The hidden city

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Parisian Fields

One of the distinct pleasures to be had in Paris is the feeling you get when you open a door into a private space. Enter a digicode and hear the satisfying click-thunk sound, or simply push open a closed but unlocked door to find yourself in the world that normally only Parisians would see.

The first apartment we rented in Paris was enormously satisfying to enter. First, there was a huge street door big enough for a coach and horses to pass through, into which was cut a smaller door. Although it is now protected by a digicode, back then one simply pushed the little door and climbed over the raised sill. A short but spacious passage led into the courtyard. To one side was a full-sized tree and a flowerbed with some bushes and plants. Across the courtyard was Escalier B. We had a key to unlock this door. Inside, a flight of steps led upwards to the elevator landing. I never failed to enjoy the process of getting from the street to the apartment. Notice the chasse-roues in the photograph below.

The next place we rented had a street door with a digicode; one walked through a narrow corridor and out the back door to a tiny courtyard where the sun seldom penetrated. Across the cobblestones was another little building – a former workshop that had been built behind the apartment building, hidden from the street. A secret house. Norman took this picture of me looking down from the upper window of our secret house.

I am endlessly fascinated by hidden and secret spaces visible only to a few. The Paris of the boulevards and public spaces is only a fraction of the full city, and most of that other city lies behind walls, or behind entire buildings. Consider this satellite view: the buildings are hollow, and the streets take up a relatively small part of the space. Most of the open space is in the interior of the blocks. And look at all those trees – many of them are not visible from the street.

In the centre of the city, where former residences have been converted to offices, it is possible to enter some of courtyards, since the street doors are left open for customers and employees. Elsewhere, one catches only a glimpse as a resident enters or leaves the building.

I keep photographing courtyards and gardens on our trips to Paris. I am particularly drawn to those with greenery, but even a paved space with a few parked cars can excite my curiosity. There might a statue. Or an interesting door. Or a bit of an older building hidden behind a new one. You never know. You have to check them all.

Courtyards can be classified in various ways. Some are meant for vehicles to enter; others admit only pedestrians; and a few are little more than air shafts penetrated only by daylight.

Each type can be further categorized into forecourts separated from the street by a wall or fence, centre courts surrounded by buildings, and rear courts behind buildings.

Among those accessible to cars, a nice example of a forecourt is the one in front of the Canadian Embassy on the rue du Faubourg St-Honoré. Unlike the American and English embassies, which are bristling with unfriendly-looking security guards, this one stood open and welcoming. It made me feel proud to be Canadian.

And here is an example of a centre court for cars. It is mostly garages, some of which may be used as work spaces. Notice the little statues.

Older versions of this would have had stables rather than garages. More modern versions include the courtyard with access to underground parking.

I took the photograph of this rear courtyard from the windows of Deyrolle, the taxidermy emporium. Photography inside the store is forbidden, but photography from the windows is allowed.

A further category might be the series of two or more courtyards. Indeed, the courtyard of our first apartment had an archway in one corner leading through to another courtyard. Here, the progression from one space to another can be seen from the entrance. Alas, the “Access Interdit” sign prevented me from exploring.

Then there are all the types of courtyard that are accessible only on foot. Most are the centre court type, but there are some forecourts, mostly on very grand buildings. This one is hidden from the street by a thick hedge.

There are even a few examples of what the English would call an “area,” known in French as a “cour anglaise” – a sunken space between the street and the front wall of the building, entered by steps leading down.

Centre courts are more common. This woman, entering with her two children, kindly allowed me to photograph this hidden garden when I asked.

Centre courts may also be sunken. This is in one of the buildings belonging to the Ecole de Medicine of the Université de Paris in the Latin Quarter.

This one, taken behind a bookshop in the Oberkampf neighbourhood, has a little container garden on the roof of a lower storey which appears to open out to a sunken space below street level.

Spaces behind houses include a few rare instances of back gardens, like the lovely one at the Musée Nissim de Camondo, which backs onto the Parc Monceau.

As for the air shaft version, here is the view from our bedroom window last May – a space that lets in daylight during the day and at night ensures a quiet sleep, since the noise from the nearby streets does not penetrate. We never found the entry to the ground level of this space; this is our only view of it.

The more I look for hidden spaces, the more I find, peering into cracks and tiny openings. And if I can see it, I can photograph it and enjoy it all over again when I get home.

Text by Philippa Campsie, photographs by Philippa Campsie and Norman Ball

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Missing Christmas in Paris

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Parisian Fields

Everything had been arranged for another Christmas in Paris—plane tickets, flat rental, friends to see—and then we had to cancel. We will spend Christmas in Toronto and will have a good time of it. But what will we miss about Christmas in Paris? Let us count the ways.

