History
The site was occupied by the Palais d'Orsay, intended for the Conseil d'État. It was begun in 1810 but not completed until 1840, when its ground floor was occupied by the Council. In 1842 the Cour des Comptes was housed in the first floor. After the fall of the French Second Empire in 1870, the Paris Commune created a provisional commission to replace the Conseil (March 1870 to August 1872), and the archives, library and works of art were removed to Versailles. Eventually both the Conseil and the Cour des Comptes were rehoused in the Palais-Royal.
The largely empty Palais d'Orsay burned to a shell in a spectacular fire the night of 23–24 May 1871, which was vividly described by Emile Zola.
The site was purchased by the Compagnie Paris-Orléans, which erected the monumental station in Beaux-Arts style, which takes its name from the Quai d'Orsay on which it stands, as the terminus for the railways of southwestern France. The western and southern sides of the building included a 370-room hotel.
By 1939 the station's short platforms had become unsuitable for the longer trains that had come to be used for mainline services, and the Gare d'Orsay was closed to long-distance traffic, though some suburban trains of the SNCF continue to use its lower levels to this day. The hotel closed at the beginning of 1973.
The former station was used as a collection point for the dispatch of parcels to prisoners of war during the Second World War, and after the war as a reception centre for liberated prisoners on their return; a plaque on the side of the building facing the River Seine commemorates this latter use.
It served as the setting for several films, including Orson Welles' version of Franz Kafka's The Trial, and is a central location in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist. It was in the ballroom of the station's hotel that General Charles de Gaulle held the press conference at which he announced his "availability to serve his country" on 19 May 1958, ushering in the end of the French Fourth Republic.
Read more about this topic: Gare D'Orsay
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—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)