Rue Saint-Jacques

“ The Panthéon is just around the corner, and the ancient Sorbonne, Louis le Grand, and the College of France line the same street on the next block, and have stood there for some hundreds of years; but, all the same, timid people certainly prefer to reach [147] them by a roundabout way rather than by this section of Rue St. Jacques.
Mlle. Fouchette had accepted a home in the Rue St. Jacques and in this particular building because other people did not wish to live there, which made rooms cheap. ”

“ During the last months of spring and the first months of summer in 1833, the rare passersby in the Marais, the petty shopkeepers, the loungers on thresholds, noticed an old man neatly clad in black, who emerged every day at the same hour, towards nightfall, from the Rue de l'Homme Arme, on the side of the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, passed in front of the Blancs Manteaux, gained the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and, on arriving at the Rue de l'Echarpe, turned to the left, and entered the Rue Saint-Louis. ”

“ The line it follows was in a long-past age the Roman road from Lutetia to Orléans—the Via Superior—la grande rue—of early Paris history. Along its course in Roman times the Aqueduc d’Arcueil brought water from Rungis to the Palace of the Thermes (see p. 138) . It is from end to end a long line of old-time buildings or vestiges of those swept away. The famous couvent des Jacobins extended across the site of the Bibliothèque de l’École de Droit and adjacent structures. At No. 172 stood the Porte St-Jacques in Philippe-Auguste’s great wall. ”

“ Jacques with its fine stained-glass, the interior of which is much plainer than St. Pierre, will not detain us long; it is rather to such streets as the celebrated 'Rue aux Fèvres' that we are attracted by the decoration of the houses, and their curious construction. There is one house in this street, the entire front of which is covered with grotesquely carved figures, intricate patterns, and graceful pillars. The exterior woodwork is blackened with age, and [Pg 39] the whole building threatens to fall upon its present tenant—the keeper of a café. ”

“ On the Rive Gauche, the walks at nightfall are more difficult to indicate. You can go anywhere in the three inner arrondissements, and you will not be disappointed. Walk year after year and you will begin to wonder whether you ever will follow out the oftformed resolution of returning to America to live. In the Seventh Arrondissement the region between the Quai d'Orsay and the Rue de Sèvres, the Rue des Saints-Pères and the Invalides is the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where are to be found the finest residences in Paris, far ahead of anything in the Etoile Quarter. ”

“ We may join the early-goers among these men, who make their way to another house, not far distant. There 220 are temptations to stop before, and explore within, the seventeenth-century mansions all along Rues Sévigné and du Parc-Royal, but we pass on into Rue Turenne—once Rue Saint-Louis, the longest and widest and foremost in fashion of Marais streets, now merely big and bustling, with little left of its ancient glory—until we come to its No. ”

“ Rue St-Merri and its old passage, Impasse du Bœuf, with its eighteenth-century grille; Rue Pierre-au-lard, a humorous adaptation of the name Pierre Aulard, borne by a notable parishioner of the eighteenth century. Passage Jabach on the site of the home of the rich banker of the seventeenth century whose fine collection of pictures were the nucleus of the treasures of the Louvre. Impasse St-Fiacre, the word saint cut away at the Revolution, where dwelt the first hirer-out of cabs ”

“ Jake Jenkins was his name, and he lived in a very nasty street in London: a street that is a turning out of Googe Street, which turns out of the Tottenham Court Road, which turns out of Oxford Street, which is too proud to turn out of anything. Sutton Row the street was called where Jake lived and it was one of those streets where the sidewalks is always bordered with cabbage stalks and orange peel and crushed banana skins, instead of the clean green grass with daisies in it, that all sidewalks ought to be bordered with. ”

“ It was their type of house that was accepted for the neighbourhood as the first streets began to open to the right and left of Fifth Avenue. That northern stretch of the Square, first invaded in fiction by Henry James, has ever been a favourite background of the story-spinners, who never tire of contrasting its tone of well-bred aristocracy with the squalor, half-Bohemian and half-proletarian, that faces it from across the Park. In fiction one does not necessarily have to be of an old New York family in order to inhabit one of those north-side dwellings. ”

“ James's Street is much more remarkable for the natural advantages and beauty of the ground, than from any addition it has received from art," so says Ralph ("Critical Review of Public Buildings," 1783 edition) . In the very [Pg 55] earliest maps of the parish a road is marked on this site, leading northward from the palace. The street was built about 1670, and was first known as Long Street. In the time of the Stuarts it shared the aristocratic tendency of the square, and had a list of noble occupiers. ”

“ Jack was putting up at Morley’s Hotel, in Trafalgar Square, and his nearest way back to it was, of course, down Piccadilly; but as he passed out through the Park gate he suddenly bethought himself of certain purchases that he wished to make at the Army and Navy Stores, and he accordingly crossed the road and entered the Green Park, with the intention of passing through it and Saint James’s Park, and so into Victoria Street by way of Queen Anne’s Gate and the side streets leading therefrom. ”

“ Water-colour of the eighteenth century (Carnavalet Museum)
Since the dark days of 1870, the elegant Boulevard has become more democratic. The old dwellings themselves have changed their uses; and electro-plate is sold in the beautiful pavilion built by Marshal de Saxe—after the Hanoverian wars—at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue Louis-le-Grand. In the eighteenth century, some one took it into his head to decorate with flowers the roofs of the houses in the vicinity of this fine mansion ”

“ The City Park, near the northeast boundary, contains one hundred and fifty acres, which are tastefully laid out, but which is little frequented. Jackson Square has a historic interest, it having been the old Place d'Armes of colonial times. It was here that Ulloa landed in that ill-omened thunder storm, and here that public meetings were held and the colony's small armies gathered together. The inclosure, though small, is adorned with beautiful trees and shrubbery, and shell-strewn paths, and in the centre stands Mills' equestrian statue of General Jackson. ”