We will miss the sounds of Paris and the fact that when we are there, we are not forced to listen to the same schlocky Christmas tunes wherever we go. We both love music, but each time we go to Paris, we revel in going to stores, cafés, and restaurants where we have the privilege of listening to the sounds of conversation, laughter, cutlery on dishes, and the lovely ordinary sounds of people enjoying themselves, rather than being pressed down by the weight of obligatory holiday music.

In particular, when we go in search of a bottle or two of wine, we don’t want to hear about Frosty the Snowman, nor about chestnuts doing whatever they do by an open fire. Perhaps we should explain. Here in Toronto, we have to buy wine and liquor from a government store. Starting in November, the stores are required to play pre-programmed music that inserts Christmas songs at the rate of about one in five, then one in four…and so on, until in early December it is all Christmas music, all the time. How the employees stand it, we will never know.

In Paris, although there is certainly a pre-Christmas season of festivity and preparation, the actual Christmas season starts just before Christmas and continues until after New Year’s. People take time off, eat too much, sleep in, and take it easy. This is the time for Christmas music. Here, the so-called Christmas season starts in November and ends abruptly on December 26. The onslaught of carols stops and the sales pitches heighten in hysteria. The French, by comparison, enjoy their holidays and hold sales in late January.

We like Christmas decorations—up to a point, and the point is too often exceeded here. We will miss going into French department stores and seeing wonderful merchandise artfully displayed rather than hidden under a blanket of Santas and reindeer and snowmen. And we will miss the carefully done window treatments that are festive and entertaining without being clichéd. French Christmas windows are expressions of joy, of mystery, of humour, things that help us slow down, talk with each other, share a sense of wonder or a laugh with strangers.

We will miss the sense that each person who enters a shop is important and the feeling it is well worth waiting for service, because when it comes, you are treated with attention and consideration. Last year, as we waited in line in the small neighbourhood butcher shop a few days before Christmas, everyone ahead of us seemed to need special complicated cuts, or something that the butcher had to find in the back of the shop. He somehow kept up a running conversation with the person at the head of the line as he worked, and he seemed to know their families well. One woman had brought in her newly married daughter, and he had some advice and encouragement for her about Christmas cooking. We were quite content to wait for our small order. The mood was convivial, not frantic. We like that shopping in small stores in Paris is still considered a social occasion, not just a rapid exchange of money for goods.

We will miss the Carol Service and Christmas Eve service at the church we attend when we’re in Paris. As an English church in a French city, it is a gathering of people who are to varying extents outsiders in the host culture, and that is probably why it feels so welcoming. The services there have a quality lacking in many other churches. They allow us to share beliefs, hopes, and aspirations without being identical. And they serve champagne on New Year’s Eve!

We will miss the Christmas markets and revel in the fact that we are buying things from people who are not pretending to be gnomes, elves, Santa, or anybody else. They know about the products they are selling and enjoy answering your questions, helping you choose the right thing, and making each purchase special. We can still remember that glorious Auvergne cheese we bought last year and the hot chestnuts in paper cones we bought from the chestnut man.

We will miss the quiet of Christmas Day. Unless the weather is too wet, there will be people strolling in the parks and on the streets where there is a sense that it is a special time, but it is a time that you make special in your own way. For us it is about serenity.

Most of all we will miss the sense that there is no rush. This may seem curious, because we have certainly been known to try to cram far too much into a Paris day, hour, minute or even moment. And Paris is a busy city. So why do we feel less rushed in Paris? We think it is because we are not surrounded by endless exhortations to spend money and to be merry. If we want to be reflective rather than festive, it is easier there. If we would rather just look than purchase, it’s okay.

Still, we are going to try to bring the spirit of a Paris Christmas to Toronto. We will spend more time in art galleries than in shops, and we will walk in our nearby park, which has a lovely view of Lake Ontario. We have plans to try some new recipes using ingredients from the market (fortunately, we have good markets here) and to catch up on our reading. We have tickets to a concert and are planning to attend a community theatre production that promises to be very un-Christmassy. We shall substitute something different for the typical turkey on the day. Perhaps we will seek out a bûche de Noël from a French bakery and we will warm up with vin chaud on chilly days.

There are even a few compensations. Buses don’t stop running when it snows here. We won’t have to learn the idiosyncrasies of someone else’s kitchen. And family is nearby.

Still, a few things we can’t replace – the look of the Champs-Elysées in its holiday finery, the lights on the river in the evening, and those funny little Santas stuck on the sides of buildings that make us laugh.

Text and photographs by Norman Ball and Philippa Campsie

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The story behind the sculpture

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Parisian Fields

The Rodin Museum is one of the most popular tourist sites in Paris. It encompasses a lovely old house surrounded by a huge garden, with several of Rodin’s bronze sculptures positioned here and there in the grounds. One sculpture in particular is placed so that all passersby can enjoy it, even without entering the museum precincts and paying the admission fee. Rodin’s depiction of “The Burghers of Calais” stands near a glass wall, so that anyone walking down the rue de Varenne can see it.

Why that piece in particular? I think there is a reason.

