THIS wonderful avenue stretching through the whole length of the arrondissement reached in olden days only to the rural district of Chaillot, and was known as the Grande Allée-du-Roule, later as Avenue des Tuileries. Colbert, Louis XIV’s great minister, first made it a tree-planted avenue. The gardens bordering it on either side between Place de la Concorde and Avenue d’Antin, were laid out by Le Nôtre, 1670, as Crown land. Cafés, restaurants, toy-stalls, etc., were set up there from the first. The Palais de Glace is on the site of a Panorama which existed till its destruction by fire in 1855. The far-famed Café des Ambassadeurs, set up in the eighteenth century, was rebuilt in 1841. The no less famous cirque de l’Impératrice was razed in 1900.
The Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées was first laid out in 1670, but the houses we see there now are all modern. Avenue d’Antin stretching on either side of it, old only in the part leading from Cours-la-Reine, was planted in 1723 by the duc d’Orléans. Marguerite Gauthier (la Dame aux Camélias) lived at No. 9. At No. 3 Avenue Matignon Heine died in his room on the fifth story (1856). Avenue Montaigne was known in 1731 as Allée des Veuves. It remained an alley—Allée Montaigne—till 1852. The thatched dwelling of Mme Tallien stood at its starting-point, near the Seine. There her divorced and destitute husband was forced to accept a shelter at the hands of his ex-wife, become princesse de Chimay; there the Revolutionist died in 1820. We see only modern houses along the Avenue of to-day. Rue Matignon was opened across the ancient Jardin d’hiver where fine tropical plants erewhile had flourished. No. 12 was the Vénerie Impériale.
Avenue des Champs-Élysées is bordered on both sides by modern mansions. No. 25, hôtel de la Païve, of late years the Traveller’s Club, during the war an ambulance, represents the style of the Second Empire. Avenue Gabriel with its grand mansions was formed in 1818 on the Marais-des-Gourdes—marshy land. The Rue Marbeuf was in the eighteenth century Ruelle des Marais, then Rue des Gourdes. Its present name recalls the Louis XV Folie Marbœuf once there. Few and far between are the ancient vestiges to be found among the modern structures we see on every side around us here. Rue Chaillot, in bygone days the chief street of the village of Chaillot, was taken within the Paris bounds in 1860. It was a favourite street for residence in the nineteenth century. Rue Bassano, entirely modern now, existed in part as Ruelle des Jardins in the early years of the eighteenth century. Rue Galilée was Chemin des Bouchers in 1790, then Rue du Banquet.
So we come to la Place de l’Étoile, the high ground known in long-gone times as “la Montagne du Roule.” Till far into the eighteenth century it was without the city bounds and beyond the Avenue des Champs-Élysées which ended at Rue de Chaillot, a tree-studded, unlevelled, grass-grown octagonal stretch of land. Then it was made round and even, and became a favourite and fashionable promenade, known as l’Étoile de Chaillot, or the Rond-Point de Neuilly. The site had long been marked out for the erection of an important monument when Napoléon decreed the construction there of the Arc de Triomphe. The first stone of the arch was laid by Chalgrin in 1806, the Emperor and his new wife, on their wedding-day passed beneath a temporary Arc de Triomphe made of cloth, as the stone structure was not yet finished. Of the statuary which decorate the arch, the most noted group is the Départ, by Rude. The frieze shows the going forth to battle and the return of Napoléon’s armies, with the names of his generals engraved beneath.[F]
CHAPTER XXXII
FAUBOURG ST-HONORÉ
TURNING down Avenue Wagram, one of the twelve broad avenues, all modern, branching from the Place de l’Étoile, we come to the Faubourg St-Honoré, originally Chaussée du Roule. The village of Le Roule was famed in the thirteenth century for its goose-market. The district became a faubourg in 1722 and in 1787 was taken within the city bounds. It has always been a favourite quarter among men of intellectual activity desiring to live beyond the turbulence of the centre of Paris. Here and there we come upon vestiges of bygone days. No. 222 is an old Dominican convent disaffected in 1906. A foundry once stood at the corner of the Rue Balzac, where public statues of kings and other royalties of old were in turn cast or melted down. The house where Balzac died once stood close there too, up against an ancient chapel—all long swept away. The walled garden remains—bordering the street to which the name of the great novelist has been given—a slab put up where we see, just above the wall, the top of a pillared summer-house, which Balzac is said to have built. The hospital Beaujon dates from 1784 but has no architectural or historical interest. The few ancient houses we see at intervals in this upper part of the faubourg are remains of the village du Roule. Several of more interesting aspect were razed a few years ago. The military hospital was once the site of royal stables. Mme de Genlis died at No. 170.
