ABSTRACT
One of the characteristics of department stores from an artistic point of view is unadorned triteness. The large companies that operate these stores generally spend as little as possible on aesthetic features, neglecting any ornamentation or reducing it to insignificant motifs. The history of the Magasins Reunis is the classic story of the social rise of a small ‘retailer’ and of the expansion of the group of businesses that he formed. In 1867, Antoine Corbin, a former commercial traveller, opened his first business establishment in Nancy. Commercial development was favoured by the arrival of large numbers of inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine who refused to accept the German annexation after 1870. There is no doubt that Antoine Corbin influenced this plan for a department store. The building designed by Eugene Corbin showed elegant craftsmanship and a simple arrangement on three storeys of different sizes: central entrance flanked on each side by four bays with two extending corner wings forming canted walls.