Only a few visitors know the story behind this particular sculpture. And most guidebooks give the barest outline. Essentially, it is this:

In the early part of the Hundred Years’ War, Edward III of England conducted a siege of Calais that lasted close to a year. Eventually, in August 1347, the inhabitants of Calais surrendered to the English forces. Edward III demanded that six of the most prominent citizens (burghers) leave the city with nooses around their necks, carrying the keys to the city. Six Calais citizens walked out to meet the king barefoot, in rags, gaunt from a year of near-starvation. Edward ordered that they be beheaded. His wife, however, intervened. According to the medieval chronicler Jean Froissart, the heavily pregnant Queen Philippa threw herself at her husband’s feet and said:

“Gentle sir, since I have crossed the sea from my home in great peril to be with you, I have desired nothing of you. Now therefore I humbly beg you, in honour of God and for the love of me, that ye will have mercy on these six citizens.”

The king looked sullenly at the queen and then said: “Ah, dame, I would you had been elsewhere, for if ye make such request to me, I cannot deny you. Wherefore I give them to you, to do your pleasure with them.”

The queen caused the six citizens to be brought to her apartment, had them clothed in garments suitable to their station, and gave them dinner. Finally she had each of them brought out of the English host under safe guard and set at liberty.

Can’t you just see the scene? The six dignified but emaciated men, the stern king, the tender-hearted, pregnant queen, the menacing English soldiers, the exhausted survivors watching anxiously from the walls of Calais… and the chronicler scribbling it all down for posterity, complete with a happy ending for all concerned.

Question is: did it really happen like that? Well, yes and no.

Since I share a first name with one of the protagonists, I thought I would find out a bit more about Queen Philippa and her role at Calais in 1347.

Edward III’s queen was known as Philippa of Hainault. She was born in Valenciennes (either in 1311 or in 1314). The town is in the Pas de Calais region, so the burghers were her compatriates.

The chronicler Jean Froissart was also born in Valenciennes, in about 1333, and Philippa was his patron. So it is possible that Froissart was inclined to heighten the drama or romance of her life’s events just a bit, for posterity.

By 1347 she had given birth to at least 10 children since her marriage to Edward in 1328. Although she went on to have two more children, most historians think it unlikely that she was pregnant when she was in Calais.

Some portraits of her, like the one above, make her look doe-eyed and willowy, but her funeral effigy below is probably more accurate. She was rather stout (having twelve children will do that to you), and no great beauty, but a sensible-looking woman who was apparently sufficiently authoritative to act as regent when her husband was away waging war (as he often was). She arrived in Calais fresh from having supervised a victorious battle against the Scots. Froissart says she led the troops herself, but he may be exaggerating. Still, she sounds brisk and competent, and battles didn’t faze her.

The siege itself is well documented. Edward needed possession of the town to keep the route from England to France open for English soldiers and military supplies crossing the Channel. Calais was a stoutly built stronghold surrounded by treacherous marshes, and attacking it would have been difficult – or perhaps Edward preferred to leave its fortifications intact. So he chose to starve out the residents.

In the early going, hundreds of women and children from the town were sent away by the French commander. The English let them pass without harming them.

The ensuing siege lasted eleven months, during which the English set up a small garrison town outside the walls. Edward was hoping that the French king, Philip VI, would come to the rescue of the people of Calais, which would allow for a proper pitched battle against his foe. Thousands of English soldiers were there, ready for a fight. But the French king (who was, by the way, Philippa’s uncle) never appeared.

When King Philip failed to appear after all those months, the residents of Calais had to admit defeat. At that point, things get a little murky. Froissart’s detailed account is all very well, but he wasn’t actually there. He got the story from someone else, and English accounts of the siege do not mention the scene with the pregnant queen on her knees. So what actually happened?

There seems to be agreement that the six men did emerge to signal the surrender of Calaias. According to one French historian, the business with the barefoot burghers was a typical surrender ceremony, based on medieval penitential rites, and by no means unique to Calais. Apparently, the ritual allowed the conquering sovereign to retain his authority while pardoning those at his mercy.* This theory suggests that executing the six burghers would have represented a shocking breach of protocol.

An English historian suggests that Edward gave the order to execute the burghers because he was furious that he hadn’t been able to fight Philip. It wasn’t the first time Edward had wanted to massacre those at his mercy – but every time he had been talked down. “Aware of the accusations of cruelty which would be brought against him if these men were killed, Edward did what he had always previously done: he relented when begged to do so by someone dear to him… It was as if in each case he was trying to play the dread king, ‘terrible to his enemies’ as well as the compassionate monarch. At Calais, as elsewhere, it was a method which confused and frightened his enemies.”**

Philippa’s biographer also sheds light on a marriage in which the queen’s role seemed to be that of sorting out her husband’s impulsive gestures, good and bad: “It has been remarked of Edward that he was always more ready to be generous to an enemy that just to a friend; and he gave away posts and honours so lavishly that sometimes he forgot, and granted the same thing twice and three times over to different people, and was then annoyed because they grumbled.”*** Philippa’s job seems to have been keeping everything straight and smoothing ruffled feathers, and one imagines that interceding for six burghers was all in a day’s work for her. But she probably did her persuading quietly behind the scenes, rather than in public.

