Paris Bourse

Paris -PLBE- Paris - La Belle Époque

In the early 19th century, the Paris Bourse's activities found a stable location at the Palais Brongniart, or Palais de la Bourse, built to the designs of architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart from 1808 to 1813 and completed by Éloi Labarre from 1813 to 1826.

Brogniart had spontaneously submitted his project, which was a rectangular neoclassical Roman temple with a giant Corinthian colonnade enclosing a vaulted and arcaded central chamber. His designs were greatly admired by Napoleon and won Brogniart a major public commission at the end of his career. Initially praised, the building was later attacked for academic dullness. The authorities had required Brogniart to modify his designs, and after Brogniart's death in 1813, Labarre altered them even further, greatly weakening Brogniart's original intentions. From 1901 to 1905 Jean-Baptiste-Frederic Cavel designed the addition of two lateral wings, resulting in a cruciform plan with innumerable columns. According to the architectural historian Andrew Ayers, these alterations "did nothing to improve the reputation of this uninspiring monument.