The Modern Interior

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nineteenth century/early twentieth century department store has been
the subject of numerous studies, the appearance of its interior spaces has
received relatively little attention. The architect of Paris’s Bon Marché
store was L. A. Boileau, the engineer of the famous Gustave Eiffel, and its
founder, Aristide Boucicaut. 19 Built of iron and glass, its interior consisted
of spacious open bays, glass skylights and a series of open inner courts.
Inside the monumental and theatrical effects continued. The iron
columns and expanse of glass provided a sense of space, openness
and light. Immense gallery opened upon immense gallery and
along the upper floors ran balconies from which one could view, as
a spectator, the crowds and activity below. Three grand staircases,
elegant and sweeping, conveyed the public to these floors as if they
were climbing to loges at the opera . . . Part opera, part theatre, part
museum, Boucicaut’s eclectic extravaganza did not disappoint
those who came for a show. 20
The interior of the Parisian store was a vast open space, similar to
the interior of the Crystal Palace, with a glass roof which had a huge
chandelier suspended from its centre. Walkways around the periphery of
the iron-structured space provided customers with vantage points from
which to view the stock which lay beneath them. Side lighting and fabrics
were, as we have seen, suspended in swags from the columns to complete
the effect. The central staircase of the store emphasized the vertical
nature of its cavernous space while the salon was an equally verticallyoriented
space of enormous scale but with ceilings painted in the classical
manner and paintings covering the walls. Away from the commercially
driven shop floors that last space was more historical in style, offering
the store’s customers a more domestic experience. The potential threat of
the commercial world was softened by that more overtly cultural space
which reassured female consumers in what was otherwise an unfamiliar
modern interior.
Selfridges, which opened in London in 1909, was the only British
department store to equal Paris’s Bon Marché and the Marshall Field’s
store in Chicago. It had ‘wide aisles, electric lighting, crystal chandeliers
and a striking colour scheme – all-white walls contrasted with thick green
carpet.’ 21 Typically of that early Edwardian era the interior was at once, in
its negation of the darker Victorian spaces of earlier stores, both novel
and, with its crystal chandeliers, traditional at the same time. That ‘cathe-