Nevertheless, the story of a pregnant Philippa on her knees became celebrated through Froissart’s chronicles. The story also symbolized French heroism in defeat. Rodin created the sculpture in the 1890s, two decades after a French defeat at the hands of the Germans, giving three-dimensional shape to popular national heroes of the time.

I think that is why this particular sculpture is visible to all who walk down the rue de Varenne. It is (or was once) a part of the French psyche and their sense of national pride. Six humbled but dignified men, ready to accept their fate, holding the moral high ground, if not the military power.****

Froissart’s story also did wonders for Queen Philippa’s reputation, and may account for the survival of her unusual name. I’m happy to share it with her.

Text and original photographs by Philippa Campsie.

* Jean-Marie Moeglin, Les bourgeois de Calais: Essai sur un mythe historique. Paris: Albin Michel, 2002.
**Ian Mortimer, The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III Father of the English Nation. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006, p. 253.
***B.C. Hardy, Philippa of Hainault and Her Times, London: John Long, 1910, p. 184.
****As for the rest of the inhabitants of Calais, they were expelled, and the city was settled with English merchants and their families. It remained an English stronghold in France until the French reconquered the city in 1558.

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Sitting on books in Paris

Posted on November 20, 2011 by Parisian Fields

The libraries, bookshops, and bouquinistes’ stalls of Paris are justly famous. So, too, are places to sit, alone or with someone else. The city offers many spots for quiet contemplation and conversation. So why not combine them? Sit on some books and ponder, or just look around.

Imagine that it is late April, I will tell you how I discovered and fell in love with one more facet of Paris.

It was a day when even the pigeons looked wonderful, looked as if they belonged and were not intrusive flying rodents. I had never thought of photographing fallen cherry blossoms and pigeons. But spring in Paris is whimsical.

Square Gabriel Pierné (named for a composer who wrote some lovely piano and harp music) is a tiny Parisian park on the rue de Seine in an area known for galleries, cafés, and heavy traffic that pretty much stands still.

Surrounded by a graceful iron fence, the park beckoned, the bench surprised and welcomed us. Square Gabriel Pierné is more than just another tiny, elegant, Parisian park. It perfectly expresses an idea that I find quintessentially Parisian, namely that open space, unbuilt-upon space is precious and should be honoured. It should also be inviting to use.

Before going into the park, I lingered outside, looking in so I could see without disturbing others. And here is one of my favourite Parisian park scenes.

I was captivated by this elderly couple. Paris is many things to many people. My Paris is one that accepts age, says it belongs, even venerates and admires it. That extends to people as well as to buildings and other works of art.

Captivated as I was, I dared not disturb their private moment—but I was trying to capture, however inadequately, my appreciation of aging in a particular place. Eventually, the couple stood up and slowly walked down the street. I took no more photographs. I simply admired their grace and elegance. I knew nothing of the lives they lived, I only know they had given me something.

For a few moment, I thoughts of my long-departed grandparents, William Stevens and Elsie (née Pirie – a French name), and how they aged together, gracefully, lovingly, and tenderly. And I hoped that Philippa and I also might be given one of the great gifts of time: happily growing old together. Even though it cannot be in Paris.

Paris has been good to us. Five years after I photographed the Square Gabriel Pierné, we found ourselves at the corner of Rue de Brosse and Quai de l’Hotel de Ville. A few steps along, the latter brought us to Le Trumilou for lunch with friends. The conversation, food, wine, champagne, and surroundings were superb in this unpretentious, traditional French restaurant. As we left, we noticed an unusual bookshop.

The Librairie du Compagnonnage is an astounding bookstore dedicated to the arts, skills, and crafts associated with preservation and restoration of buildings and artifacts. There we browsed and talked, but also enjoyed the company of books and interesting objects.

And we spotted some books to sit down on while we read. What else should one do in such a splendid city after lunch with fine friends and no real work on either the agenda or the horizon? Well, we did thank the staff profusely and paid for the physical riches we found and took home.

Text by Norman Ball, photographs by Norman Ball and Philippa Campsie

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Eyes on the street

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Parisian Fields

One hears a lot about the use of surveillance cameras in England. Indeed, when we returned from Greenwich, I spotted a few lurking in photographs I had taken. Can you spot the camera in the picture below? (There may even be two, I’m not sure.)

Paris has its fair share of security cameras and protective devices, but there hasn’t been the same sort of publicity attached to their use. After all, the Parisians are accustomed to being observed. For decades, their comings and goings were watched by concierges.

