanche, had proposed

regionalist models for the nation, with a with a prominent administrative and

economic center surrounded by a network of smaller dependent towns,27 and this

10
idea indeed coincided with Corbins pattern of expansion. Mapping the locations

of the Magasins Runis reveals that the headquarters in Nancy controlled a

network of branches essentially distributed in concentric arcs geographically

outwards from it. [SLIDE 30] In 1909, the Magasins Runis became the only

department store to have its own pavilion at Nancys Exposition Internationale de

lEst de la France, a temporary building by Weissenburger that nonetheless

reminded one of the twin-towered faade of the main store downtown.28 Its

ubiquitous presence around Lorraine testified to the vaunted place of the

company within the region and the French nations economic prowess.

Conquering Paris

[SLIDE 31] In 1905, Eugne Corbin, perhaps impressed by the two

Guttons iron-frame Genin-Louis grain shop in Nancy from 1902 (which was

located just a few blocks from the Magasins Runis flagship store), asked Henry

to remodel an eighteenth-century neoclassical building that his father had

purchased on the rue de Turenne in Paris into a department store. Gutton

obliged, gutting the two-level interior and erecting a framework of steel columns

inside the shell for maximum flexibility of interior space. Pleased with the result,

which became the Magasins Runis in Paris, [SLIDE 32] Corbin asked Gutton

to construct a new Parisian store, called the Grand Bazar de la rue de Rennes

(1906-07), which became Guttons best-known work.29 Upon its completion,

Gutton gave up architecture temporarily to become the stores manager.30

The Grand Bazar de la Rue de Rennes was hailed as the manifesto in

11
Paris of Art Nouveau from Lorraine by the national press,31 though in fact it was

not typical of the regional strand of Art Nouveau architecture practiced by most

architects in Nancy. In Lorraine, most such structures, even if they used modern

reinforced concrete or steel frame construction, were cloaked in a stone veneer.

But Guttons building, with its exposed steel frame, curtain walls and a flat

roofline that supported an elaborate iron railing punctuated by signage and

flagpoles, [SLIDE 33] bore much more structural resemblance to Frantz

Jourdains Samaritaine (which was built at the same time), and Victor Hortas A

lInnovation in Brussels, completed in 1901.32 [SLIDE 34] Its design provided a

striking contrast to the sinuous, undulating Art Nouveau concrete forms used by

Paul Auscher just across the street for the Felix Potin department store in 1904.33

Unlike most European department stores, [SLIDE 35] Guttons Grand

Bazar did not use a corner tower. Instead, to attract customers, it relied on its

distinctive metal superstructure, the stacks of goods lining the sidewalk, and the

huge expanses of exterior glass that revealed hundreds of products inside. The

interior mirrored those of other French department stores, with several gallery

levels encircling a glass-lit atrium, hung from a point-support steel frame, and

linked by a grand staircase, thus leaving most space open for displays. Its

exterior, however, remained markedly different from most of the Magasins

Runis stores in Lorraine. Yet even though it did not accurately represent

Nancys Art Nouveau to a Parisian audience, the Grand Bazar nonetheless

effectively enticed customers inside, and in that sense, it was a triumph of the

12
provincial style in the capital. Guttons store won approval from a public that had

previously ignored Nancys efforts with Art Nouveau, and provided economic

sustenance for a regional enterprise.

Conclusion

[SLIDE 36] The vitality of Nancys Art Nouveau during the belle poque,

however, came to an abrupt and violent end with the proximity of the city to the

Western Front in World War I. During the war, most of the regional branches of

the Magasins Runis were destroyed by German air raids, and a spectacular fire,

apparently unrelated to the conflict, consumed the main branch in Nancy on the

night of 17 January 1916. [SLIDE 37] The company was far from the only one

associated with Nancys artistic establishment to suffer, as many of the citys

decorative arts firms were also ruined and some of its leading designers died in

the conflict. [SLIDE 38] After the war, Eugne Corbin, acting on

Weissenburgers advice, recognized the change in taste towards what we now

call Art Deco and hired the Nancy architect Pierre Le Bourgeois to rebuilt the

Magasins Runis in a streamlined manner, in which capacity it survived until the

company folded in the late 1960s. 34 [SLIDE 39] Today, the dozens of Art

Nouveau buildings that survive in Nancy are, fortunately, recognized as a

national patrimony, a reminder of the years before 1914 when Nancy dictated its

style to France,35 with its own strand of regionalist modernism.

