{"id":1614,"date":"2022-02-25T19:44:12","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T19:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/riseoftherentier\/?p=1614"},"modified":"2022-02-25T22:08:17","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T22:08:17","slug":"monuments-to-financial-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/riseoftherentier\/2022\/02\/25\/monuments-to-financial-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Monuments to Financial Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0<\/p>\n

Monuments to Financial Crisis<\/p>\n

Space matters tremendously to both the reproduction and the everyday experience of finance, something which did not elude contemporary financial operatives and their critics in nineteenth-century France. The premises of a financial outfit was worth investigation and investment by all concerned. Police examining potential malfeasance accorded great significance to what could be gleaned from the location of an agency, the rent it paid, the organization of its rooms, and the circuit of people they housed. An inquiry into the Cr\u00e9dit Territorial de France in 1882, for example, emphasized that the setup of its offices proved without doubt that the company was linked to two others, as \u201call the rooms connect between them, without appearing so to the public.\u201d The arrangement of what purported to be an administrative council chamber, hung with cherry satin and dominated by an immense table covered with green felt, \u201cgave the room an administrative appearance that might impress a na\u00efve public.\u201d But, the report continued, \u201cthe furnishings give more the atmosphere of a gambling house than a council chamber; the great, double-door deposit box, covered with dust and rarely opened [\u2026] An experienced eye can tell in a glance that everything breathes deception.\u201d Space could communicate an intention to mislead, and was a central category of economic surveillance.<\/p>\n

\"Black

Cover of the anonymous 1884 expos\u00e9 of the Cr\u00e9dit de France, a “bank” (a scam?) that collapsed from 1882.<\/p><\/div>\n

When the Cr\u00e9dit de France, a large-scale but unstable (and ultimately, fraudulent) banking enterprise was ruined along with scores of similar companies in 1882, expos\u00e9s like the anonymous Grandeur et d\u00e9cadence d\u2019une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 financi\u00e8re <\/em>[Rise and Fall of a Financial Company, 1884] were full of contempt for the way such firms embedded themselves in cities across France, and especially how they aimed to engage the public by doing so:\u00a0 \u201cLet us pick any of the country\u2019s larger cities; choose the richest district, the most monumental building; there, on the first floor, you\u2019ll be sure to find that kept woman known as the Cr\u00e9dit de France. Its name stretches in huge golden letters across the balcony\u2019 drawing in customers, its 30 million making eyes at passers-by, who are incapable of resisting the outpouring of the prostitute\u2019s charms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Front

Front page of the Moniteur des Valeurs \u00e0 Lots, listing all the company’s branches in France. Biblioth\u00e8que Nationale de France, photo by author.<\/p><\/div>\n

This company was in existence for just slightly over five years, and yet its directors \u2013 or, more accurately, Edouard Lepelletier, the disgraced banker who was pulling the strings \u2013 spent a considerable part of that time on the construction of a luxurious headquarters in the dynamic commercial districts of Paris\u2019s right bank. It\u2019s hard to fathom how quickly and ostentatiously this firm, raking in terrific sums of money from clients who avidly consumed its cheap gazette, the Moniteur des Valeurs \u00e0 Lots<\/em>, marked their stake in the fevered Parisian financial scene of the early 1880s. The building erected at 16 rue de Londres was across the street from the company\u2019s original headquarters at no.17, and intended as a showpiece for the public (the company kept offices and meeting spaces at no.16). As a statement about the firm\u2019s growth, optimism, and self-importance, the expansion far outpaced the short distance involved.<\/p>\n