The stereotype is a middle-aged or elderly woman, single or widowed, lurking in the loge, constantly spying on tenants (there were some male concierges, and even a few couples, but in the mid 20th century, the ratio was something like nine women to one man on the job).

In 1974, the now-defunct journal Horizon published an article by Ormonde de Kay, Jr. titled “Adieu aux Concierges” that described this once-familiar figure:

From her lair off the vestibule she observes all their comings and goings—and those of their visitors. Distributing the mail, she learns more: that Monsieur Fifth-Floor-Left is being dunned for taxes, and that the gentleman who comes to see Madame Third-Floor-Right on Tuesdays and Thursdays is in Zurich. And as the rent collector, often, for the landlord or his agent, she knows just who is in arrears.

I found the photograph below in the Roger Viollet collections. I suspect the surprisingly young concierge is a model (or perhaps the daughter of the real concierge). Still, this rather stagy shot shows the letter boxes that concierges used: not much room for confidential communications here.

Another photo from the archives shows a more typical example of the species.

Concierges were a growth industry when the big apartment houses were being created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The buildings were designed so that one could not enter or leave unobserved by the hawk-eyed crone in the loge. Indeed, in the paranoid Second Empire, the authorities deployed them strategically to keep an eye on certain public figures.

Mind you, it wasn’t an easy life. A concierge’s duties were tightly regulated, as de Kay describes:

If she is a tyrant, she is also a slave: her humble home-cum-office, the loge, is often one cramped room; she is on duty, theoretically, six days a week from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and even after midnight has to awaken—or did until recently—to admit homecoming tenants by tugging on the cordon, a rope that releases the door catch. In addition to keeping out intruders and emptying the garbage, she must keep the stairs and hall clean; she also has to clean the courtyard once a week, devoting, in the maniacally precise language of a government decree, “one and a half minutes per square meter for the first forty meters and thirty seconds per square meter for the remaining surface.”

Not a job many people would want, surely, despite the advantages of a roof over one’s head, and the power that comes with knowledge of others’ lives.

For years, concierges were a fixed feature of Paris life. Robert Doisneau did a series of photographs of them. Here is an example.

This link will take you to a whole portfolio of his concierge portraits. It’s all there — the overfurnished, ill-lit apartments, the pot plants, the cats…

Today, concierges have been replaced by functionaries known as “gardiens” or “gardiennes,” who accept deliveries and deal with cleaning and maintenance, but are not necessarily the eyes and ears of a building as the concierges used to be. This transition began years ago, and was noted by de Kay in 1974:

Today the concierges are fast disappearing from the Paris scene. Of the 40,000 to 50,000 in the city, most are over fifty… some 20,000 will die or retire in the next decade. They are being replaced in many new buildings by buzzers, intercoms, and mailboxes; and in older buildings, increasingly, by live-out doormen.

The concierges may be gone, but there are still eyes on the street. They have been there for decades. Every move one makes on a Paris street is observed.

I am thinking of the countless faces on Paris facades. They gaze down at us, unblinking, noting our comings and goings.

Some have kindly faces; others seem disapproving.

A few appear demented.

Rarely does one walk down a Paris street unobserved by these countenances.

My father grew up in Malta, where it is traditional to paint eyes on the front of a boat so it can see where it is going. I can’t help thinking that the eyes on Paris buildings allow the buildings to watch the comings and goings of everyone on the street, just as the concierges used to do.

Who needs security cameras when the walls have eyes?


Text and original photographs by Philippa Campsie

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Reminders of Paris in Greenwich and London

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Parisian Fields

Ah, Paris! We still love you, and we’re coming back, but you have a rival. Thanks to the generosity of Alison and David, we had the use of a superb flat in Greenwich for a week. And perhaps because we spend so much time thinking about Paris, we ended up discovering elements of Paris in Greenwich and London. We also noticed some striking differences.

Moving quickly and turning sharply, the catamaran headed towards us at the dock at Greenwich. It looked like one mean mother of a boat. The Thames Clipper gets you to London in a hurry.

As we stood on the outside deck near the stern, the city raced by. Churning water, the roar of the engines mixed with the wind, and the vibrations coursing through the hull were exhilarating. While all too short, the trip up the Thames was unforgettable. This is not the Batobus. Of necessity, the boats on the narrower Seine are more sedate.

In an earlier blog, I talked of how Paris taught me to be aware of the geometry, colour, and patterns of chimneys and chimney pots. London and Greenwich continued my education.

And as night fell, the colour drained from the chimneys and flowed into the sky. The chimneys became pure geometry, which included more TV aerials than one is accustomed to seeing in Paris. The Greenwich skyline was as intriguing as the scale was comforting.

I even found some interesting chimneytracks to photograph, although nothing quite as dramatic as the Paris versions I described in a previous blog.

In Paris, I enjoy photographing the cast iron beneath our feet. Greenwich, too, rewarded me. How surprised I was to see my old friend Pont-à-Mousson with its characteristic seven-arch bridge profile and the familiar letters PAM.