“ Third Avenue is a broad street, but in the character of its houses and stores it is quite inferior to Broadway, though better than some of the avenues further east. Fifth Avenue, as most of my readers already know, is the finest street in the city, being lined with splendid private residences, occupied by the wealthier classes. Many of the cross streets also boast houses which may be considered palaces, so elegant are they externally and internally. Frank caught glimpses of some of these as he was carried towards the Park. ”

“ Henry James (in "Washington Square") .
here is little in our busy, modern, progressive city to suggest Father Knickerbocker, with his three-cornered hat and knee-breeches, and his old-world air so homely and so picturesque. Our great streets, hemmed by stone and marble and glittering plate glass, crowded with kaleidoscopic cosmopolitan traffic, ceaselessly resonant with twentieth century activity, do not seem a happy setting for our old-fashioned and beloved presiding shade. ”

“ The Grande Rue now attains its climax of importance much farther on, between Galata Seraï and Taxim, whence, keeping ever to the crest of the hill, it passes out into the country like another [181] Broadway between apartment-houses and vacant lots. Other Grandes Rues may be statelier, or more bizarre and sketchable. This Grande Rue must have been more sketchable in the time of Von Hammer, who found nothing picturesque in the balconies almost meeting across the street, in the semi-oriental costumes of the Perotes and the high clogs in which they clattered about the town. ”

“ To those who really understand them, every one of the great, vital streets of the world has a soul as well as a body. The social invader from the West, the merchant whose establishment still found profit in Grand Street, the banker from Broad Street, or the ship's chandler from South, the club awakening to the fact that its quarters on Broadway or in one of the side streets near Irving Place was too far downtown, or in size inadequate to its growing membership—those were the agencies that wrought the Avenue's material development. ”

“ In the pages of the venerable historians of the French capital, and in ancient maps, it is always called "La Grande Rue de Sainct Denys," being, no doubt, at one time the ne plus ultra of all that was considered wide and commodious. Now its appellation is curtailed into the Rue St D'nis, and it is avoided by the polite inhabitants of Paris as containing nothing but the bourgeoisie and the canaille. Once it was the Regent Street of Paris—a sort of Rue de la Paix—lounged along by the gallants of the days of Henri IV., and not unvisited by the red-heeled marquises of the Regent d'Orleans's time ”

“ It was levelled and made uniform in 1764, having previously descended from Piccadilly by steps.
St. James's Street has been noted from the very beginning for its clubs, gaming-houses, and convivial gatherings. Its proximity to the Court attracted all the fops and beaux, and it was the resort of fashionable and gay young idlers. Many anecdotes are related of the street, but chiefly in connection with the clubs, for which it is still famous. White's (37 and 38) is one of the oldest; it was established about 1698, and was at first a chocolate-house. ”

“ He could live in "Europe," as he had been in the habit of living, on the product of these flourishing New York leases, and all the better since, that of the second structure, the mere number in its long row, having within a twelvemonth fallen in, renovation at a high advance had proved beautifully possible.
These were items of property indeed, but he had found himself since his arrival distinguishing more than ever between them. The house within the street, two bristhng blocks westward, was already in course of reconstruction as a tall mass of flats ”

“ We see on every side some interesting vestiges of the past. Rue Canivet and Rue Férou show many old houses. Rue du Luxembourg is modern, built along what was once a shady alley of the garden. The Café at No. 1, Rue Fleurus, was erewhile the meeting-place of great artists: Corot, Murger and others of their time. Rue Auguste Comte is another modern street along an old alley of the garden. ”

“ James's Street, having the privilege, like the rest of the world, of looking in at the windows of 'Blight's,' or 'Foodle's,' or 'Snook's,' or the great bay at the 'Contemplative Club,' I behold with respectful appreciation the figures within—the honest rosy old fogies, the mouldy old dandies, the waist-belts and glossy wigs and tight cravats of those most vacuous and respectable men. Such men are best there during the day-time surely. ”

“ 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 ”

“ That point where Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street cross is one of the great corners of New York. It is the one that made the profoundest impression on Arnold Bennett: "The pale-pillared, square structure of the Knickerbocker Trust against a background of the lofty red of the Æolian Building, and the great white store on the opposite pavement." A city of amazement has been left behind. Here we are at the threshold of still another city. It is different at every hour of the day. ”

“ Fifth Avenue, from Washington to Madison Square, was, in the opinion of the writer, one of the finest residence streets anywhere. At most hours of the day the people on the sidewalks were comparatively few and there was a very small proportion of business wagons and trucks that used the roadway as compared with the numbers that do so to-day. University Place was a street of nearly the same character, as was also Second Avenue from Seventh Street to Stuyvesant Square. ”

“ Of all the blocks in the stretch of tradition that carries the Avenue up to Fourteenth Street, the richest in interest is, naturally, that which lies immediately north of the Square. Dividing this block in two, and running respectively east and west, are Washington Mews and MacDougall Alley. When Fifth Avenue was young and addicted to stately horse-drawn turnouts, it was in these half streets that were stabled the steeds and the carriages. ”

“ Arrived on Broadway, he removed his coat and, hanging it over his arm, took a taxicab back to the Redmere. [Pg 178]
He could hardly wait until he reached his apartment to count up the results of his morning's work, but his caution stood by him, and it was not until he had locked his door and barricaded it with the bureau rolled in front of it that he opened the various packages. There were ten of them altogether, and Jack's eyes nearly popped out of his head with wonder as he saw so much real money spread out before him. ”