PLACE ET COLONNE VENDÔME
The Rue and Marché St-Honoré are on the site of the ancient convent and chapel of the Jacobins, suppressed at the Revolution, and where the famous club des Jacobins was established. The market dates from 1810. Rue Gomboust dates from the thirteenth century, when it was Rue de la Corderie St-Honoré. Rue de Ste-Hyacinthe dates from 1650. Rue de la Sourdière from the seventeenth century shows us many old-time walls and vestiges and much interesting old ironwork.
On the wall of the church St-Roch we still see the inscription “Rue Neuve-St-Roch,” the ancient name of the street at its western end. The street has existed from the close of the fifteenth century bearing different names in the different parts of its course. The part nearest the Tuileries was known in the eighteenth century as Rue du Dauphin, in Revolution days as Rue de la Convention. Many of its houses are ancient and of curious aspect.
In Rue d’Argenteuil, leading out of Rue St-Roch, once a country road, stood until recent years the house where Corneille died.
Rue des Pyramides dates only from 1806, but No. 2 of the street is noted as the meeting-place, in the rooms of a friend, of Béranger, Alexandre Dumas, père, Victor Hugo and other famous writers of the day. In the fourth story of a house in the corner of the Place dwelt Émile Augier.
From the Place du Théâtre-Français where the fountain has played since the middle of the nineteenth century, the Avenue de l’Opéra opened out about 1855 as Avenue Napoléon, cut through a conglomeration of ancient streets and dwellings. Leading out of the Avenue there still remains in this arrondissement Rue Molière, known in the seventeenth century as Rue du Bâton-Royal, then as Rue Traversière, and always intimately associated with actors and men of letters. Rue Ste-Anne was known in its early days as Rue du Sang and Rue de la Basse Voirie, then an unsavoury alley-like thoroughfare. Its present name, after Anne d’Autriche, was given in 1633. Then for a time it was known as Rue Helvetius, in memory of a man of letters born there in 1715. Nearly all its houses are ancient and were the habitation in past days of noted persons, artists and others. Nos. 43 and 47 were the property of the composer Lulli. The street runs on into arrondissement II, where at No. 49, hôtel Thévenin, we see an old statue of John the Baptist holding the Paschal Lamb. At No. 46 Bossuet lived and died. No. 63 was part of the New Catholic’s convent. Nos. 64, 66, 68, mansions owned by Louvois.
Rue Thérèse (Marie-Thérèse of Austria) was in 1880 joined on to Rue du Hazard, a short street so called from a famous gambling-house; No. 6 has interesting old-time vestiges. At No. 23 we see two inscriptions honouring the memory of Abbé de l’Epée, inventor of the deaf and dumb alphabet, who died at a house, no longer there, in Rue des Moulins. Rue Villedo records the name of a famous master-mason of olden time. Rue Ventadour existed in its older part in 1640. Rue de Richelieu, starting from the Place du Théâtre-Français, goes on to arrondissement II in the vicinity of the Bourse. It dates from the time when the Cardinal was building his palace. Most of its constructions show interesting architectural features, vestiges of past days, many have historic associations. Some of the original houses were rebuilt in the eighteenth century, some have quite recently been razed and replaced by modern erections. Much of the fine woodwork once at No. 21 was bought and carried away by the Marquis de Breteuil; the rest by Americans. In a house where No. 40 now stands Molière died in 1763. No. 50, hôtel de Strasbourg, was rebuilt in 1738 by the mother of Madame de Pompadour. In 1780 the musician Grétry lived in the fourth story of No. 52.
Rue du Louvre is a modern street where ancient streets once ran, demolished to make way for it. At No. 13 we find traces of a tower of the city wall of Philippe-Auguste, as also at No. 7 of the adjacent Rue Coquillère, a thirteenth-century street with, at No. 31, vestiges of an ancient Carmelite convent. At No. 15 we find ourselves before an arched entrance and spacious courtyard surrounded by imposing buildings and in its centre an immense fountain. This structure is a modern re-erection of the ancient Cour des Fermes; the institution of the “Fermiers Généraux” was suppressed in 1783 and definitely abolished by law in the first year of the Revolution—1789. The members, however, continued to meet; many were arrested and shut up as prisoners in their own old mansion on this spot, used thenceforth, until the Revolution was over, as a State prison.