13
Notes
1
For the population statistics of Nancy and Paris in 1911, see Pierre Barral, Franoise-Thrse
Charpentier, and Jean-Claude Bonnefant, La Capitale de la Lrraine Mutile (1870-1918), in
Taveneaux, dir., Histoire de Nancy, (Toulouse: Privat, 1979) 393; and the census of 1911,
reported by the Institut National de la Statistique et des tudes conomiques (INSEE), available
at <http://www.insee.fr>.
2
See Peter Clericuzio, Modernity, Regionalism, and Art Nouveau at the Exposition Internationale
de lEst de la France, 1909, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 10, no. 1 (Spring 2011),
<http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/> and idem., Nancy as a Center of Art Nouveau Architecture,
1895-1914, (Ph.D. diss, University of Pennsylvania, 2011), esp. chapter 2, The Ecole de Nancy
and Nancys Artistic Scene, pp. 47-121.
3
A term used by modern historians to describe Nancy during this period. See Pierre Barral,
Franoise-Thrse Charpentier, and Jean-Claude Bonnefont, "La Capitale de la Lorraine
Mutile," in Histoire de la Lorraine, dir. Ren Taveneaux (Toulouse: Privat, 1979), 407.
4
One that was tempered, however, with an appreciation of both regionalist considerations in
design and the knowledge of the new rationalism that appealed to the followers of Viollet-le-Duc.
See Meredith Clausen, Frantz Jourdain and the Samaritaine: Art Nouveau Theory and Criticism
(Leiden: Brill, 1987), 61-69, 184-85; Louis Hautecoeur, Histoire de lArchitecture Classique en
France 7: La Fin de lArchitecture Classique, 1848-1900 (Paris: Picard, 1957), 337-418, and
Clericuzio, Nancy as a Center of Art Nouveau Architecture, 90-104.
5
See Clericuzio, ibid., esp. 105-111.
6
On the building and history of the Bon March, see Michael Miller, The Bon March: Bourgeois
Culture and the Department Store, 1869-1920 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).
7
The development of the department store has been well-documented. In addition to Miller, cited
above, see Meredith Clausen, The Department StoreDevelopment of the Type, in Journal of
Architectural Education 39, no. 1 (Fall 1985): 20-9; idem., Frantz Jourdain and the Samaritaine,
esp. 191-215. Also consult Bernard Marrey, Les Grands Magasins des Origines 1939 (Paris:
Picard, 1979), 17ff; and Serge Jaumain and Geoffrey Crossick, The World of the Department
Store: Distribution, Culture and Social Change, in Jaumain and Crossick, eds., Cathedrals of
Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850-1939 (Aldershot, UK/Brookfield, VT, USA:
Ashgate, 1999), 1-45; and Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types, Bollingen Series XXV,
vol. 19 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 257-73. For Guadet, see his Elments
et Thorie de lArchitecture (Paris: Librarie de la Construction Moderne, 1901-4), 3:3-13.
8
On the development of Berlin department stores at the turn of the century, see Peter
Strzebecher, Das Berliner Warenhaus: Bautypus, Element der Stadtorganisation, Raumsphre
der Warenwelt (Berlin: Archibook-Verlag, 1979), esp. pp. 20-37.
9
Arguably, these features also made it easier for store officials to see the activity going on below
in one glance. See Tony Bennett, The Exhibitionary Complex, in New Formations 4 (Spring
1988): 81; also see John William Ferry, A History of the Department Store (New York: Macmillan,
1960), 20-21. The problem of theft and the need for control and security of goods became a major
issue, particularly with respect to female shoppers, around the turn of the century, both in France
and Germany. For more on this, see Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Department Store: Gender
and the Politics of Consumption in Turn-of-the-Century Paris, and Uwe Spiekermann, Theft and
Thieves in German Department Stores, 1895-1930: A Discourse on Morality, Crime and Gender,
and Kathleen James, From Messel to Mendelsohn: German Department Store Architecture in
Defence of Urban and Economic Change, all in Crossick and Jaumain, eds., Cathedrals of
Consumption, 116-30, 131-59, and 262-3, respectively.
10
When Antoine died.

