Category Archives: Paris postcards

The strange case of the disappearing hotel

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Parisian Fields

Norman recently bought, sight unseen, a shoebox of French postcards from a man in Winnipeg. Among them was a series of images from a Paris hotel called the St-James and Albany. They set me off on a hunt that led … Continue reading →

Posted in Paris history, Paris hotels, Paris postcards | Tagged Charles-François Lebrun, Drouot auction house, Earl of Bridgewater, Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henriette Anne Louise de Noailles, Hotel de Noailles, Hotels St-James & d'Albany, Lady Verney, Lord Egerton, Marquis de Lafayette, Musée Carnavalet, rue d'Alger, rue de Rivoli, rue St-Honoré, Thomas Mann, Unsinkable Molly Brown | 20 Comments

Twenty questions

Posted on December 27, 2020 by Parisian Fields

A happy Saint-Sylvestre to you all! A few of you may wonder what that means, but in France, New Year’s Eve is often called by the name of the saint whose day falls on December 31. That fact got us … Continue reading →

Posted in Paris churches, Paris history, Paris popular culture, Paris postcards, Paris streets | Tagged Arc de Triomphe, Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel, avenue Foch, Café Varenne, C’était un rendez-vous, Centre Pompidou, chasse-roue, Chevaux de Marly, Claude Chappe, Claude Lelouch, Deyrolle, Dufayel, fiacre, La Samaritaine, Le Grand Mogol, Marie Antoinette, Marie Curie, Mel Bonis, metonymy, Notre Dame du Travail, Oscar Wilde, Place Beauvau, Point du Jour, Porte St-Denis, Porte St-Martin, Quai d’Orsay, Rose Bertin, rue de Varenne, rue Xaintrailles, rue Xavier-Privas, Saint-Sylvestre, Sophie Berthelot, St-Fiacre | 14 Comments

Postcards: Little windows into a vanished Paris

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Parisian Fields

Many of our blogs begin with a postcard. That is not a coincidence. When we are rummaging through the bins of 1- and 2-euro cards at flea markets, we are drawn to images that make us stop and wonder, “What … Continue reading →

Posted in Paris bridges, Paris maps, Paris postcards, Paris travel, Seine | Tagged Écluse de la Monnaie, Écluse du Pont Neuf, Bains de la Samaritaine, Barrage de la Monnaie, bateaux-lavoirs, bateaux-omnibus, Bureau d’Omnibus de la Compagnie Générale, cartes postales, Exquise Goulliout, La Samaritaine, Marie Gabriel Biessy, Paris Flood 1910, Paris postcards, Pont des Arts, Pont Neuf, vintage postcards, voitures à voie ferrée Vincennes-Sèvres | 13 Comments

The postcard collector

Posted on April 22, 2018 by Parisian Fields

To her employers and patients, she was known as Nurse Pirie. But to Norman, she was simply Grandma Stevens. She lived with Grandpa Stevens in a house that his Grandpa had built, near enough to Norman’s family home in Hamilton, … Continue reading →

Posted in Family history, Paris postcards | Tagged Bourges, Cambo, Château de la Motte aux Bois, Château de Maubranches, Comtesse de Bondy, Croix, Filae, Geneanet, Hazebrouck, Lille, Marquise de Loys, Roubaix | 15 Comments

A city street, a lamppost

Posted on January 28, 2018 by Parisian Fields

It was the photograph that caught my eye from a high shelf in a bookshop. A street with a lamppost and the corner of a building; two men walking in opposite directions. It was only later that I registered the … Continue reading →

Posted in Paris books, Paris civic functions, Paris postcards, Paris streets | Tagged du Gaz et de l’Eclairage, Dufayel, Frédérique Bousquel, Jacques Lusseyran, Jo Baker, Joseph Epstein, Journées du Patrimoine, Marcel Epstein, Mémoire de l’Electricité, Mémoire des rues, MEGE, Ronald C. Rosbottom, rue de Clignancourt, rue Ramey, Second World War | 21 Comments

Voutch and the evolution of a cartoon style

Posted on June 19, 2016 by Parisian Fields

You know how it is: you notice something properly for the first time, and for the next while, you see it everywhere. So it was with us and the cartoons of Voutch (real name: Olivier Chapougnot). We had wandered along the … Continue reading →

Posted in Paris art, Paris popular culture, Paris postcards | Tagged boomerang, Credit du Nord, Dominque Fertil, Editions Cherche-Midi, Galerie Dominique, Le Monde, Librairie Les Traversées, Madame Figaro, Olivier Chapougnot, Olivier Vouktchevitch, Psychologies, This is as Bad as it Gets, Voutch | 9 Comments

A bird lover’s guide to Paris

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Parisian Fields

This is one of my favourite photographs from Paris. I use it as the wallpaper on my desktop computer, so that every day, when I sit down to work, I feel for a second that I am taking my place … Continue reading →

Posted in Paris gardens, Paris history, Paris parks, Paris postcards, Paris streets | Tagged Bois de Boulogne, Charles Yriarte, Charmeurs d’oiseaux, Jardin du Luxembourg, La Bagatelle, Medici fountain, Parc Monceau, pigeonnier contraceptif, pigeons, Puvis de Chavannes, Rene Dagron, Richard Holmes, Siege of Paris, Square des Batignolles, Tuileries | 14 Comments

The invention of the omnibus

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Parisian Fields

Take a good look at this postcard. What do you see? I tend to gravitate to postcards like this because of the rich detail in the buildings – the names of businesses, the façades of the old houses, the advertisements, … Continue reading →

Posted in Paris civic functions, Paris postcards, Paris streets, Paris travel | Tagged Compagnie Générale des Omnibus, Duchesse de Berry, Entreprise Générale des Omnibus, Faubourg St-Martin, impériale, Le Petit Journal, Nantes, Nicholas Papayanis, omnibus, omnibus-restaurants, Stanislas Baudry, trams, tramways, Vicomte de Botherel | 19 Comments

Paris in the First World War

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Parisian Fields

It’s that time of year again. The poppy-sellers are out on the streets of Toronto, and soon, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we will stop what we are doing for a minute or … Continue reading →

Posted in Paris churches, Paris history, Paris postcards, Paris streets, World War I | Tagged Big Bertha, Brigadier Bidault, Eugene Bailly, First World War, Margaret Macmillan, Menilmontant, Nantes, Paris 1919, Paris Gun, Peacemakers, rue Mathurin Regnier, St-Gervais, Zeppelin | 21 Comments

Postcards of a Working River

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Parisian Fields

We don’t often think of Paris as a port city. But the city handles about 20 million tonnes of cargo a year, and with more than 7 million people travelling on the river each year, Paris is the leading river … Continue reading →