There's still so much to discover in the Paris metro, one of the oldest in the world! Did you know that, at one time, a station manager on the platforms watched over your every move and the smooth running of the trains from a small office? Unfortunately, these tiny rooms disappeared around 1970. Nowadays, with the advent of surveillance cameras and centralized remote control, they're no longer of any use, but there are still a few rare remnants of this element in two Paris stations.
If you stop on metro line 12, at the Sèvres-Babylone station in the direction of Aubervilliers, you'll find a small station manager's office(see illustration), dating back to 1910! Entirely glazed, it was then equipped with a small switchboard and a few operating device controls, to warn drivers in the event of delays. The architecture of this one, with its small white and green tiles, blends in well with the background.
There's also one embedded in the middle of the platform at Liège station on line 13, also with a rounded shape. Like Sèvres-Babylone, this is a former station of the Nord-Sud line, a competitor of the Compagnie du Métropolitain Parisien, so there are a few differences from other, more modern stops, not least the historic lettering on the metro walls, which has never disappeared.
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