14
11
Catherine Coley, Les Magasins Runis: From the Provinces to Paris, from Art Nouveau to Art
Deco, in Jaumain and Crossick, Cathedrals of Consumption, 230-6; and Philippe Bouton-Corbin,
Eugne Corbin: Collectioneur et Mcne de lcole de Nancy, Prsident des Magasins Runis-
Est, Inventeur du Camouflage de Guerre (Pont--Mousson/Nancy: Imprimerie
Moderne/Association des Amis du Muse de lEcole de Nancy, 2002), 34-41.
12
The faades completion was announced by Aux Magasins-Runis, in LImmeuble et la
Construction dans lEst 25, no. 20 (15 September 1907): 156.
13
Unfortunately, I have not been able to identify the precise nature of these scenes.
14
Emile Nicolas, Un Grand Magasin Moderne, in LArt Dcoratif 11, no. 127 (April 1909): 144-
45; Bouton-Corbin, 40-1; and B., LArt lorrain aux Magasins Runis, in LEtoile de lEst 11, no.
3679 (21 April 1911): 2.
15
Aux Magasins Runis, in LImmeuble et la Construction dans lEst 30, no. 16 (18 August
1912): 305; and Aux Magasins Runis, in LImmeuble et la Construction dans lEst 30, no. 21
(22 September 1912): 407.
16
Coley, op. cit., 236.
17
Ibid. Also see Bouton-Corbin, 34-5. This seductive design was a hallmark of drawing customers
into department stores. See Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late
Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), 66-70.
18
Bouton-Corbin, 30-41; also Nicolas, op. cit., 144-52.
19
Nicolas, ibid., 148-52; L. M., Exposition dart aux Magasins Runis, in LEst Rpublicain 8282
(23 April 1910): 3; and B., LExposition Friant aux Magasins-Runis, in LEtoile de lEst 11, no.
3623 (23 February 1911): 2.
20
James, From Messel to Mendelsohn, 260. This movement, however, did not include Art
Nouveau.
21
As evidence of this, see Nicolas, Un Grand Magasin Moderne, 144-52.
22
See the Liste des Principaux Travaux Executs Sous la Direction de Monsieur Lucien
Weissenburger, Architecte Diplom par le Gouvernment Nancy (de 1888 1915), 32 pp.
(Inventaire Gnral de la Lorraine, Nancy, Dossier Weissenburger); Coley, 237-9; and Bouton-
Corbin, 42-44.
23
Officially known as Chlons-en-Champagne since 1998. The store that Corbin came to control
there was known as the Grand Bazar de la Marne, and it was remodeled in 1913 by
Weissenburger. See the Liste des Principaux Travaux de Lucien Weissenburger (Inventaire
Gnral de la Lorraine, Nancy, Dossier Weissenburger).
24
Horta, however, emblazoned the signs mounted on an iron framework at the Maison du Peuple
with the names of famous leftist philosophers, not commercial products.
25
Coley, Les Magasins Runis, 236-39.
26
This building, which still exists today as a branch of the fnac electronics chain in Troyes, can
still be seen with the Nancy-Paris lettering carved prominently into its faade.
27
See Chapter 1.
28
Clericuzio, Modernity, Regionalism, and Art Nouveau at the Exposition Internationale de lEst
de la France, 1909, cited above.
29
Marrey, ibid., 141-42.
30
After World War I, however, Gutton founded his own construction company and realized

