VIEUX MONTMARTRE
(Cabaret du Lapin-Agile)
Returning to the vicinity of St-Pierre and the Sacré-Cœur, we find numerous short streets, generally narrow and tortuous, which retain their old-world aspect. Rue St-Eleuthère is one of the most ancient. Rue St-Rustique formerly Rue des Dames, Rue Ravignan once Rue du Vieux-Chemin, Rue Cortot, Rue Norvins, Rue des Saules, are all seventeenth-century thoroughfares. Rue Norvins was Rue des Moulins in bygone days. No. 23 was a far-famed folie, then, in 1820, the celebrated Dr. Blanche founded there his first asylum for the insane, many of whom he cured. At No. 9 we come to an old house and alley, the impasse Trainée, a name recalling the days when Montmartre was, in wintry weather, a wolf-haunted district: a trainée is a wolf-trap. The inn at No. 6 was in the past a resort of singers in search of an engagement: the impecunious could bring food to eat there. On the Place du Tertre two trees of liberty were planted in 1848, felled in 1871. No. 3 is the site of the first Mairie of Montmartre. Passing along Rue du Calvaire we come to the rustic Place du Calvaire, erewhile Place Ste-Marie.
A very chief interest at Montmartre is the view. It is best obtained from the Belvedere built by baron de Vaux at No. 39 Rue Gabrielle, and from the Moulin de la Galette reached through Rue des Trois-Frères. Rue de la Mire was in olden days Petite Rue des Moulins. The steps we see are said to have been put there for the passage of cattle.
The cellars of the house at No. 7, Rue la Vieuville are vestiges of the ancient abbey. Place des Abbesses was erewhile Rue de l’Abbaye. On the ancient place we find the most modern and most modern-style church in Paris, St-Jean l’Evangeliste, built of concrete. The Passage des Abbesses leads by an old flight of steps to Rue des Trois-Frères, a modern street. Rue Lepic, for some years after its formation Rue de l’Empereur (Napoléon III), was renamed in memory of the General who defended the district in 1814. Numerous old streets are connected with it. Avenue des Tilleuls recalls the days when lime-trees flourished there, the lime-trees memorized in Alphonse Karr’s novel Sous les Tilleuls. In the Square where it ends is an eighteenth-century house where François Coppée dwelt as a boy. The severely wall-enclosed hôtel at No. 72 was the home of the artist Ziem. Close here is the entrance to the Moulin de la Galette. At the top of the house No. 100 there is an astronomical observatory set up under Napoléon III. The Rue Girardon, a rural pathway in the seventeenth century, was known later as Rue des Brouillards, the point no doubt from which the city lying below was to be seen fog-enveloped, as is not unfrequently the case. The old house No. 13 goes by the name le Château des Brouillards. In the impasse at No. 5 stood in ancient days the Fontaine St-Denis. Its waters were of great repute, assuring, it was said, in women who drank them, the virtue of conjugal fidelity. And here through the short street Rue des Deux-Frères we reach the historic Moulin de la Galette. It dates from the twelfth century and has seen tragic days. Its owners defended it with frantic courage in 1814, whereupon one of them, taken by the attacking Cosaques, was roped to the whirling wheel. It was again assailed in 1871. The property was owned by the same family from the year 1640, a private property, a farm, a country inn, where dancing often went on as a mere private pastime till, in 1833, its landlord, an expert in the art of dancing, decided to turn his talent to pecuniary account and opened there the famous public dancing-hall. Rue Caulaincourt, erewhile quaint and rural, has lost of late years almost all its old-time characteristics. Rue Lamarck has become quite modern in its aspect. Rue Marcadet was known in the seventeenth century as Rue des Bœufs—Ox Street. At No. 71 we find a fine seventeenth-century hôtel, now a girls’ school, hôtel Labat, and another good old house, also a girls’ school, at No. 75; at No. 91 yet another. The modern structures at No. 101 are on the site of the ancient manor-house of Clignancourt. The turret at No. 103 is probably the relic of an old windmill. Rue de la Fontaine du But records the name of a drinking fountain, demolished some forty years ago, said to have been set up there by the Romans. Tradition has it the word but was once buc, and referred to the Roman rite of the sacrifice of a buck to Mercury. According to another legend, “but,” i.e. aim, referred to the English archers who when in France made that spot their practising-ground. Rue du Ruisseau owes its name to the stream of water which flowed through it on the demolition of the ancient fountain. The seventeenth-century Rue de Maistre, bordering the northern cemetery, is the ancient Chemin des Dames. Rue Eugène-Carrière, opening out of it, was till quite recently Rue des Grandes Carrières, memorizing the big quarries whence from time immemorial has been obtained the white stone, so marked a feature of Paris buildings, and the world-famed plaster of Paris.
MOULIN DE LA GALETTE
Rue Damrémont is modern; in the little Rue des Cloys opening out of it at No. 102 we see vestiges of a curious old cité of wooden dwellings. Rue Neuve de la Chardonnière recalls the days when it was a thistle-grown road. Rue du Poteau reminds us of the gallows of the St-Ouen road. The Avenue de Clichy and the Avenue St-Ouen which form the boundary of the arrondissement, both date back as important roads to the seventeenth century. Along them we find here and there traces of ancient buildings, none of special interest. To the east of the boulevards Ornano and Barbes, which run through the arrondissement from north to south, we find numerous ancient streets, mostly short. The street of chief importance is Rue des Poissonniers, its lower end merged in boulevard Barbes. We see several unimportant old houses along its course. The impasse du Cimetière and the schools we see there are on the site of an old graveyard. In Rue Affre, bearing the name of the archbishop of Paris slain on the barricades in 1848 (see [p. 250]), we find the modern church St-Bernard, of pure fifteenth-century Gothic as to style, but far inferior in workmanship to the Gothic structures of ages past. Rue de la Chapelle, known in Napoléon’s time as Faubourg de la Gloire, began as the Calais Road, then became the Grande Rue de la Chapelle. La Chapelle is a spot of remarkable historic memories. It began as the Village des Roses—in days when roses, wild and cultivated, grew in abundance in what is now a Paris slum. Then the population, remembering that Ste-Geneviève had stopped to rest and pray in the church on her way to St-Denis, called their village La Chapelle-Ste-Geneviève. Later it was named la Chapelle-St-Denis. To the church at la Chapelle went Jeanne d’Arc in the fateful year 1425. We find ancient houses all along the course of this old thoroughfare, and at No. 96 the church dedicated to St-Denis, built by Maurice de Sully, the chancel of that thirteenth-century structure still intact, after going through two disastrous fires and suffering damage in times of war. It has been enlarged in recent years. The statue of Jeanne d’Arc there dates from the reign of Louis XVI.