Perhaps nothing beneath my feet caught my attention as much as two subtly different access covers bearing the name Post Office.

The one above was originally installed to provide access to buried telegraph lines. Then, with the advent of a new communications technology, there was a new sign and buried telephone lines, also run by the Post Office.

In Paris, I have seen many devices to make sure that the wheels of carts and trucks do not run into and damage buildings and posts at entryways and corners. In France they are called chasse-roues (literally chase-wheels-away) and in England they are called guard stones.

Some were of cast iron such as the above, which stood near Davy’s Wine Vault in Greenwich. We highly recommend Davy’s wine boutique and its restaurant.

The stone—or concrete—guard stone shown above is paired with a don’t-go-there reminder. I have written about some of the sterner anti-trespassing devices I have seen in Paris. Greenwich offered a few threatening versions of its own.

I photographed the image above as Philippa and I walked through an area where dockyards and businesses stood cheek-by-jowl with new flats. The spikes looked as if they had been made on site for the purpose. I guess on Savile Row it would have been called a bespoke version of a barrier.

Close by, the same lack of welcome came from a fence that looked very modern, something stamped out and mass-produced to a standard industrial design. I guess we could call this one an off-the-rack barrier.

We did not have to walk far to see a stark sign that left no doubt that life for intruders would not be pleasant.

I lingered about this place and photographed the wire, actually the wires. I noticed a curious blending of the old and the new. Can you see the old and the new in the image below?

There are two kinds of wire in the photo. Look in the centre of the image to see sharp edges mounted on wire; this is razor wire, a 20th-century invention. There are also pieces of 19th-century technology in the picture. Here we see a traditional form with short pieces of sharp-ended wire wound around and held in place at right angles to the length of the wire by two twisted strands.

Barbed wire was developed to keep animals in place—or out of places—whereas razor wire was directed towards people. Barbed wire has a long and complex history that includes many variant designs. It might even be French in origin. And here endeth this digression.

Greenwich and London are every bit as intriguing and exciting as Paris. And it is because I am more familiar with Paris that I kept seeing reminders of Paris in them. But when I return to Paris, the tables will be turned and I will see reminders of Greenwich and London. I find travel most satisfying when I am able to draw links between places and to see things in unfamiliar ways. I prefer to see a few places in detail rather than rushing through many places. Greenwich and London have been added to the list of places I must see more deeply.

There is the sign I glimpsed quickly through the dusty windows of a London Transport No. 188 Bus. I want to know more about that.

And this is an image taken from the Greenwich flat, created in what was once an elementary school, whose history, design details, and architectural complexity I am still struggling to capture.

We will also have to find again the little hole-in-the-wall eatery where the food and coffee were excellent, tables were shared, and wi-fi was not available. It was the kind of place where customers were expected to help keep the business alive, not take up residence in multiples of half days.

It might be near The Cartoon Museum to which we plan to return, or maybe the Museum of Brands, Packaging & Advertising, which will be another repeat visit. Or maybe it was near the Victoria and Albert Museum, or the Science Museum, where they have some typewriters I need to see for a book I am writing with a friend who collects pre-1900s typewriters.

Greenwich and London went by in a glorious blur, but we will be back.

Text and photographs by Norman Ball.

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One address, many stories

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Parisian Fields

“What’s that building with the dome, there, on the right?” Norman pointed to a building shown in a stereographic photograph of the Champs-Elysées he had recently bought at an antique photo show. The photo had been taken from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. I had no idea. Which means, of course, that I had to find out.

From the look of the early automobiles and horse carriages, the photo was taken some time before the First World War. The location was on the south side of the avenue, just beyond the row of buildings that fill the space between the Place de l’Etoile and the rue de Presbourg (which follows a concentric course around the Place). This is where Publicis is now, so the address would be 133 avenue des Champs-Elysées. It should be possible to identify.

But wait (I hear some of you say), what is Publicis? Ah, that is an interesting story in itself. Publicis started out as a fairly modest French advertising agency and is now a huge holding company for advertising agencies around the world. Its headquarters on the Champs-Elysées close to the Arc de Triomphe incorporates the convenience-store-to-end-all-convenience-stores, with a shop selling newspapers and magazines, a separate bookshop, a pharmacie, an épicerie that sells everything from bottled water to fresh macaroons, a restaurant, a bar, a gift shop, and other boutiques selling makeup, cigars, wine… you name it, all open until 2 in the morning. It is called the Publicis Drugstore.

Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, who founded the Publicis agency in 1926 on the Faubourg Montmartre, opened the original Drugstore on the Champs-Elysées in 1958, cashing in on the craze for all things American. It became a hangout for youth at the height of Beatlemania. It was even mentioned in a song by Serge Gainsbourg called Les Sucettes (The Lollipops/The Suckers – the song includes several double-entendres).

