French Quarter

“ The French quarter is out of repair, and has the air of being for rent; but in fact there is comparatively little change in occupancy, Creole families being remarkably adhesive to localities. The stranger who sees all over the French and the business parts of the town the immense number of lodging-houses—some of them the most stately old mansions—let largely by colored landladies, is likely to underestimate the home life of this city. ”

“ The sixty squares ("islets" according to the Creole idiom, because each block was literally an islet in time of flood) which comprise the old French town established in 1718 by the Sieur de Bienville, are unlike the rest of the city not merely in architecture, but in all respects. The street names change at Canal Street, the highways become narrower as you enter the French quarter, and the pavements are made of huge stone blocks brought over long ago as ballast in sailing ships. Nor is the difference purely physical. ”

“ The air grows chilly; it is again the hour to dine—the hour when Paris wakes.
In the smaller restaurants of the Quarter one often sees some strange contrasts among these true bohemians, for the Latin Quarter draws its habitués from every part of the globe. They are not all French—these happy-go-lucky fellows, who live for the day and let the morrow slide. You will see many Japanese—some of them painters—many of them taking courses in political economy, or in law ”

“ The great stream has its tributaries. To Fifth Avenue belong the side streets that feed it and in turn draw from it flavour and inspiration. To it belong Washington Square, the south side as well as the north side, and the street beyond, that today is known as West Broadway, and yesterday was South Fifth Avenue, and before that, in the remote past, was Laurens Street; and the crossing thoroughfares that constituted the French Quarter of the late seventies and early eighties ”

“ Open gateways in the front of many a gloomy-looking house give us a glimpse of attractive interior courts, gay with flowers and splashing fountains. Many other courts, alas, are deserted or neglected, for this is no longer the fashionable section of New Orleans. Most of the city's creole population lives in the French Quarter. These people are the descendants of the early French and Spanish inhabitants.
JACKSON SQUARE AND THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. LOUIS
In the French Quarter is Jackson Square, which was the center of governmental life in the early years of the city. ”

“ House as it appears today, with galleries, ironwork added in 1870’s.
Strangely, these distinguished writers and authors went back to their offices in the East and proceeded to turn out bales of copy about New Orleans but with only side references to the Garden District. Passing mention was made of the luxury and beauty of the homes of this area, but the French Quarter was the subject of all the sketches and engraved illustrations. Rare is the surviving sketch, tintype or glass plate photo of amateur or professional. ”

“ It is certain that it is not this new and expensive quarter which lends to Nemours its strange charm, any more than in other French towns, or in Paris itself, where the modern attempts at architecture are veritable eyesores.
After all, each man enjoys life in his own way ”

“ The Orléanists, Bonapartists, Anti-Semites, and their allies were quick to see the value of a popular leader in the most turbulent and unmanageable quarter of Paris. The Quartier Latin was second [353] only to Montmartre as a propagating bed for revolution; the fiery youth of the great schools were quite as important as the butchers of La Villette. ”

“ No attempt has been made by the French to modernize the ancient city.
The European Quarter.—From the landing stage a short street leads into the broad Avenue Jules Ferry or de la Marine running east to west and ending in the Place de la Residence, on the north side of which is the Roman Catholic cathedral and on the south side the palace of the French resident-general, with a large garden. The main thoroughfare is continued westwards by the Avenue de France, which leads to the Porte de France. ”

“ The river boats landed in front of the Faubourg St. Marie, as this part of the city was then called, bringing tobacco, cotton, pork, beef, corn, flour, and fabrics. Commercial buildings sprang up, and as the [256] trade was distinctly American, the district came to be known as the American Quarter.
In the days when the French Quarter was all there was of New Orleans, the city was in the shape of a half moon or crescent. The newer part of the city follows the course of the river and makes the New Orleans of to-day more like a letter S.
ST. CHARLES AVENUE
St. ”

