EXHIBITION YEAR IN PARIS

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22016, 13 February 1937, Page 16

EXHIBITION YEAR IN PARIS

'—~-♦- . TRANSFORMING A CITY ATTRACTION FOR VISITORS TO CORONATION . LONDON, January 23. In an atmosphere of wars and rumours of wars, it is difficult even for Parisians to remember that 1937 is "the year of the exhibition," the greatest exhibition that Paris has ever held. Originally conceived" as a moderate? sized "Exhibition of the Decorative Arts," it has swollen to the. "International Exhibition of Arts and Industry," with the pavilions of 50 nations in the heart of Paris, innumerable other temporary pavilions,, and permanent municipal improvements which are costing at least £2,000,000. Changes which In London #would need nve years' debate in the London County Council, the House of Commons, and the newspapers 'have in Paris been resolved on after hesitation of a few weeks—or at most months — as a mere adjunct to a temporary show. s Strikes, held up work for from a month to two months, but the credits were increased and work is being pushed on night and day, so that the exhibition may open on May 1. The Pont d'lena has become one of the finest bridges in Paris, trebled in width; a tunnel at the north end.permanently eases the traffic in this part of Paris by carrying the east-west current beneath that going north and south. South of the Pont d'lena the gardens of the Champs de Mars are a maze of" iron girders and coloured concrete, which are gradually making shape as temporary pavilions that wind among the trees, bestride roads, and descend unexpectedly to water level. The Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower, a memorial of the 1889 Exhibition, is being stripped of some of its most Victorian ornamentation and prepared for its role as the great beacon of the exhibition of 1987. Over the way the centre of the Trocadero gardens has not been covered up, but removed, and the very rock beneath it quarried down to the embankment level. The Trocadero itself, that hideous but oddly likeable building, has already almost entirely disappeared, and its two wings, widened and heightened,, are being faced with severe white stone. Where the vast stomach of the Trocadero once bulged between the wings, there will be a stone flagged terrace on the level of, ..the Place du Trocadero, commanding the noble view down the Champs de Mars. / The new enlarged wings will house worthily fine permanent collections (notably the Ethnological Museum, to be renamed the "Museum of Man"), which have hitherto been seen to disadvantage. Other new museum buildings are rising between the Avenue du President Wilson and the riverbank, half-way between the Trocadero and the Place d'Alma, on a fine site formerly occupied by unsightly' military warehouses. These, after the exhibition, will house many of the smaller Paris collections, now rarely Seen because so scattered. The Pont d'Alma is being doubled by a temporary bridge. On the south bank the Versailles railway, which runs from the Invalides along the riverbank, has been permanently roofed over for more than a mile so as almost to double the ..*- ready generous width of the riverside esplanade. Amusement Park The Esplanade des Invalides is to be the Amusement Park. The Grand Palais (relic of the 1900 Exhibition)

is to be the Palace of' Science and Discoveries. Throughout the area of the exhibition —two miles long in the centre of the city—streets are being bridged, metros reconstructed, and special lighting effects arranged; v.. Somehow or other all these constructions, temporary and permanent, are coming into existence in the heart '.of Paris without seriously checking the life of the capital, in spite, of the prolonged economic crisis, the instability of Governments under the last legislature, and the 1 social crisis under the present one. Without any dictator in the background, the co-operation of capital city and State, of colonies, private firms, and, foreign nations has been secured. As the date of the opening draws near and the buildings increasingly take gracious shape, where there was chaos, the Parisians, and ultimately all France, will draw from this tremendous enterprise a sense of France's abiding energy and power of attraction and essential unity in spite of the bitterness of class conflict and party .politics. . The undertaking of an international exhibition at this moment is a tremendous risk. Germany may build her'pavilion of hewn stone (to be reerected afterwards in Nuremberg), and Italy face hers with.marble slabs, but neither country is going to release foreign exchange for her citizens to travel to Pans to see the exhibition for themselves. Paris is indeed hoping that the same throng of visitors from the New World which is to crowd London for the. Coronation will cross the Channel for her exhibition, but many will have to come in to take the places of all the absent Central Europeans, Italians. Spaniards and Russians. '" '