15
eighteen low-cost housing projects for the reconstruction. He later became one of the pioneers of
industrially-manufactured construction. See Bernard Marrey, Les Grands Magasins des Origines
1939 (Paris: Picard, 1979), 265. The idea of using Gutton, trained as an architect, as a
manager for a commercial enterprise seems strange, but it was not without precedent in Nancy,
where Jules Vuillard had made Gutton and his partner Emile Andr both the architects and the
managers for a garden suburb real estate venture called the Parc de Saurupt between 1901-06.
On this, see Peter Clericuzio, Nancy as a Center of Art Nouveau Architecture, 148-63.
31
As reported in Roussel, Nancy Architecture 1900 1:40; also see Coley, Les Magasins Runis,
239. This is probably due to the fact that the Parisian press made sure to identify Gutton as being
from Nancy when discussing the building. See A.-L.-R., Bazar de la Rue de Rennes, in La
Construction Moderne 22, no. 24 (16 March 1907): 281.
32
A fact that has been noted by others; see Meredith Clausen, La Samaritaine, in Revue de lArt
32 (1976): 66.
33
Marrey, ibid., 142-43.
34
Coley, Les Magasins Runis, 226-36, 242-46; and Bouton-Corbin, 30-33. On the destruction
of the prewar building, consult Les Magasins Runis Dtruits par le Feu: 16 millions des dgats -
Pas de victimes, in LEst Rpublicain 10323 (18 January 1916): 2; and Formidable Incendie
Nancy: Les Magasins Runis sont dtruits, in LImpartial de lEst 78, no. 7484 (18 January
1916): 2, among many other newspaper articles from this period. On the change in style, see
Christian Debize, Les Annes 20, lHritage en Question, in Franoise-Thrse Charpentier et.
al., LArt Nouveau: Ecole de Nancy (Metz: Denol/ Serpenoise, 1987), 255-75; and Andr Thirion,
Revolutionaries Without Revolution, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Macmillan, 1975)
[1972], 50-52.
35
Jean Vartier, Quand Nancy dictait son style la France, Lorraine-Magazine (19 September
1972): 23.

16
The Magasins Runis, Art Nouveau,
and Regionalism, 18901914
Peter Clericuzio
Lucien Weissenburger, Magasins Runis, Nancy, France, 1894-1907,
as seen from the train station across the Place Thiers

!
Louis-Charles Boileau, Bon March Department Store, Paris, 1869

!
Frdric Sorrieu, La Belle Jardinire et le Pont Neuf, ca. 1870-80
Color lithograph
Frantz Jourdain, La Samaritaine Paul Sdille, Printemps
department store, Paris, 1905-07 department store, Paris, 1883
Lon Lamaizire, Les Nouvelles Galries, Lachmann and Zauber,
Saint-Etienne, France, 1894-95 Jandorf department store,
Brunnenstrae, Berlin, 1904
Georges Chedanne and
Ferdinand Chanut,
Galries Lafayette, Paris, 1912
Interior showing gallery levels
around atrium
Headed notepaper for the Magasins Runis, early 1890s, showing the cluster
of storefronts that were eventually replaced by the single main store.

!
Lucien Weissenburger (1860-1929) Lucien Weissenburger, Magasins Runis,
architect of the Magasins Runis Nancy, 1894-1907 (destroyed 1916)
and the Corbin family, ca. 1910 Postcard, ca. 1912
Lucien Weissenburger, Magasins Runis, Nancy, 1894-1907
Lucien Weissenburger, Magasins Runis, Frantz Jourdain,
Nancy, 1894-1907 La Samaritaine, Paris, 1905-07
Detail of south faade from postcard Faade facing Rue de la Monnaie
Lucien Weissenburger, Magasins Runis, Nancy, 1894-1907
Lucien Weissenburger, Magasins Runis, Nancy, 1894-1907
Central atrium
Lucien Weissenburger and
Frdric Schertzer, corner
entrance to Magasins Runis
store annex, Nancy, 1912
Perspective and detail
 Louis Majorelle,
Lamps at entrance to main staircase,
Magasins Runis, Nancy, ca. 1909