“ Theatres, concert rooms and beer gardens are filled with pleasure-seekers.
Canal street, the main business thoroughfare and promenade of New Orleans, is nearly two hundred feet wide, and has a grass plot twenty-five feet wide, in the centre, bordered on each side by trees. Claiborne, Rampart, St. Charles and Esplanade streets are similarly embellished. They all contain many fine stores and handsome residences. Royal, Rampart and Esplanade streets are the principal promenades of the French quarter. ”

“ HE street is not fashionable, neither is it shabby. It is a pariah among streets—a street without a Quarter. It is generally understood to lie outside the pale of the aristocratic Avenue de l’Observatoire. The students of the Montparnasse Quarter consider it swell and will have none of it. The Latin Quarter, from the Luxembourg, its northern frontier, sneers at its respectability and regards with disfavor the correctly-costumed students who haunt it. ”

“ Here people live at their windows and in the doorways--the women talking from balcony to balcony, the men smoking, reading, playing at dominoes. Here too are more cafés and cabarets, open-air stalls for the sale of fried fish, and cheap restaurants for workmen and students, where, for a sum equivalent to sevenpence half-penny English, the Quartier Latin regales itself upon meats and drinks of dark and enigmatical origin. Close at hand is the Place and College of the Sorbonne--silent in the midst of noisy life, solitary in the heart of the most crowded quarter of Paris. ”

“ Michel—the liveliest roadway of the Quarter. Then it seems to become suddenly inoculated with its bustle and life, and from there on is crowded with bourgeoise and animated with the commerce of market and shop.
An Englishman once was so fired with a desire to see the gay life of the Latin Quarter that he rented a suite of rooms on this same Boulevard St. Germain at about the middle of this long, quiet stretch. Here he stayed a fortnight, expecting daily to see from his “chambers” the gaiety of a Bohemia of which he had so often heard. ”

“ My windows command the Quarter, and what they do not overlook, Augustine does.
Some people might think there could not be much to overlook, for the Quarter is as quiet and secluded as the Inns of Court. J. is forever boasting that if he is in London he is not of it, and that he lives the simple life, with Charing Cross just round the corner. The "full tide of existence" sweeps by, seldom overflowing into the Quarter, which is one of the most difficult places in all the town to find for those who do not know the way. ”

“ The poetry of those old deserted quarters came suddenly home to me—all the little commonplace thoughts; all the commonplace associations of Georgian London. For the time I was done with the meanings of things.
I was seeking Lea—he was not at home. The quarter was honeycombed with the homes of people one knows; of people one used to know, excellent young men who wrote for the papers, who sub-edited papers, who designed posters, who were always just the same. ”

“ The quarter has one broad thoroughfare or lung, which on a sunny day is gay, sightly, and alive; then to north and south diverge the innumerable low red-brick streets where the poor live and work; which have none, however, of the trim uniformity which belongs to the workers' quarters of the factory towns pure and simple. ”

“ It has of course a new quarter in the provincial-elegant style (fresh stucco cafés, barber-shops, and apartments to let) , looking out upon a planted promenade and a charming bay, locked in fortified heights, with a narrow portal to the ocean. I walked about for two or three hours and devoted most of my attention to the old quarter, the town proper, which has a great frowning gate upon the harbour, through which you look along a vista of gaudy house-fronts, balconies, awnings, surmounted by a narrow strip of sky. Here the local colour was richer, the manners more naïf. ”

“ I have heard even our postman brag of the beauty of its architecture and the fame of the architects who built it more than a century and a half ago, and I do not believe as a rule that London postmen could say who built the houses where they deliver their letters, or that it would occur to them to pose as judges of architecture. Because we love the Quarter we watch over it with unceasing vigilance. We [Pg 370] are always on the look-out for nuisances and alert to suppress them. In fact, if not in name, we constitute a sort of League for the Prevention of Dirt and Disorder in the Quarter. ”

“ Plainly visible in more rooms than one, bending over high drawing-tables not only through the day but on into the night, are many Architects, with whom the Quarter has ever been in favour since the masters who designed it years ago made their headquarters in our street, until yesterday, when the young man who is building the Town Hall for the County Council moved into it, though, had the County Council had its way, there would be no Quarter now for an Architect to have his office in. ”