The new building was constructed by Salomon Revel, an architect also employed by the capital city\u2019s police prefecture. It received warm reviews, many of them pushed in a massive press campaign by the bank, and stands out today for distinctive \u2013 perhaps not entirely harmonious \u2013 ornamentation. The British journal The Builder <\/em>noted the grandiose Renaissance fa\u00e7ade but chiefly praised the interior decoration, which included gilded mosaics, wide stone staircases with wrought iron handrails, and large ceiling frescos by the artists Henri Gervex and A. Louis Rey. Gervex in particular was an acclaimed young painter; his picture Rolla <\/em>caused a scandal when it was banned from the Salon in 1878 for immorality, but he quickly found a place as a nearly official painter of municipal republicanism. At 16 rue de Londres, the painter depicted (or, alternatively, Rey, a \u2018painter-decorator\u2019 copied) an allegory of the bank on the ceiling of the gilded, Louis XVI style administrative council chamber. The painting depicts a female form bearing a caduceus \u2013 symbol of Mercury, the mythological messenger and protector of merchants \u2013 and surrounded by the accoutrements of finance (account books, a bill press, a safe), industry (smoke stacks) and global commerce (Chinese porcelain, textiles).<\/p>\n

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\"An<\/a>

Henri Gervex, ‘Allegory of a Bank,’ oil painting. Mus\u00e9e Carnavalet, Paris.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

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Alongside these trappings of augustness, the bank invested in the infrastructures of transparency and security that defined the new commercial banking establishments of this period. As The Builder<\/em> noted, \u201cThe Hall is devoted chiefly to the financiers, who are in constant communication with the public\u201d, surmounted by \u2013 and exposed to \u2013 three ranges of galleries supported by iron columns and girders. The French press repeated that the vaulted hall rises \u201chardiment\u201d \u2013 a word that translates as both \u201cboldly\u201d or \u201crecklessly.\u201d The bank\u2019s (read: clients\u2019) capital was reputedly protected by \u201cdeeply excavated\u201d basements \u2013 home to vaults and deposit boxes \u2013 and a system of fire prevention that could \u201cinundate a considerable portion of the building\u201d with one turn of a key. The sumptuous offices of the directors were \u201cin direct communication\u201d (L\u2019Univers illustr\u00e9, <\/em>January 1882) with the public-facing bureaus, via electrical and compressed air mechanisms.<\/p>\n

\"Newspaper

Interior of the Cr\u00e9dit de France, from The Builder, January 1882.<\/p><\/div>\n

Certainly, the ceiling paintings and other surviving decoration give the building a certain attraction, resulting in some prominence in local historical tours<\/a> and web reviews<\/a>. Ordinary passersby cannot enter, of course \u2013 a stark contrast with the openness and exchange for which its monumentality was designed \u2013 though inaccessibility perhaps amplifies the interior\u2019s allure. But such repute as building enjoys is, I suspect, generated rather by the fact that it was occupied for only one year before the Cr\u00e9dit de France went bust. The contrast between the opulent and declarative premises, festooned with a bombastic pastiche of columns and sculpted lions, and the nearly immediate collapse of the enterprise whose ambition it announced coalesces into an unsettled but affecting emotional assemblage: wonder, chagrin, schadenfreude. The attraction of the Titanic. <\/em>The building was quickly repurposed by another company and is still in use today as commercial offices; its fall outside the financial economy was brief. But, in another register, it is nearly a ruin: a trace of grandeur and pomposity, a projection of an economic future that wasn\u2019t, Ozymandias\u2019s face in the sand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most important economic futures that were erased with the bank\u2019s failure were those of its clients, which transpired at a remove from these vaunted, vaulted spaces. Lepelletier\u2019s enterprise \u2013 named in succession the Cr\u00e9dit Fran\u00e7ais, the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale Fran\u00e7aise de Cr\u00e9dit, and finally the Cr\u00e9dit de France, a name bought from another failing bank \u2013 was nicknamed in financial circles the \u201cPetit Mazas\u201d or \u201cMaison Centrale de la rue de Londres,\u201d in reference to the clandestine director\u2019s convictions and prison sentences. Lepelletier was both skilled and politically savvy, painting his enterprise as royalist and Catholic in order to appeal to the same demographic that engaged with the Union G\u00e9n\u00e9rale bank. Police reports described his bank\u2019s gazette as \u201cthe example par excellence<\/em> of a financial paper that defrauds the public with the most extraordinary bad faith, while knowing how to cleverly avoid falling afoul of legal infractions.\u201d The transfer in late 1881 to the new headquarters was accompanied by a massive increase in subscribed capital (up to 75 million francs from only 6.5 million in early 1880) and a reshuffle of the administrative council, with famous and esteemed individuals replacing less notable (though possibly more notorious) characters. The building\u2019s tiered interior may have unconsciously appropriated the criticism that many reputable financiers still lobbed at Lepelletier\u2019s venture: that it was nothing but a \u201cBazar\u201d, a \u201cLouvre department store\u201d or \u201cBon March\u00e9 de la Banque.\u201d Just before its collapse, another police report noted that the bank \u201cinstalled in unprecedented luxury on the rue de Londres\u201d was nevertheless \u201con the point of collapse \u2013 the ruins will be immense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Newspaper

