The Great Paris Flood Of 1910

By Paul Homewood 

 

With the floods in France in the news, Dennis Ambler reminds me of the Great Paris Flood of 1910.

 

The following sequence is from the Parisian Field website:

https://parisianfields.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/remembering-the-great-paris-flood-of-1910/

 

 

 

 

There are countless images of the flood, but perhaps none speaks so eloquently of the disruption as the interior of the Gare d’Orsay. It looks like an over-the-top swimming pool. This photo, as with all of the images in this blog, is from the Paris en Images website, one of my favourite Paris places.

 

 

 

In addition to destruction, floods turn the familiar into the unfamiliar. Perhaps the most disconcerting element of this photo of the Gare d’Orsay, now a museum with a stunning collection of impressionist art, is the stairway descending into the water. It seems surreal, something that Jules Verne might have given to Captain Nemo, had the submarine Nautilus been big enough to have a swimming pool.

 

The Gare d’Orsay had been built as part of the preparations for the International Exposition of 1900. The world famous Paris Métro was also inaugurated to celebrate the Exposition of 1900. And it, too, succumbed to the flood.

 

Familiar stately streets such as the Boulevard St. Germain took on an eery unfamiliarity. How can one imagine this being one of the places to take a stroll, to shop, to see and be seen and above all to linger? Much of the city had been transformed.

 

 

One hardly expects to find a boat in a Parisian doorway. But boats became one of the main ways to get about the flooded city.

 

 

 

More to see here.