“ Normandy cider, and a lot of new sketches besides.
Already the tables within are well filled. The long room, with its newer annex, is as brilliant as a jewel box—the walls rich in tiled panels suggesting the life of the Quarter, the woodwork in gold and light oak, - 42 -the big panels of the rich gold ceiling exquisitely painted. ”

“ Nearly every highway has its popular side, and on the “Boul’ Miche” it is the left one, coming up from the Seine. Here are the cafés, and from 5 P.M. until long past midnight, the life of the Quartier pours- 30 - by them—students, soldiers, families, poets, artists, sculptors, wives, and sweethearts; bicycle girls, the modern grisette, the shop girl, and the model; fakirs, beggars, and vagrants. Yet the word vagrant is a misnomer in this city, where economy has reached a finesse that is marvelous. ”

“ The result has been that its vicinity has become a rich and elegant quarter, simply because it has been made attractive to the large and constantly growing class who are seeking pleasant residence sites within easy access of their places of business. ”

“ I love that quartier—if ever I went to Paris again I should reside there. It is quite a different world from the streets usually known to, and tenanted by the English—there, indeed, you are among the French, the fossilized remains of the old regime—the very houses have an air of desolate, yet venerable grandeur—you never pass by the white and modern mansion of a nouveau riche; all, even to the ruggedness of the pave, breathes a haughty disdain of innovation—you cross one of the numerous bridges, and you enter into another time—you are inhaling the atmosphere of a past century ”

“ Cudyk stood at the top of the gentle rise opposite the Washington Avenue bridge, and looked down at the Quarter. It was just after sunset, and the ranked street-lights cast a lonesome gleam. The streets were empty. There was no one left in the Quarter except one man in the powerhouse. When the time was up, he would pull the switches on the master board and come out; then the Quarter would be dead.
The Niori edict had come on the Wednesday morning after Rack's death. ”

“ The older portion of the town is still surrounded, on the north and east, by its ancient, though dilapidated medieval walls, and is a labyrinth of steep and dirty streets. The more modern quarter which has grown up at the southern foot of the hill has handsome broad boulevards and villas, many of them with beautiful gardens, filled with semi-tropical plants. ”

“ A shameless new quarter suddenly obtruded itself with an ugly emphasis; unclassifiables, male and female, began to assert and disport themselves more daringly than dreamt of heretofore; and many good citizens who would crowd the town forward to a population of a million and to a status undeniably metropolitan came to stroll these tawdry, noisy new streets with a curiosity of mind at once disturbed, titillated, and somehow gratified. ”

“ The extensive and swarming German quarter is precisely like the German quarter of Philadelphia, (though the Cincinnati lager-bier is better,) and the wide, square, spacious old mansions are exactly such as the older houses of Philadelphia would be if Philadelphia burned bituminous coal.
Every New-Yorker supposes, of course, that there must be in a large and wealthy city one pre-eminent and illustrious street like his own Fifth Avenue, where he is wont either to survey mankind from a club window, or, as mankind, be surveyed. ”

“ The left bank has changed no less than the right. The luxurious quarter of the Faubourg Saint-Germain has spread immeasurably, and even where old streets remain, as many do in the Quartier Latin, their houses have been rebuilt. Many a Bohemian could probably have told a parallel to Champfleury's touching story of how, long after his mistress had left him, he witnessed by chance the demolition of an old wall of a house in the quarter, and there on the topmost story was laid bare the room, with its very wallpaper unchanged, where they spent so many happy months of youth and love. ”

“ The mud-banks between the new harbour and the old quay (now Boul. de France) have been artificially raised and converted into an area of 50 acres for building. The projected new quarter, with its straight and shadeless streets, has made little progress as yet. Between it and the older suburb, built since 1832, are the Avenue de Paris and the palm-avenue of the Boulevard de France (Pl. B, C, 3) , where most of the public buildings are situated.
In the Ave. de Paris are the Contrôle Civil (Pl. 1; C, 3) , the Post Office (Pl. 6; C, 3) , and the Hôtel de Ville (Pl. C, 3) . ”