Hector Guimard, Lamp at

entrance to Paris Mtropolitain
station, 1899-1900
 Louis Majorelle, ironwork
with pine-cone motifs on
atrium railings
Magasins Runis, Nancy,
ca. 1907

Jacques Gruber,
stained-glass signs for
departments
Magasins Runis,
Nancy, ca. 1907

!
Louis Majorelle, Tea Room, Magasins Runis, ca. 1909
 Lucien Weissenburger, Detail of advertising flyer for the
Magasins Runis, Magasins Runis, ca. 1907,
Pont--Mousson, France, 1901 listing locations of various branches

!
 Lucien Weissenburger,
Lucien Weissenburger, Grand Bazar de la Marne,
Magasins Runis, Joeuf, France, 1910 Chlons-sur-Marne, France, 1913
Lucien Weissenburger,
Magasins Runis,
Troyes, France, 1894

!
Lucien Weissenburger, Magasins Runis, Toul, France, 1905
Joseph Hornecker, Magasins Runis (Grand Bazar des Vosges),
Epinal, France, 1908-09
Victor Horta, Maison du Peuple, Henry Gutton,
Brussels, 1895-99 Grand Bazar de la Rue de Rennes,
Paris, 1906-07
Detail of roofline and ironwork

!
 Photo of interior of Pharmacie Malard, Csar Pain, Les Clmatites,
Commercy, France, (1907), showing 26, rue Flix Faure, Nancy, 1907
wallpaper by Nancy artist Charles Fridrich
Otto Wagner, Majolikahaus,
Vienna, 1899

Joseph Hornecker, Magasins Runis

(Grand Bazar des Vosges),
Epinal, France, 1907-09
Lucien Weissenburger,
Magasins Runis, Troyes, 1894
Detail of corner tower emblazoned
with NANCY

Lucien Weissenburger,
Magasins Runis,
Lunville, France, 1910

!
Map of Lorraine and
neighboring areas, showing
principal locations of
Art Nouveau architecture,
including locations of
branches of the Magasins
Reunis (underlined)

FRANCE
Lucien Weissenburger, Pavilion of the Maison des Magasins Runis,
Exposition Internationale de lEst de la France, Nancy, 1909
Henry Gutton and Henri Gutton,
Genin-Louis Grain Shop, Nancy, 1901-02

Henry Gutton (interior remodeling),

Magasins Runis,
Place de la Rpublique, Paris, 1905
Henry Gutton, Grand Bazar de la Rue de Rennes, Paris, 1906-07
Frantz Jourdain, La Samaritaine Victor Horta, A lInnovation
department store, Paris, 1905-07 department store, Brussels, 1901
Henry Gutton, Grand Bazar de la Paul Auscher, Flix Potin
Rue de Rennes, Paris, 1906-07 department store, Paris, 1904
Henry Gutton, Grand Bazar de la Rue de Rennes, Paris, 1906-07
Faade Interior atrium
Headquarters of newspaper
LEst Rpublicain, Nancy, after
German bombardment of 1918

Ruins of Louis Majorelles shop

after German bombardment,
Rue St.-Georges, Nancy, October 1917
Pierre Le Bourgeois, Magasins
Runis, Nancy, 1923-25
Now occupied by Printemps and
fnac

Advertisement for new Magasins

Runis, Nancy, after 1925
Emile Andr, Huot Houses, Lucien Bentz, Jacques Pharmacy,
Nancy, 1902-03 Nancy, 1903
 Lucien Weissenburger, Detail of advertising flyer for the
Magasins Runis Magasins Runis, ca. 1907,
Pont--Mousson, France, 1901 listing locations of various branches

All text and images 2012 Peter Clericuzio.