The refined exterior and grand offices of the Cr\u00e9dit de France. From Le Monde Illustr\u00e9, January 1882. Source: BNF, Gallica.<\/p><\/div>\n

Indeed, the building would remain as the company\u2019s promises and aspirations evaporated. As the anonymous \u201cgogo\u201d wrote in 1884, by that point the building\u2019s headquarters \u201cwere the only material flotsam that remained of this stupendous shipwreck.\u201d Ruined investors began holding tumultuous meetings to discuss possible action against the company in mid-1882, gathering in meeting halls in the financial district. We can only surmise how the gilded interiors of the nearby Cr\u00e9dit de France appeared to them at this point. To some degree, they may have provided reassurance, tangible proof of the continued potential of the company as options were considered to right the boat; proof, as well, that they were not unwise to have invested with the company materially, of course, it represented a security that could be recovered by creditors. Though here, again, was frustration; the bank\u2019s furnishings carried an auction estimate of 300 000 francs, but police reported that Lepelletier made his own deal, selling the lot to an interior decorator for just 35 000 francs but pocketing a 15 000 franc commission.<\/p>\n

Nothing today announces this building\u2019s status as a ruin, or perhaps a tomb, of financial aspiration. Yet clearly something lingers, a disjuncture created by the collision between castles in the air and durable stone and marble. The bank\u2019s short-lived tenure endows the building with the fluidity of crisis; it was an imaginary of a state \u2013 for its builders, for its clients \u2013 that did not come into being. As we look for ways of accessing and theorizing the everyday world of finance, these spatial arrangements and built orders are centrally important. They not only told tales of affluence, of security, of modernity to investors \u2013 tales that could be read at a distance through publicity and reporting. They also engaged them physically in spaces of abundance and of performance: abundantly decorated, abundantly open, abundantly consumerist. We can not only discern contemporary expectations of investors \u2013 a group to be courted, dazzled, and made into participants in a bank\u2019s story of itself \u2013 but also get closer to an investor\u2019s experience of economic practices.<\/p>\n

Further Reading: <\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Youssef Cassis, Capitals of Capital: A History of International Financial Centres, 1780\u20132005<\/em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)<\/li>\n
  • Maria Kaika, “Architecture and crisis: re\u2010inventing the icon, re\u2010imag (in) ing London and re\u2010branding the City,”\u00a0Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers<\/em>\u00a035, no. 4 (2010): 453-474.<\/li>\n
  • Maren Koehler and Jasper Ludewig, eds., \u201cFinancialized Space,\u201d Architectural Theory Review<\/em>, special issue 26, no.1, forthcoming 2022<\/li>\n
  • Anne Murphy, \u201cPerforming Public Credit at the Eighteenth-Century Bank of England,\u201d Journal of British\u00a0<\/em>Studies<\/em>, 58, no.1 (2019): 58-78<\/li>\n
  • Grandeur et d\u00e9cadence d\u2019une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 financi\u00e8re, par un Gogo<\/em> (Paris: Auguste Ghio, \u00c9diteur, 1884)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

     <\/p>\n

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    \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div> \u00a0Monuments to Financial CrisisSpace matters tremendously to both the reproduction and the everyday experience of finance, something which did not elude contemporary financial operatives and their critics in nineteenth-century France. The premises of a financial outfit was worth investigation and investment by all concerned. Police examining potential malfeasance accorded great significance to what could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3773,"featured_media":1616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"

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