Quai St-Michel was known for a time in Napoléon’s day as Quai de la Gloriette. Its first stone was laid so far back as 1561, then no more stones added till 1767, an interim of two centuries. Another interruption deferred its completion to the year 1811. The two narrow sordid streets we see opening on to it, Rue Zacharie and Rue du Chat qui Pêche, date, the first from 1219, as in part Rue Sac-à-lie in part Rue des Trois-Chandeliers, from its earliest days a slum; the second, a mere alley, from 1540.
Quai de Montebello began in 1554 as Quai des Bernardins from the vicinity of the convent—its walls still standing (see [p. 136]). The quay bore several successive names till its entire reconstruction in early nineteenth-century years, when it was renamed in memory of Napoléon’s great General, Maréchal Lannes.
Quai de la Tournelle was Quai St-Bernard in the fourteenth century. The Porte St-Bernard was close by. La Tournelle was a stronghold where prisoners were kept close until deported. On the wall of Nos. 57-55, now a distillery, we read the words: “Hôtel cy-devant de Nesmond.” It began as hôtel du Pain. Président de Nesmond, who owned it later, inscribed his name on its frontage, the first inscription of the kind known. The Pharmacie Centrale we see at No. 47 is the ancient convent of the Miramiones. The nuns were so named from Mme de Miramion who, left a widow at sixteen, founded this convent for the care of poor girls. The nuns had their own boat to convey the girls to services at Notre-Dame. In the chapel we find seventeenth-century decorations, and in the body of the building many interesting vestiges. On the walls at No. 37 we read the inscription, “Hôtel cy-devant du Président Rolland” (the anti-Jesuit). The old-time coaches for Fontainebleau had their bureau and starting-point at No. 21. No. 15 is the quaint and historic restaurant de la Tour d’Argent, which has existed since 1575 (closed during the war), famed for its excellent and characteristic cuisine and its picturesque, old-time menu cards, with their strong spice of couleur locale.
Quai d’Austerlitz is the old Quai de l’Hôpital. The boundary-line between Paris and what was before its incorporation the village of Austerlitz passed at No. 21. The famous hôtel des Haricots, the prison of the Garde Nationale, where many artists and men of letters of olden days served a period of punishment, often left their names written in couplets on its walls, was till the early years of last century on the site where now we see the busy departure platform of the Gare d’Orléans.
Quai de la Gare, bordered by ancient houses, was till 1863 route Nationale.
CHAPTER LII
LES PONTS (The Bridges)
ONCE more to the south-western corner of this “bonne ville de Paris.” The first bridge over the Seine within the city boundary, beginning at this end, is the Viaduct d’Auteuil (see [p. 320]). The second is Pont-Mirabeau, dating from the last decade of the nineteenth century. Pont de Grenelle is of earlier date (1825). The Statue of Liberty we see there (Bartholdi) is a replica in reduced size of that sent to New York. Pont de Passy first spanned the Seine as a mere footway at the time of the Exhibition of 1878, rebuilt in its present form in 1906. Pont d’Iéna has a greater historic interest. Its construction was set about in 1806. It had just been finished when in 1814 Blücher and the Allies proposed to blow it up. Royal influence prevailed to save it. It was called thenceforth till 1830 Pont des Invalides.
Pont de l’Alma, that emphatically Second-Empire bridge with its four Napoléonic soldiers, a Zouave, an infantry man, an artillery man, and a chasseur, was built between the years 1854-57. It was still unfinished when on April 2nd, 1856, Napoléon III and a sumptuously accoutred cortège passed across it to present flags to the regiments returned from the Crimea. Pont-des-Invalides was built in 1855.
LE PONT DES ARTS ET L’INSTITUT