Page 29 - Livre Beau Rivage Palace

Fig. 5 Fig. 6

half the costs of dredging the harbour, while land to the west capital’s lack of any real holiday accommodation, the hotels in the
of the castle was sold to the future property developer Société town itself were more reliant on passing trade.
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immobilière d’Ouchy (sio), later to become public property. The waterfront development was the work of the architect
The fact that one of the members of the interim board was also a Louis Joël, a member of the town council and a future Liberal mayor
member of the committee appointed to examine the project may (1867-83). His design geographically separated commercial
well have influenced the decision. The agreement with the town activities and tourist facilities. To the west of the castle he created a
authorities was ratified by the municipal council a fortnight later. commercial dock. Close by, he intended in due course to develop
sio undertook to complete the planned improvements within an industrial estate in the area where there was already a gasworks,
three years and the city agreed to reimburse the costs in annual built in 1848, as well as a railway workshop and a boat builder. To
instalments payable over five years. The elected members were the east, he built a promenade around the harbour basin which
obviously pleased that the long-awaited work which, had it been was to be dredged. Marking the boundary between the two
publicly funded, could only have been done in stages, would soon different worlds was the castle, which Joël, unlike his some of his
be started and completed. contemporaries, believed it essential to preserve. ‘This extremely
Under the presidency of Édouard Dapples, a former Mayor picturesque tower is an adornment for the village, a point of reference, a
of Lausanne who would later be re-elected, sio was formally sort of lighthouse for lost sailors. Indeed, if the castle did not exist one
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established July 1857. The company’s aims were as follows: ‘To would have to invent it’ (fig. 4). Without ‘any real hope in the near
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build to the west of the present jetty of Ouchy harbour a quay extending future of seeing Ouchy become a little Eden’, he believed that the
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in front of the land belonging to the castle, the village and the gasometer construction scheme would have a beneficial effect on the village
as far as the Bellerive estate, thus creating along the lake an additional where ‘old buildings which barely harmonise with the overall effect will
space of several thousand perches [1 perch = approximately 5 metres], naturally have to be repaired, rebuilt and realigned, and new buildings
to transfer to this space and the land behind it all the warehouses and erected on the plots left vacant in accordance with a master plan’. 15
sheds which currently occupy the space to the east of the harbour and The work along the shore was carried out between 1857
which clutter up the approach to the harbour itself, the limits of which will and 1859. The Beau-Rivage Palace opened in March 1861, when
be redrawn and the basin deepened by a full-scale dredging operation. To planting the gardens along the lakeside promenade was well under
demolish the customs house and adjacent sheds and clear the site to create a way. That year, a lido was created to the east of the hotel. At the
public promenade which, thanks to its location and its length and breadth centre of the bathing area was a chalet constructed on piles and
will, if appropriately designed and adorned, unquestionably be the finest connected to the shore by a gangway. There were two enclosed
promenade along the entire shore of the lake.’ pools, one for men, the other for women (fig. 5).
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In addition to these public works, sio embarked on a
commercial enterprise in the form of a first-class hotel to be built CREATING THE TOURIST INFRASTRUCTURE
on the eastern side of the village. The second project was a direct In 1877, the hotel and its surroundings became much more
result of the first since the hotel ‘would only attract travellers if it were accessible with the advent of the Lausanne-Ouchy funicular, which
surrounded by pleasant places to walk and quays planted with trees’. was directly linked to the railway station. The station had grown
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While sio took advantage of the increasing popularity of the Lake considerably with the introduction of services to the Valais, Berne,
Geneva region among foreign travellers, the rapid development of and La Broye and finally to Paris. From the outset, the funicular
the railway – the station opened in May 1856 – and the Vaudois was designed to carry both passengers and goods arriving at Ouchy

Fig. 4 Mme Roland-Krieg, Public bathing pools, otherwise known as the Rochat Pools. The landing stage in front of the Hôtel Beau-Rivage. Photograph, 1866.
The village of Ouchy. Present state of the village and proposed improvements. Pencil drawing, undated, signed on the back.
Architect Louis Joël’s 1857 development plan for the Société Immobilière d'Ouchy.

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