Glories of French architecture - Paris bibliothèques

From today%26#39;s New York Times...

March 5, 2006

Journeys

At These Parisian Landmarks, Shhh Is the Word

By RICHARD B. WOODWARD

IN a city where braininess is sexy, the bibliothèques of Paris don%26#39;t suffer from the dowdy image problem that afflicts libraries in the United States. The buildings erected or adapted for libraries, dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries, are among the glories of French architecture, their stylish forms as impressive as the contents stored inside their walls.

Decades before Gustave Eiffel built his tower, Henri Labrouste was the supreme fashioner of cast iron, leaving his mark from the 1840%26#39;s to the 1860%26#39;s with a pair of magnificent libraries, the Bibliothèques Ste.-Genevieve and Nationale. Dominique Perrault%26#39;s futuristic design for the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand, widely ridiculed since it was completed in 1994, has nonetheless served as a quai-side anchor for the revitalization of the 13th Arrondissement, across from the rejuvenated neighborhood of Bercy.

Libraries seldom turn up on a tourist%26#39;s itinerary. This makes them ideal havens for anyone eager to escape from one%26#39;s fellow foreigners. It%26#39;s worth risking a derisive glance from a Parisian bookworm, who no doubt regards you as an intruding barbarian anyway, to tiptoe through some of the city%26#39;s most atmospheric public spaces.

BIBLIOTHÈQUE FORNEY

Named for the industrialist Samuel-Aimé Forney, who left 200,000 francs in 1886 for the education of students in the decorative arts, this institution has been situated since 1961 in the Hôtel de Sens, one of just three medieval-Renaissance private residences still standing in the city.

The grand exterior and courtyard, built from 1475 to 1507 and heavily restored in the 20th century, is a disguise. Behind the turrets and thick walls is the city%26#39;s lively collection of graphic arts, including more than a million postcards and 20,000 posters, an art form at which the French have historically excelled.

A mostly young clientele races up and down the stone staircases, and the exhibitions tend toward the light-hearted. On my visit in the fall, a cross-cultural history of illustrations for %26quot;Le Petit Chaperon Rouge%26quot; (%26quot;Little Red Riding Hood%26quot;) was on display.

BIBLIOTHÈQUE MAZARINE

Across the Seine on the Quai de Conti, Mazarine is a more hushed and forbidding place. Founded in 1643 by Cardinal Mazarin, prime minister for the young Louis XIV, it is the oldest public library in France. It is also the official library for the Institut de France, which oversees five of the nation%26#39;s most venerable artistic, literary and scientific academies, including the Académie Française, guardian of the language.

The L-shaped reading room, on the second floor, is comparatively small. From the windows on one side it looks across the river toward the Louvre, giving the place an intimate, serene air that can transport you back to the 17th century.

Researchers sit with notebooks and laptops at leather-topped tables surrounded by carved wooden doors, ceilings and more than a hundred Corinthian columns. Against the walls of books, held in by rails, are sliding ladders that run beneath a balcony. Marble busts of historical eminences (the Roman emperor Vespasian, Benjamin Franklin, the Count de Buffon) complete the setting of royal privilege.

BIBLIOTHÈQUE DE L%26#39;ARSENAL

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, France%26#39;s writers competed to attain comfortable positions, financed by state sinecures, of caring for other writers%26#39; books. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Leconte de Lisle, Georges Bataille and Anatole France were librarians, and Proust once applied for a post as an unpaid assistant in the Mazarine, one of his periodic half-hearted attempts to prove to his father that he could hold down a job.

But perhaps no librarian is more renowned in the history of French literature than Charles Nodier (1780-1844). An early theorist of Romanticism and a notorious eccentric whose autobiography has a chapter with nothing but punctuation marks, he ran the Arsenal in the 1820%26#39;s. His brilliant nonsectarian salon, whose regulars became known as the Cénacle, attracted the young Victor Hugo, for whom Nodier became a father figure. Busts of both men can be found at the library, near the Marais.

As its name implies, the Bibliothèque de l%26#39;Arsenal is a former military stronghold. Crammed into its long, narrow and ill-lighted confines are more than a million volumes. The concentration is on French literature and includes the prison dossier of the Marquis de Sade.

