Carriage Doors around Paris

While walking through the streets of Paris, the carriage doors on some buildings have grabbed my attention. These doors provide access to the central courtyards of buildings or building clusters and are wide enough to accommodate horse-drawn carriages, which was their original purpose. An interesting design feature seen on some carriage doors are the small metal or stone thingys on the bottom corners that kind of look like mini-bollards or guard rails. They’re called guard stones or chasse-roues (wheel chasers) and their purpose was to protect the building’s walls from being damaged by the wheels of carriages. If a carriage got its wheels stuck on a guard stone, then it was either too off-center or too large to pass through the passage without banging against the walls.

Like most things in Paris, the form of doors was just as important of a design consideration as their function. It’s no accident that I stopped and took notice of these doors, they’re designed to be noticed. Even if they’re not necessarily saying: “Welcome in,” they certainly are saying: “Look at me.” The material and level of intricacy of the door’s material would’ve been a way for the owner/resident of the building to flaunt their wealth and status. On official buildings, the design of the door is used as an opportunity to engage is some self-describing architecture. For example, one of the doors pictured below has the Paris City Crest on it which makes sense since that building is on the Île de la Cité and (probably. I couldn’t confirm the building’s use) houses government offices. Lions are a popular design element that I’ve seen in doors, likely due to the generals symbolism behind lions being popular and it lets passers-by know just how regal and important you are (or want to be).

The door of a buildings is a design element that nearly everyone who walks by will see from street level. Even if they can’t see the whole building, everyone who walks by is likely to see its door and everyone who enters is guaranteed to see its door. It’s no wonder then, that building designers and/or owners would use the door to project something about themselves and their building.