The Lumière venture
The Lumière villa is the last surviving evidence in Lyons of the social rise and tremendous industrial success of the painter and photographer, Antoine Lumière and of his two eldest sons, Auguste et Louis, the inventors of the cinematograph.
The Lumière family settled in Lyons in 1870. The photographic studio in the rue de la Barre, first housed in a wooden shed, then in a permanent building with a window and a reception room, became a fashionable place, the haunt of many artists, politicians and scientists.
Auguste and Louis, soon became partners in their father's experiments. Seventeen-year old Louis' first invention marked the beginnings of both their industrial venture and their financial success as he perfected a gelatino-bromide plate making snapshots possible. The plate, in its blue-labelled box, met with an immediate success which encouraged the development from small-scale to large-scale production. A factory was set up in the eastern part of the city in 1882.
The growth of the firm did not prevent the two brothers from carrying on with their experiments in various fields, and in particular that of the moving picture. In February 1895, Louis registered the patent for a device he called the Cinématographe Lumière which included a flexible and transparent film with regulary punched edges: the cinema was born.
The Lumière as builders
"My father was a bricks-and-mortar maniac... He was carried away by the success of our firm and soon bought an estate in La Ciotat where he had a large an beautiful villa built and vines planted an huge cellars added; he had other buildings erected in Evian, la Turbie and eventually Monplaisir...". Auguste Lumière writes in his memoirs.
Le "château Lumière" (Lumière castel), as local people have been calling it since the very beginning, is Antoine Lumière's ultimate architectural creation. Not unlike many entrepreneurs in Lyons, such as the car manufacturers Rochet and Schneider or even Marius Berliet, he had an imposing and spacious family mansion built just outside Lyons near the workshops. It was built between 1899 and 1902, by the architects Alex and Boucher, both natives of Lyons, and displays particulary luxurious decorative elements where the Art Nouveau style can be traced.
Looking at the house from the outside
The architects conceived a compact, square building in which only the driveway in the north juts out. The irregular volumes and the varied elevations contrast with this regular plan. The architectural effects rely upon the proportions of the outlines and the interplay of materials, colors and ornementation.
The variety of materials contributes to the polychromatic effects, with white limestone balustrades, terraces and balconies, grey limestone stringcourses and cornices, brick and white stone dormers and chimney stacks, glazed and enamelled scale-like roof tiles, zinc ridges and crests, glass and the metal and the ceramic wall tiles of the wintergarden.
Looking at the house from the inside.
The house is laid out in the most traditional way : the basement is reserved for service, the ground floor for reception, the main two upper floors for family apartments and the attic for servants' rooms. What is most striking is the unusually large studio, taking up the full height of the last two floors of the main body of the building. The ground floor is organized around the hall and the imposing main staircase, with the drawing-room directly in line with it, the kitchen and dining-room on the right, the billiard room and wintergarden on the left. As is usual, the drawing-room occupies the heart of the house, but surprisingly it opens onto an interior gallery with large bay windows. The gallery leads to the dinning-room on the one hand and the billiard room on the other.
Comfort and conviviality have been defined as priorities in this building. From the outset the villa was equipped with an elevator, central heating and a telephone ; every bedroom has its own bathroom. The construction opens out generously onto the outside, thanks to the vast windowed surfaces resulting from the use of metallic structures, also present in the roof.
The interior decoration appears as truly unified. The materials and forms echo one another from room to room: pressed cement tiled floors with rich decorative effects or inlaid floorboards according to function, marble plinths, panelling and doors with pediments in high relief, ceramic friezes, carved mantelpieces. The Art Nouveau vocabulary is clearly perceptible in the composition and colorings of the stained-glass windows and wall paintings.
Antoine Lumière called on artists from Lyons, including friends of his such as the sculptor Pierre Devaux who had already worked for him in Evian, the painter Eugène-Benoît Baudin, an expert in flower paintings and a keen photographer, and the woodcarver G. Cave. The major elements of the decorative project are displayed on the ground floor.
Evolutions
Conceived as a family residence, this luxurious villa was actually occupied for a few years only by Jeanne-Joséphine Lumière, 'Antoine's wife.
It became the official property of the Société Lumière in 1950 only, though it had been housing its registered office and other offices for several years. When the city of Lyons bought it along with the surrounding land, in 1975, the inside was found to be partitioned and the decorations concealed. This necessitatated an important restoration programme which gave back to the rooms their original volumes and, as far as possible, their decorations. In the second phase of the programme, the roofs , were entirely rebuilt and were restored to their original polychromy. The restored fronts, set off through the creation of a 7000 square meter park, are highlighted by lighting, awarded a (prize in 1993 by the Caisse des Monuments historiques et des Sites. ) The whole villa has been on the historic buildings register since May 20, 1986, and the shed where the first film was shot since December 2, 1994.
This shed is to be restored in 1996 ; a new theater is poing to be built where the Lumière factory used to stand. The Institut Lumière, an association which was created in 1982 to promote cinematographic art and culture and to show to advantage the Lumière works and heritage, and wich is only occupier of the villa today, will be offered a setting in keeping with its vocation as the "living museum of the cinema".
Virtual exhibition made from the booklet
"La Villa Lumière, rue du premier film, Lyon".
By M.R. Jazé-Charvolin; photographs by A. Franchella.
Lyon : Association pour le développement de l'Inventaire des Richesses artistiques de Rhône-Alpes, 1995.
20 p. : ill. en coul.; 23 cm (Itinéraires du Patrimoine n°93; ISBN 2-11-084717-4). Price : 20F.
Documentation consultable à : D.R.A.C. Rhône-Alpes, Centre de documentation du Patrimoine, le Grenier d'abondance.
6 quai Saint Vincent. 69001 Lyon Tél. : 72-00-43-29