But in 1972, the place burned down. The photograph from the Roger-Viollet collection shows that it was completely gutted. It also shows that what burned had originally been quite ornate.

It took three years to rebuild, in the chromy, curvy, shiny style of the 1970s. Here is a picture from 1977.

It was transformed once again in 2003 by architect Michele Saee, with glass and swooping metal lines on the exterior, curvy and shiny in a very 21st century way. Here is a Google Street View image, taken from the side away from the Champs-Elysées.

But I still haven’t answered the original question: what was there before? It turns out it was the Hotel Astoria (which continues in Paris at a different address*). I found this information on French Wikipedia, which has a helpful list of all the current and former buildings on the Champs-Elysées.

The French Wikipedia contributor notes that it was built in 1907 and that Félix de Rochegude, author of Promenades dans toutes les rues de Paris: VIIIe arrondissement (Hachette, 1910), had this to say about it: « l’élévation exagérée et agressive de cet hôtel détruit la belle harmonie de la place de l’Étoile. » (The exaggerated and aggressive elevation of this hotel destroys the beautiful harmony of the place de l’Etoile.)

Hm. Too big. Too much. Where had I heard that before? In an earlier blog, I had written about the over-the-top department store of Georges Dufayel, designed by Gustave Rives. Rives specialized in extreme ostentation. He had even created a house for Dufayel that was so grand that its owner (who was no shrinking violet) couldn’t live in it and inhabited a smaller building in the courtyard.

Well, guess who designed the Astoria? None other than good old Gustave. You want domes? How about two? Sculpture on the façade? Bien sûr. Loggias? Terraces? Elaborate balconies? Pile ’em on. Nothing suited Rives quite like excess. Here’s what it looked like in its heyday (this is the same perspective as the Google Street View version).

In 1910, the Scientific American Handbook of Travel (no, I hadn’t heard of this before, but I found it on Google Books) described the hotel in a terse entry: “Up to date. Unique position. High-class restaurant. Celebrated orchestra.”

The only problem was the timing. The Hotel Astoria had only a few years of regular operation before the First World War made high-class restaurants and celebrated orchestras unimaginable luxuries. The hotel became a hospital. It was an unusual one, though – a Japanese military hospital, staffed by Japanese doctors and nurses and equipped entirely by Japanese manufacturers of medical equipment. Apparently the Japanese decided not to fight in the First World War, but supported the Allies by sending medical teams to free up British and French resources for the war effort. The Roger-Viollet archival photo collection was my first clue to this fascinating but obscure piece of history.

Shortly after the war, the hotel was pressed into service during the peace conference of 1919.

Margaret Macmillan, in Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, says it took five hotels to accommodate the 400 officials, advisors, and clerical assistants in the British Empire delegation. The centre of British activity was the Hotel Majestic** on the Avenue Kléber, and the Brits went to the trouble of replacing all the French staff there with English hotel workers. Macmillan writes:

The food [at the Majestic] became that of a respectable railway hotel: porridge and eggs and bacon in the mornings, lots of meat and vegetables at lunch and dinner and bad coffee all day. The sacrifice was pointless, [Harold] Nicolson and his colleagues grumbled, because all their offices, full of confidential papers, were in the Hotel Astoria, where the staff was still French.

After this brief appearance in world history, the Hotel Astoria seems to drop out of sight. My 1927 copy of Muirhead’s Paris and its Environs (found at a secondhand store in Canada) does not mention it at all. I wonder why.

Perhaps it had become more office-like than hotel-like. Nonetheless, it was used by the Germans during the Second World War – along with many other luxury hotels. After the war, Dwight Eisenhower used it as his headquarters in the early days of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Publicis took it over in the 1950s, and what burned in 1972 was the original hotel building that the advertising agency had used for more than 20 years.

That brings the story up to date. But while doing the research, I found out that before it was the Hotel Astoria, 133 avenue des Champs-Elysées was the address of a noble family, the kind in which everyone has about a dozen names. For example, in the 1870s, the owner was Olivier Emmanuel Auguste Louis Nompar de Caumont La Force, who married Blanche Aimée Elisabeth Jeanne de Maillé de la Tour Landry. There is probably a story behind all those names. One day I will find out who they were and what their house looked like, back when the Champ-Elysées still looked bucolic.

So many stories, so little time.

Text by Philippa Campsie

* It’s a Best Western hotel on the rue de Moscou.

**The Majestic Building has been used as offices in recent years, but it is due to return to its former glory as the Peninsula Hotel in 2013.

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Propping up Parisian trees

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Parisian Fields

Paris. City of light? Yes. Bridges? Indeed. Trees? Absolutely. The trees and their changing colours are one of the marvels of Paris. But it is no accidental marvel. Parisians work hard at maintaining their trees.

Paris abounds in small parks such as this. They are refreshing oases of calm and often elderly dignified beauty.

