Bolivar Metro Station

Bolivar is a station on 7bis of the Paris Métro in the 19th arrondissement, on the Avenue Simon Bolivar.

History

The station was opened on 18 July 1911, six months the opening of a branch of line 7 from Louis Blanc to Pré Saint-Gervais on 18 January 1911. On 3 December 1967 this branch was separated from line 7, becoming line 7bis. The Avenue Simon Bolivar is named after Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), "liberator" of several South American countries.

During the World War I, the station, like other deep metro stations was converted into an air raid shelter. During a violent bomb attack on 11 March 1918, the local population rushed to the shelter in panic and tried to enter it down the stairs of an exit that led to gates that only opened to the outside. The first rows of the crowd were crushed or suffocated by those behind them, and were eventually trampled when the doors finally broke under pressure. Seventy-six people died in this incident. In response all gates on the metro are now designed to open inward as well as outward.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Bolivar (Paris Métro)" and modified on 23 July 2019 under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.