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Apparently Chevrolet left Switzerland for France with his family when he was only 8 years old. He left for Canada in his early 20s and founded the Chevrolet Motor Co in 1911 at age 33. He sold his share in Chevrolet after only 4 years then sold parts to Ford! He was probably better known as a race car driver (for Fiat). His story reminds me of Carroll Shelby another visionary in the automobile industry but not an especially good businessman.
Interestingly there is some controversy over the origin of the Chevrolet logo. Some say as Peterli reports that it is patterned after the Swiss cross. But others say it was copied from a wallpaper pattern in a Paris hotel where Louis had stayed, a much more mundane explanation.
Hello Mark,
<< Interestingly there is some controversy over the origin of the Chevrolet logo. Some say as Peterli reports that it is patterned after the Swiss cross. But others say it was copied from a wallpaper pattern in a Paris hotel where Louis had stayed, a much more mundane explanation. >>
Very interesting, and I certainly don’t want to say that either of these explanations (or perhaps another as well) is the real story. It’s just that I learned the stylized Swiss cross story, and knowing that Chevrolet was born in Switzerland, just accepted that this was correct.In any case, it makes a good story.
Hello Slowpoke,
<< Mr. Chevrolet went where bigger is better. Neuchatel may have been vibrant, but it was not big.He was a visionary. I’m guessing that he realized that Switzerland was too small for his dreams. >>
I’ve been away for quite a few hours so am trying to work through the new posts to this thread, starting with the most recent. I don’t know if I’ll get all the way through, but here goes: Louis Chevrolet’s family left for France when he was about 8 years old. He was fascinated by automobiles, and during the last decade of the 1800s France was the leading country in the world for automotive innovation (ahead of both Germany and the USA). As Mark pointed out, he was finally lured to North America, first to Montréal, Canada, probably because he was a francophone, and then moving south to New York City in the USA, a much larger economy. Here is an informative Wikipedia article about him: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Chevrolet
Le Corbusier, whose given name was Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, was a native of La Chaux-de-Fonds, as 1960man has pointed out. He was born in October of 1887, and I mention this date because another famous son of La Chaux-de-Fonds was born just over a month earlier in that same year. This man’s given name is Frédéric-Louis Sauser, but he is best known today as Blaise Cendrars. Here is a Wikipedia copy/paste about one of his works: << La prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France (Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France) is a collaborative artists’ book by Blaise Cendrars and Sonia Delaunay-Terk. The book features a poem by Cendrars about a journey through Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express in 1905, during the first Russian Revolution, interlaced with an almost-abstract pochoir print by Delaunay-Terk. The work, published in 1913, is considered a milestone in the evolution of artist’s books as well as modernist poetry and abstract art.
The publisher of a 2008 reprint of the book has called it “one of the most beautiful books ever created”. Cendrars himself referred to the work as ‘a sad poem printed on sunlight’.>>
For those who read French, here is a link to the poem:electrodes-h-sinclair-502.com/2009/04/23/blaise-cendrars-prose-transsiberien-jetais-en-mon-adolescence/
I will also attach an image of Delaunay-Terk’s artwork for Cendrars’ poem.
Two famous people originally from La Chaux-de-Fonds who both were attracted to many places in the world and led fascinating lives, and both who ultimately died in France. Here are the English Wikipedia links for both of them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Cendrars
Attachments:
Hi Peterli –
The le Corbusier Museum in Zürich is spectacular, and well worth the trip from la Suisse Romande.
And, of course there is the small chapel at Ronchamps:
http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ronchamps+chapel+images
I used to enjoy his building at Harvard University, when I was at school in Cambridge.
Has Neuchatel erected any form of memorial to their very own genius?
Slowpoke
Hallo Slowpoke,
I am not aware of any statues of Le Corbusier in Switzerland. In fact the only one I am aware of is in Moscow. See attached. I am aware that there is sort of a monument to him in Chandigarth (India). The neat thing about architecture is that your accomplishments are monuments in a sense, like the chapel at Ronchamp.
However, since 2014 there has been a bust of Louis Chevrolet in a playground in La Chaux-de-Fonds. See atttached. If you can see a likeness to any human there, you are better than me. It kind of reminds me of one of those Terminator movies we used to see.
Did he not leave any trace of a “product” in Neuchatel? Or, to phrase it differently,
Where must one travel to…nearest accessible from Neuchatel…to see his works?
Slowpoke
Sure, here is a list of his works, and you can see that several are right in La Chaux-de-Fonds en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Le_Corbusier_buildings
Let’s try that again. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Le_Corbusier_buildings I just noticed that the link wasn’t working as it should. I guess I forgot to put a space between the name of the city and the link.
While I am here, I’ll add a link to Corbusier’s Villat Fallet, which he designed when he was still a teenager: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Fallet
Hi Peterli,
The links are now both working!! 🙂
Best,
Steph
Hi,
You have a power that I do not have. Thanks.
Thanks.
Now I am able to find the proper name of the spectacular building in Zürich…the Heidi Weber Museum. Maybe it was called the “House” before the government took it over. It was repaired and refinished recently, and I think it has been open again for only a year or two, so you may not have been to see it yet.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavillon_Le_Corbusier
It has an advantage over the Carpenter Center at Harvard…there is enough space around it to appreciate it. The setting in Zürich is very nice. And, not all that far from another spectacle…Tingueley’s Heureka.
http://www.zuerich.com/en/visit/attractions/heureka-jean-tinguely
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHxRuwEbK_o
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/heureka-useless-machine
In Cambridge, the other buildings are too close to it, so you cannot step back and get a really good look. Perhaps that is why you get to look at the insides from the ramp that goes through the building.
http://www.archdaily.com/119384/ad-classics-carpenter-center-for-the-visual-arts-le-corbusier
Slowpoke
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