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Category Archives: Paris postcards
The strange case of the disappearing hotel
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
14 Comments
Twenty questions
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
The postcard collector
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
A city street, a lamppost
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
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
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
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
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
Postcards of a Working River
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
Posted in Paris bridges, Paris history, Paris markets, Paris postcards, Seine
Tagged Antoine-Rémy Polonceau, Bassin de l’Arsenal, bateaux mouches, Bercy, Colonne de Juillet, La Seine, Les Halles de Bercy, Paris Flood 1910, passerelle Debilly, péniches, Place de la Bastille, Pont Alexandre III, Pont au Change, Pont des Arts, Pont des Saints-Pères, Pont du Carrousel, Pont Mirabeau, Port de l'Hotel de Ville, Port du Louvre, Port Saint-Nicolas, Quai d'Austerlitz
10 Comments
