Palais Brongniart

The Brongniart palace, formally called the Stock Exchange Palace, is a building covered with Corinthian architecture, whichaccommodated the Paris stock exchange. It is locatedin the Vivienne quarters, in the2^nd district of Paris.
It was conceived by the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart (1739-1813).
This site is served by the subway station.

History of the site
With the French revolution, it was decided to move the place which lodged the Paris stock exchange in the 18th century, which had just lived thegreat stock exchange speculations under LouisXVI.
The “commission of the Five” gave orders to general Jacques de Menou de Boussay to occupy the convent of the Saint-Thomas Girls, located in the street of the Saint-Thomas Girls,which extended then from Saint-Augustin street to the street of our Lady of Victories, for here meets a “section always denouncing at thenational assembly, in the newspapers, in the cyber cafes and in the public places”, as “a slogan of moderation and counter-revolutionaries”.

The convent was destroyed and began construction again in 1807 from the ruins of the Brongniart palace. While waiting for the end of the construction, the Stock Exchange was moved from the Virginia gallery to a hangar located not far from the ex-convent, in the enclosure of the Saint-Thomas Girls,that served for the decoration of the Opera the maker, close by. 

Construction
In 1807, Napoleon the 1^st entrusted the constructionof a building to the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart (1739-1813). He wished to set up an emblem of the power and achievement to which France attained. Indeed, the triumphs of the emperor on the battlefields developped a true European trade. He ordered in 1808 the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart a building bearing the effigy of trade: the Paris stock exchange. 

The emperor thus hoped to find an order in the economy of the country by centralizing the whole of the economic exchanges.
However, A.T.Brongniart did not have the possibility of seeing this work completed; he died prematurely on June 6th, 1813.
Fountain notes on June 8th, 1813 in his newspaper, with the title ‘’the death of the architect of the Stock Exchange’’:
“Mr. Brongniart an architect charged with the building of the stock market edifice has just passed away. He has left an unfinished and one of the most beautiful and most important of the present reign. The general provision of the plan which one carries out is good, but the details were not sufficiently studied. One has already made some changes in the interior distributions and the party to be taken for the decoration and the cover of the big room is not definitively adopted. Several architects have presented themselves to replace Mr.Brongniart but the minister up till now did not approve their services. He made an offer to my friend Mr Percier who did not ask anything to name it. This preference is due to Mr. Bruyère, but Mr Percier refused.”

Among the candidates to take over the resumption of the project, we find François-Joseph Bélanger and Louis-Pierre Baltard.
It was finally Éloi Labarre (1764-1833) who took the succession of Brongniart and completed  the building in November 1825.
It was declared as a historic monument by a decree on October 27th 1987.

Usage
The construction of the Brongniart palace was a big step in the history of the stock exchange. During its unveiling, it carried on the pediment “Stock Exchange and commercial court”. The latter holds audience. The building lodges also the commercial stock exchange, which finally moved into its buildings only in 1885.
 

On December 17th, 1856, an imperial decree fixed an import duty, perceived via the revolving door placed at an angle within the edifice. One of the important characters of the place, Rotschild, fulminates to have to pay twenty centimes every day to enter the palace. Fifty years after its construction, the Paris stock exchange became the second in the world after that of London and it possessed the trends of going globally. The peristyle which surrounds the building makes it possible to accommodate the outside brokers, who compete with the stockbrokers by negotiating the foreign securities like the young British railway companies at the time of Railway boom, then the gold mines of South Africa.

The market prices of the actions, the cash were managed by data processing since 1987, in thebuildings of the banks, out of Brongniart palace.The latter has equally lodged for twelve years or more agreements on the futures market of based on the index CAC 40, Matif, until November 6th 1998.
 

The Brongniart palace is presently a place for conferences, congresses, seminars, receptions, lunches, dinners, cocktails, official receptions, living rooms, exhibitions. Managed beforeby Euronext, it is conceded today to GL Events for a thirty years duration. The former mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, asked his former assistant Éric Ferrand to lead the mission of redefining and predicting of what will become this site after 2009.
 

Following an agreement between GL Events and the Silicon Path associates, the 2nd floor of the Brongniart palace accommodated between January 7th, 2011 and the month of November 2013, promotions of 12 startups for 6 months in the Camping program, the first accelerator of startups in France. Since October 2014, with the opening of a new incubator and a coworking space The Planetic Lab, the startups are entitled as having right in the Brongniart palace again.
 

In the same way, following an agreement between GL Events and the European School of Internet trading, the Brongniart palace accommodates since the autumn of 2011 the first students of this school newly created.

Decorations
The painter Alexandre Denis Abel de Pujol (1785-1861), carried out the decorations of the ceiling, like Charles Meynier (1768-1832), paintings of greyness representing the various towns of France, supplemented by planks of garlands where the various stock exchanges of Europe are represented. Éloi Labarre (1764-1833) the architect decorated the meeting room of the stockbrokers. The sculptor Louis-Denis Caillouette (1790-168), carried out the statues of Justice and Europe, Asia low-reliefs above doors, as well as Jean-Baptiste Joseph De Bay (1779-1863). The colorless arched paintings by Auguste Vinchon (1789-1855), and Merry-Joseph Blondel (1781-1853).
 

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_Brongniart source