BIBLIOTHÈQUE STE.-GENEVIÈVE

%26quot;I inaugurated my new existence by ascending the stairs to the Bibliothèque Ste.-Geneviève,%26quot; Simone de Beauvoir wrote in %26quot;Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.%26quot; When she studied at the Sorbonne, in the late 1920%26#39;s, the library, in the Latin Quarter, had a section reserved %26quot;for ladies only.%26quot;

Both sexes can now move around freely and peruse the more than one million volumes in the general collection. Its strengths are history from 1811 to the present, and a rare book and manuscript division with material dating back to the ninth century.

For historians of architecture, the main attraction is the Labrouste Reading Room on the second floor. When it opened in 1850, the design was revolutionary. The slender cast-iron columns that run down the center of the room, and the pierced leaf-patterned cast-iron arches that support the twin barrel vaults, allowed Labrouste to dispense with massive masonry and gives the room a buoyant airiness not usually associated with products of the industrial age. On a sunny day, with beams of light streaming over the heads of readers from the windows facing the Place du Panthéon, it can be one of the blissful interiors in Paris.

BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE

Labrouste took an even bolder approach in his design for the national library on the Rue de Richelieu, opened in 1868. A stony fortress from the street, the library warms up once you step inside. The reading room is punctuated by nine terra-cotta domes, each open to the sky at the top. The Salle Ovale with its glass ceiling is another heavenly space for scholars.

But it was for the stacks (closed to the public but visible through a glassed archway) that Labrouste produced his most modern experiment in cast iron. Intersecting horizontal and vertical metal planes, a frame for containing five stories of books, are exercises in pure geometry and materials that bring Mies van der Rohe to mind.

Exhibitions at the Bibliothèque Nationale are commonly of a high order and require a modest entrance fee. A retrospective of the Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado and a selection of graphic works by A. M. Cassandre, one of the masters of Art Deco poster design, were highlights in the fall.

BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE FRANÇOIS MITTERRAND

There has been much sighing from scholars over the last 10 years as most of the books and readers once found in Labrouste%26#39;s overcrowded, outmoded but still-cherished building have been transferred across the river to this colossal library (also known as the Très Grande Bibliothèque). It competes with the hollow cube at La Défense, on the other end of Paris, as perhaps the most despised structure of recent vintage.

Perrault%26#39;s striking design — with its four symbolic glass towers, like four open books — is as impractical as it is uninviting. Special blinds had to be inserted in the towers to protect the books from sunlight, and the barren setting recalls the totalitarianism of %26quot;1984.%26quot; Walking across the plaza on a windy day toward the escalators that take you down into the main body of the library can be like fighting a gale on the deck of a ship.

The imaginatively installed exhibitions are the main reason to venture here. The superb %26quot;Livres de Parole%26quot; show, which explores the overlapping traditions of the Torah, Bible and Koran, is on display through April 30. Prayer shawls, rosaries, fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls and other pertinent objects supplement gorgeous or important examples of the sacred books from the library%26#39;s collections.

If You Go

The country and dialing codes for Paris, France, dial 01 before the number.

Bibliothèque Forney, Hôtel de Sens, 1, rue du Figuier, Fourth Arrondissement; phone 42.78.14.60. Open Tuesday to Saturday 1:30 to 7 p.m.

Bibliothèque Mazarine, 23, Quai de Conti, Sixth Arrondissement; 44.41.44.06; www.bibliotheque-mazarine.fr. Reading room open Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; closed holidays and July 29 to Aug. 15. A pass for two consecutive days is free; a provisional pass, for 10 working days, is 7.50 euros, $9.10 at 1.21 to the euro.

Bibliothèque de l%26#39;Arsenal, 1, rue Sully, Fourth Arrondissement; 53.01.25.25; Open Monday to Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m to 5 p.m.; closed Sundays, holidays and April 10 to 21.

Bibliothèque Ste.-Genevieve, 10, Place du Panthéon, Fifth Arrondissement; 44.41.97.97; www-bsg.univ-paris1.fr. Open Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m to 10 p.m.

Bibliothèque Nationale, 58, rue de Richelieu, Second Arrondissement; 53.79.59.59; www.bnf.fr. Reading room open Tuesday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday 9 a.m to 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 to 7 p.m.

Bibliothèque François Mitterrand, Quai François-Mauriac, 13th Arrondissement; 53.79.59.59. Exhibitions and reading rooms open Tuesday to Friday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday 1 to 7 p.m. Entry: 3.30 euros.

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Thanks so much for this post. As a librarian I had planned to at least visit one of the libraries in Paris during our week stay. Now I want to visit them all but I know my husband would be bored and our schedule is all ready jam packed. I will file this info away so if there ever is a next time for me to visit, I will put this at the top of my list. Thanks again.