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Exposition Internationale Urbaine de Lyon, 1914

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Exposition Internationale Urbaine de Lyon, 1914

The 1914 Lyon International Urban Exhibition was born from the ambitious vision of Mayor Édouard Herriot, who sought to transform the city into a stage for his municipal policies and the burgeoning concept of the “Modern City.” Aiming for a grand success that would surpass Lyon’s previous fairs in 1872 and 1894, the organizers, including architect Tony Garnier and medical doctor Jules Courmont, curated a sprawling (75.38 hectares with 17,000 square meters of exhibit space), eclectic mix of industrial displays, foreign pavilions, and colonial exhibits, including a Senegalese village. It’s theme was the 20th century and modernity, focusing on improving sanitation, medical services, transportation, and cultural services, while improving housing and green spaces in Lyon. Herriott placed special emphasis on the urban planning aspect of the event, hence its name.

However, the event soon became a mirror for the era’s underlying instabilities. Even before its grandest ambitions were tested, the exhibition struggled with a “disordered profusion” of themes and a desperate need for profitability that blurred its educational goals. When President Raymond Poincaré inaugurated the event in May 1914, the atmosphere was already clouded by the memory of the 1894 fair, which had ended in tragedy following the assassination of President Sadi-Carnot.

The exhibition’s ultimate failure was sealed not by internal mismanagement, but by the relentless march of history. By August, the declaration of World War I effectively dismantled the fair’s international spirit; German and Austrian pavilions were abruptly closed on August 2, 1914, and exhibitors from enemy nations fled as their goods were confiscated. The war was greeted in Lyon with patriotic demonstrations, and the attention of the municipal authorities was soon absorbed by other tasks (organizing the mobilization, supplying provisions, etc.). At the official closure on November 1, many pavilions had been empty for a long time. The remarkable Halle Tony Garnier, the centerpiece of the exposition, was used as an arms factory during the war and later as a slaughterhouse. In 1988, it was reconstructed as an exhibition and event center.

Incubator Exhibit

Alexandre Lion showed his infant incubators at Lyon in 1914. It was, as far as we know, his last exposition exhibit, following close on the heels of his exhibits at Dunkerque in 1912 and Ghent in 1913. We have not discovered any pictures of the pavilion (so far), but we do have a souvenir postcard from Lion’s standardized house series, captioned “Pavillon des Couveuses d’Enfants, Avenue de Paris (en face du Salon Parisien), Exposition Internationale de Lyon 1914.” The pavilion’s location can be fixed from the exposition’s own plan. The card’s “en face du Salon Parisien” corresponds to the block on the Avenue de Paris opposite the pavilion marked “Salons Parisiens,” in the commercial quarter south of the Grand Hall, the block that also contained Section XXVII, “Protection de l’enfance et Puériculture.” An independent witness corroborates the exhibit: a report in La Tribune de l’Aube of 6 July 1914, recounting a girls’-school excursion to the fair in mid-June, lists among the visitors’ stops “l’établissement de puériculture (couveuses d’enfants)” alongside the named national and industrial pavilions.

Source: Author’s collection.

Beyond those two pieces of evidence, no mention of Lion’s exhibit has been found in the French popular press, the Exposition’s catalog, official Bulletin, or the Journal de l’Exposition. My best guess is that Lion’s “Pavillon des Couveuses d’Enfants” operated as a concession or attraction outside the official exhibitor structure. Whether Lion ran the pavilion personally or delegated a representative to manage it can’t be determined from the available record.

The presumed location of Lion’s exhibit in the section Protection de l’enfance, Puericulture (XXVII), across the Ave. de Paris from the Salons Parisiens (LIII), is marked.

Primary Sources

  • Catalogue général officiel de l’Exposition internationale urbaine de Lyon, 1er mai–1er novembre 1914 (Lyon: Imprimeries réunies, 1914), Section XXVII “Protection de l’enfance — Puériculture,” pp. 253–257, Classes 146–152. A copy (Getty Research Institute) is digitized in full, OCR-searchable, at the Internet Archive, identifier gri_33125016182020.
  • Bulletin de l’Exposition internationale de Lyon 1914 (official organ, “reconnue officiellement par décret du Président de la République”; administration, 45 rue de la République, Lyon). Gallica / BnF: N° 11 = ark:/12148/bpt6k45166481; N° 13 = ark:/12148/bpt6k45166503; N° 15 = ark:/12148/bpt6k4516652x.
  • Lyon-Exposition / Journal de l’Exposition internationale de 1914 (commercial illustrated weekly; 1re année N° 1, 25 avril 1913, to N° 38, 2 août 1914; hebdomadaire illustré, 66 rue de la République, Lyon). Consulted as the compiled run on Gallica / BnF, ark:/12148/bpt6k935540v.
  • La Tribune de l’Aube, 6 July 1914 — account of a girls’-school (École de Launay) excursion to the exposition in mid-June 1914, listing among the visitors’ stops “l’établissement de puériculture (couveuses d’enfants)” alongside the named national and industrial pavilions.

Secondary Sources

  • Christiane Demeulenaere-Douyère, “Une exposition internationale prise dans la Grande Guerre : l’Exposition internationale urbaine de Lyon, 1914” (Centre Alexandre Koyré, EHESS-CNRS-MNHN; version dated 25 August 2014).
  • Maria-Anne Privat-Savigny (dir.), Lyon, centre du monde ! L’exposition internationale urbaine de 1914 (Lyon: Musées Gadagne / Fage éditions, 2013), 335 pp., ISBN 978-2-84975-305-7.
  • Frédéric Crouzet et al., “Lyon en 1914 — Cité moderne,” Le Figaro Magazine (édition Lyon), 25 October 2013 — journalistic special edition tied to the Gadagne exhibition, quoting Privat-Savigny;
More Information about Alexandre Lion

French primary sources were machine-translated, then checked against the originals and edited by the author. Portions of this page were drafted with machine assistance; the final text was reviewed, verified, and edited by the author.

Last Updated on 09/04/26