Paris, d’Orsay Museum

Prior to the de l’Exposition de 1900 (World’s Fair, 1900), the trains of the Orleans Railroad stopped at Gare Austerlitz, on the east side of Paris. Since they wanted a station in the middle of Paris and nearer the Fair, the railroad company sought permission to build a new station on the Left Bank of the Seine, a block or two from the Louvre. For thirty-years the vacant land and the carbonized ruins of the Palais d’Orsay had served as reminders of the civil war, since the Palais was burned to the ground during the violence of La Commune in 1870.

On July 14, 1900 this beautiful building, stretching 150 yards from end to end, with a 100 foot high barrel vault ceiling of iron and glass, opened as Gare d’Orsay, the grandest railway station in France. Soon the platforms were too short for the much longer trains, so that architectural occupation lasted only 40 years, and in 1939 d’Orsay was reduced to a commuter station. During WW II it was the mailing center for sending packages to prisoners of war, then was a welcome center for those same prisoners after the Liberation. Finally in 1969 the last train left Gare d’Orsay, and for several years it was home to stray cats, pigeons, and the occasional film director (such as Orsen Wells for the “The Trial”) who needed a setting for a film.

While President d’Estaing was in office, in October 1977 the green light was given to develop Musée d’Orsay. The French Government spent millions to convert Gare d'Orsay into Museum d'Orsay, a beautiful museum, and the Musée was opened to the public by President Mitterrand, on December 9, 1986. Some of the art, including “Whistler’s Mother,” came from other museums in Paris, but much had been in storage and up to now, not available for public view.

We enjoyed our visit to the beautiful building, the works of art, an excellent model of the Opera building, and a replica of the buildings of a Paris neighborhood under a floor of Plexiglas. Looking through a huge clock in a window, we could see the Louvre, the Garnier Opera building, with Montmartre and the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur in the distance. A barge was sailing down the Seine, a clothes-line strung from bow to cabin with a couple dozen items hung out to dry. Those unmentionables were the talk of the town.

As we left the museum, I congratulated the man at the information booth, and said, "The French Government has proved its ability to change an old railroad station into a museum, so now would you see if you can get them to change Pompidou Center (National Center for Art and Culture) into a railway station." The man laughed, agreed, shook my hand and enjoyed the comment.

Pompidou is the museum with exo-skeletal architectural style, with the pipes, escalators, etc., on the outside, and odds and ends of stuff [art ?] on the inside. One writer stated that, “ … when it opened it was a turkey, but unlike most turkeys, this one wears its entrails outside its skin.”

The German language uses "du" [pronounced “do”] when a friend or a member of the family is addressed, and "Sie" [pronounced “Zee”] when they talk to a stranger. Our German friends say this Paris museum is so strange they call it "Pompizee." Read that again, it really does make sense.