La gare Lisch

The Lisch railway station was inaugurated on March 31, 1878, as the terminus station for the route running from Champ-de-Mars to the Grenelle-Ceinture station, and to the 1878 Universal Exhibition.

At the dawn of the 20th century, plans to build a new terminus at Les Invalides jeopardised the future of the passenger terminal.

The architecture of the passenger terminal, designed by Juste Lisch (1828-1910), is representative of the period's architectural trend: only the base is stone; the framework is entirely made of metal, and the infills are glazed brick, complemented with vividly coloured ceramic tiles.

It was demolished and reconstructed piece by piece in 1897 at the end of the Impasse des Carbonnets, on the boundary between Asnières-sur-Seine and Bois-Colombes, on property owned by the Compagnie de l'Ouest, to replace the old workshops devastated by the storm of 18 June 1897.

The building was then used as workshops and a warehouse next to the track. However, owing to the electrification of the railways between 1924 and 1936, the station was given new life and became the end of the Saint-Lazare/Bois-Colombes line, which was now electric.

Following the construction of what is now the Bois-Colombes train station and the burial of the lines, the Lisch station was converted into a warehouse in 1937. The structure, which is still owned by SNCF Réseau and was scheduled for demolition in 1983, was added to the Supplementary Inventory of Historic Monuments on August 13, 1985.

A new look

In 2018, Asnières Town Hall and the SNCF secured the Lisch station's submission in the second edition of the prestigious "Inventons la métropole" (Inventing the greater Paris metropolis) competition, held by the Greater Paris Metropolis, with the goal of saving this monument.

This abandoned treasure of Asnières history is soon to be completely renovated. Standing on its metal beams and clad in luminous skylights, the brick lady will be decked out in her ceramic jewels, just as she was before.

The building could eventually become a research and innovation hub, with coworking spaces.