The church St-Philippe du Roule was built by Chalgrin in 1774 on the site of the seventeenth-century hôtel du Bas-Roule. No. 107 was the habitation of the King’s Pages under Louis XV. On the site of No. 81 comte de Fersan had his stables in the time of Louis XVI. The Home Office (Ministère de l’Intérieur) on Place Beauvau dates from the eighteenth century and has been a private mansion, a municipal hôtel, a hotel in the English sense of the word.
The Palais de l’Élysée, built in 1718, was bought in 1753 by Mme de Pompadour. La Pompadour died at Versailles, but by her express wish her body was taken to Paris and laid in this her Paris home before the funeral. She bequeathed the hôtel to the comte de Province, but Louis XV used it for State purposes. Then, become again a private residence, it was inhabited by the duchesse de Bourbon, mother of the due d’Enghien. She let it later to the tenant who made of it an Élysée, a pleasure-house, laid out a parc anglais, gave sumptuous fêtes champêtres. Sequestered at the Revolution, the mansion was sold subsequently to Murat and Caroline Buonaparte, then became an imperial possession as l’Élysée-Napoléon. Napoléon gave it to Joséphine at her divorce but she preferred Malmaison. There the Emperor signed his second abdication and there, in 1815, the Duke of Wellington and the Emperor of Russia made their abode. The next occupants were the duc and duchesse de Berry. The duchesse left it after her husband’s death in 1820. It became l’Hôtellierie des Princes. In 1850 Napoléon as Prince-President made a brief abode there before the coup d’état. The façade dates from his reign as Napoléon III when, to cut it off from surrounding buildings, he made the Rue de l’Élysée through its gardens. The Garde Nationale took possession of it in 1871. It was saved from destruction under the Commune by its conservateur, who placed counterfeited scellés. No. 41, hôtel Pontalba, built by Visconti on the site of an older hôtel, now owned by one of the Rothschilds, has fine ancient woodwork, once at hôtel St-Bernard, Rue du Bac. No. 39, the British Embassy, was built in 1720 for the duc de Charost; given in 1803 to Pauline Buonaparte, princesse Borghese, given over to the English in 1815. British Embassy since 1825. Nos. 35, 33, 31, 29, 27 are all eighteenth-century hôtels. At No. 30 the Cité de Retiro was in past days the great Cour des Coches, inhabited by the “Fermier des carrosses de la Cour.” Nos. 24, 16 are ancient. No. 14 was the Mairie till 1830.
The streets opening out of the Faubourg date mostly from the eighteenth century and show here and there traces of a past age, but the greater number of the houses standing along their course to-day are of modern construction. Rue d’Aguesseau was cut in 1723 across the property of the Chancellor whose name it records. The Embassy church there is on the site of the ancient hôtel d’Armaille. No. 18 was at one time the Mairie of the 1st arrondissement. Rue Montalivet, where at No. 6 we see the friendly front of the British Consulate, was for some years Rue du Marché-d’Aguesseau. Rue des Saussaies was in the seventeenth century a willow-tree bordered road. Place des Saussaies is modern on the site of demolished eighteenth-century hôtels. In Rue Cambacérés we see ancient hôtels at Nos. 14, 8, 3.
The first numbers in Rue Miromesnil are old and have interesting decorations, Châteaubriand lived at No. 31 in 1804. Rue de Panthièvre was Rue des Marais in the seventeenth century, then Chemin Vert. Its houses were the habitation of many noted persons through the two centuries following. Franklin is said to have lived at No. 26, also Lucien Buonaparte. The barracks dates from 1780, one of those built for the Gardes Françaises, who had previously been billeted in private houses. Fersen lived in Rue Matignon; Gambetta at No. 12, Rue Montaigne (1874-78). The Colisée, which gave its name to the street previously known as Chaussée des Gourdes, was an immense hall used for festive gatherings from 1770 to 1780, when it was demolished. On part of the site it occupied, Rue Penthieu was opened at the close of the eighteenth century and Rue de la Bôëtie into which we now turn. That fair street was known in the different parts of its course by no less than eleven different names before its present one, given in 1879. Several eighteenth-century hôtels still stand here; others on the odd number side were razed in recent years to widen the thoroughfare. No. 111 was inhabited for a time at the end of the eighteenth century by the then duc de Richelieu. When Napoléon was in power, an Italian minister lived there and gave splendid fêtes, at which the Emperor was a frequent guest. In recent days its owner was the duc de Massa, grandson of Napoléon’s famous minister of Justice. Carnot lived for a time at No. 122. Eugène Sue at No. 55. Comtesse de la Valette at No. 44, a hôtel known for its extensive grounds.