Quai des Gesvres was built by the Marquis de Gesvres in 1641. The ancient arcades upon which it rests, hidden away with their vaulted roofing, still support this old quay. The shops they once sheltered were knocked to pieces in 1789. The Café at No. 10, built in 1855, was named “A la Pompe Notre-Dame,” to record the existence till then on the bridge, Pont Notre-Dame, of the twin pumps from which the inhabitants of the neighbourhood drew their water. Rue de la Tâcherie (tâche, task, work) was known in thirteenth-century days as Rue de la Juiverie. This is still the Jews’ quarter of the city.
Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville was formed in its present aspect in the nineteenth century, of three ancient thoroughfares along the banks of the Seine. Corn and hay were in old days landed here. On the walls of the house No. 34 we see the date 1548, and find within an interesting old staircase. At No. 90 opens the old Rue de Brosse, named in memory of the architect of the fine portal of St-Gervais, before us here (see p. 103), and of the Luxembourg palace, close by the ancient impasse at the south end of the church; and at the junction of Quai des Célestins, opens the twelfth-century Rue des Nonnains d’Hyères, where the nuns d’Yerres had of old a convent. Almost every house is ancient. In the court at No. 21 we see the interesting façade of the hôtel d’Aumont, now the Pharmacie Centrale des Hôpitaux.
HÔTEL DE FIEUBET, QUAI DES CÉLESTINS
Quai des Célestins, in the district of the vanished convent (see p. 303) has many interesting vestiges of the past. No. 32 is on the site of the Tour Barbeau, where the wall of Philippe-Auguste ended, and of the tennis-court which served at one time as a theatre for Molière and his company (1645). The walls of No. 22 are one side of the fine old hôtel de Vieuville (see [p. 114]). At No. 16 we find a curious old court. No. 14, once hôtel Beaumarchais, then petit hôtel Vieuville, at one time used as a Jewish temple, has a splendid frescoed ceiling. We see remains of old hôtels at No. 6 and 4. No. 2, l’École Massillon, built as a private mansion, l’hôtel Fieubet, the work of Mansart (seventeenth century), was restored in 1850, enlarged by the Oratoriens in 1877.
Quai Henri IV stretches along the ancient line of the Île Louviers joined to the Rive Droite in 1843, the property of different families of the noblesse till 1790. At No. 30 the Archives de la Seine.
Quai de la Rapée, named from the country house of a statesman of the days of Louis XV., is bordered along its whole course by old, but generally sordid, structures, in olden days drinking booths. Passage des Mousquetaires at No. 18 records the vicinity of the Caserne des Mousquetaires, now l’Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts.
Quai de Bercy, records by its name the bergerie, in old French bercil, here in long-gone days. Here, too, there was a castle built by Le Vau and extensive gardens laid out by the great seventeenth-century gardener Le Nôtre. Their site was given up in the latter half of the nineteenth century for the Entrepôts de Bercy.
Picturesque old quays surround the islands on the Seine. Quai de l’Horloge, overlooked by the venerable clock-tower of the Palais de Justice (see [p. 50]), went in past days by the name Quai des Morfondus, the quay of people chilled by cold river mists and blasting winds. When opticians made that river-bank their special quarter, it became Quai des Lunettes. Lesage, author of Gil Blas, lived here in 1715, at the Soleil d’Or. No. 41, where dwelt the engraver Philipon, Mme Roland’s father, is known as the house of Madame Roland, for it was the home of her girlhood. No. 17 dates from Louis XIII.