I love a good revival story and even more so when there are archival photos to illustrate the evolution.
In March, I visited the renovated Hilton Paris Opéra, a soaring hotel adjacent to the Saint Lazare train station. Its bandages had just been removed after an 18 month transformation (for the cool price tag of $50 million) and I was there to review the space for Afar Magazine. Formerly the Concorde, the 125 year old hotel was the first to have electricity in Paris and had a strong legacy as a business and social hub.
What left me slack-jawed was less the fact that the hotel had been completely redesigned, updated to beautiful effect, but rather that in an instant, my sole memory of sitting in the Terminus Café some seven years ago, still the name of the street-side restaurant seen in the photo below, came flooding back with vivid detail. I was there to meet a friend for a quick drink before she had to head home to the suburbs, hopping onto the RER A which she picked up right at the train station mere feet away. I remember thinking to myself, what a strange place to have an apéro! The…
