Grands Magasins Dufayel

Jacques François Crespin founded the Palais de la Nouveauté in 1856, initially as a furniture store at 11-15, boulevard Ornano, a recently opened thoroughfare that would be renamed boulevard Barbès in 1882. The store was located in a working-class area of Paris, unlike most rival department stores such as Le Bon Marché, Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville, La Samaritaine, Printemps, or Galeries Lafayette. That allowed many of more modest means access to a similar shopping experience as middle-class customers, and encouraged workers to view shopping as a social activity. In 1888, Crespin died and his close associate Georges Dufayel took over the business, of which he secured sole ownership two years later, allowing for the change of name in 1890. Dufayel then developed the retail operation aggressively, leveraging the prestige of Parisian culture with the addition of a 3,000-seat hall and a schedule of free lectures, science demonstrations, and performances to draw in customers, complemented from 1896 with film projections, among the earliest in Paris. The Dufayel customer base reached 2.4 million in 1900, and 3.5 million in 1904. Beyond consumer credit, Dufayel developed other financial services including insurance, and was a pioneer in large-scale advertising on the walls of Paris. Employees at the Grands Magasins Dufayel worked long hours, and Dufayel introduced fines on employees coming late. In December 1905, staff went on strike for a few days to protest the actions of two abusive managers. By 1912, the Dufayel headcount had reached 15,000. Georges Dufayel died without issue in 1916. His will triggered the transformation of his firm from sole proprietorship to a joint-stock company whose shareholders where the store's employees. The franchise declined after World War I, however, and eventually the Grands Magasins Dufayel went bankrupt in 1925. Following the bankruptcy a department store remained in operation until at least 1935 on the boulevard Barbès side of the compound, branded Palais de la Nouveauté. ==Consumer credit==

Based on his experience of running a photography store, Crespin designed a pioneering credit system in which customers could earn vouchers worth five times the amount they paid in cash, and use these vouchers to make further purchases that they would reimburse later on set terms. According to an advertisement from 1879, the "Crespin vouchers" were accepted in three hundred fixed-price stores across France. After taking over in the late 1880s, Dufayel developed this system further, taking a 18 percent commission on all sales. By the early 1900s, 800 investigators (so-called abonneurs with reference to the customers' subscription or abonnement to the credit service) were employed by Dufayel to assess the customers' solvency. Some of their information came from Parisian concierges, incentivized to provide insight by preferential conditions at the store. In 1913, La Semeuse de Paris became a direct competitor to Dufayel's consumer credit operations by serving customers of La Samaritaine. Dufayel retorted by starting selling apparel to compete directly with La Samaritaine. ==Flagship building and decoration==

(1895) above the main entrance on rue de Clignancourt The main building grew in stages within the large city block between rue de Clignancourt, rue Christiani, boulevard Barbès, and rue de la Nation (known since 1971 as rue de Sofia). In 1874, Crespin commissioned the first purpose-built expansion designed by architect , then assisted by his son Stephan. The program entailed lavish artistic sponsorship with 200 statues, 180 paintings, a giant stained steel window, The entrance porch was overlooked by a monumental relief by Dalou and flanked by two large allegorical bronze groups by Falguière, respectively representing Advertising () and Credit, the two areas in which Dufayel had most distinctive leadership. Rives then designed two towering rotundas on boulevard Barbès, at the respective corners with rue de la Nation and rue Christiani. The expansion was completed in 1913, Falguière's bronze statues of Advertising and Credit were acquired by Daisaku Ikeda, founder of Soka Gakkai International, and transported to Japan in 1969. They were both installed on the campus of Sōka University in Hachiōji near Tokyo at its inauguration in 1971. In 2019, BNCI's successor BNP Paribas sold the building for redevelopment. The (by then) 12,500-square-meter property was renovated by on a design by Paris-based firm Yrieix Martineau Architecture. In February 2026, it was announced that most of the complex would host an AI-themed coworking facility branded Cortex House. ==Gallery==

File:Dufayel.jpg|From Montmartre, 1904 File:A building as seen from Montmartre, Paris 8 March 2015.jpg|Similar perspective in 2015 File:Staircase in the Salle du Théâtre, Grands Magasins Dufayel, Paris.jpg|Grand staircase leading to the theater hall, 1905 File:Paris grandsmagasinsdufayel salondelecture.jpg|Reading hall File:Paris grandsmagasinsdufayel galeriedelatapisserie.jpg|Furniture hall File:Paris grandsmagasinsdufayel galeriedesmeublesdestyle.jpg|High-end furniture gallery File:Paris grandsmagasinsdufayel salondessaisons.jpg|Salon des saisons File:Paris - shop now a hospital LCCN2014697734.jpg|Rotunda section, 1914 File:Paris 75018 rue de Clignancourt no 26 Magasins Dufayel 20181130.jpg|Monumental entrance on rue de Clignancourt, in 2018 before renovation ==See also==