At street level, the Champs-Elysées seems awash in stores for all levels of ready cash and credit card limits. We are buffeted by a steady stream of tourists of all sizes, shapes, descriptions and dispositions and the sounds and sights of an endless stream of vehicles. It is easy to forget that the Champs Elysées is almost a wooded glade. As one stands on the top of the Arc de Triomphe, and looks along the Champs Elysées, it is the trees rather than the merchandising that stand out.

Paris’s trees often have to fight for our attention. The one shown below is certainly an attention grabber, and a reminder that trees have a finite lifespan. Some fall down. This tree in the Tuileries Gardens did not fall down. Called L’arbre des voyelles (the tree of vowels), it is a magnificent bronze sculpture by the Italian-born sculptor Guiseppe Penone. Born in 1947, his youth in the Piedmont forests gave him a love of nature and trees that one sees in his works of art.

Our discovery of L’arbre des voyelles was a quintessential Parisian moment. We return to it for calming renewal and to be reminded that the more you wander, the more Paris gives up its secrets. Only later would we realize that the same sculptor had created the striking wooden sculptures we love to show visitors we take to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. And yes, it is the same tree that has appeared at the top of every blog since we first started to write about the city.

Philippa and I first stumbled upon this extraordinarily realistic work of art quite by accident. We had crossed the river on the Passerelle Solferino and as we walked through the Tuileries Gardens we became aware of the apparently fallen tree. Aside from its beauty, two other things captivated us. It seemed so different from much of the geometric formality of French landscaping; Paris landscape designers are to be commended for exploring new forms. Second, it seemed so familiar, because at home in the Canadian woods and forests, we have often seen fallen trees with roots flailing at the sky.

Being a tree that lives to ripe old age in Paris often requires human commitment and sometimes rather heroic support.

As we drifted along the Seine on the Batobus (one of the best transportation bargains in the city), this tree stood out like a living punctuation mark to salute the beauty of the Seine and Paris. But the beauty was supported by the quayside extension that gave the tree a proper place to live and to grow.

In early November as we walked along the bank of the Seine near the Quai Henri IV, we were suddenly aware of some trees that seemed to arise out of the river as if they were floating.

As we got closer, we had to walk carefully, in order not to trip over the I-beams that were propping up the trees lest they fall over and end up floating or dipping into the water.

And it was thanks to the I-beams and the great care and pride of those who keep Paris a city of trees that several minutes later gave us this magical moment.

On a hot August afternoon, we were grateful for the shade afforded by a former church and this tree near the entrance to the Musée des Arts et Métiers (Museum of Arts and Trades/Technology).

The museum has stunning collections showcasing human ingenuity, skill, and imagination in areas such as instrument making, building technology, and transportation. It is also a fine place to eat. It is a popular museum and many visitors come through the doors or pause to sit in the shade and rest their feet. But how many pause to think of the engineering that helps to keep one tree upright and healthy?

How many look closely at the stainless steel ring circling the trunk about 4 metres above ground height? How many notice the cables and reinforcing stays that let the tree draw on the strength of the building? Or see the traces of the building itself having been reinforced?

Many of my photos start when changing light and reflections enter my consciousness. Without the tree, without the dedication and engineering that helps the Musée des Arts et Métiers tree stay alive and structurally sound, the reflections in the photo below would be less interesting. And without the carefully tended tree, Paris would have lost a precious asset.

I am grateful for the many ways Paris works to protect that which is rooted. While I might not be of Paris, while I am there I feel rooted. Rather like this chair on the rue St-Paul. One day, I may take up root at a café table myself.

Text and photographs by Norman Ball

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Mary Callery, sculptor and collector

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Parisian Fields

Last February, I wrote a blog about the Villa d’Alesia, a small street of artists’ studios in the 14th arrondissement. In my research, I came across a photograph of Henri Matisse taken by Brassaï in 1939. The title was “Matisse dessinant un nu couché dans l’atelier que lui avait prêté Mrs. Mary Callery à la Villa d’Alesia.” (Matisse drawing a nude in the studio lent to him by Mrs. Mary Callery in the Villa d’Alesia).

The photograph shows Matisse in a smock that looks like a doctor’s labcoat, sitting in a chair, drawing a female model posing in the nude.

I think the studio was the one shown below, a photo that appeared in the earlier blog.

Who was this Mrs. Callery who lent studios to artists? I found a Wikipedia entry for Mary Callery (1903-1977) that described her as “an American artist known for her Modern and Abstract Expressionist sculpture.” The entry listed numerous solo exhibitions, several group exhibitions, and many institutions that owned her pieces, from the Museum of Modern Art to the Eastland Shopping Centre in Detroit. It was a useful assemblage of facts as far as it went, but it told me next to nothing about who she was.* I decided to do a little digging on my own.

This was not a job for Google. Mary Callery had the misfortune to die in the 1970s, and that means that she was pre-Internet, but many of the likely sources of information would be still under copyright, or the kind of things that have never been digitized. You can find more information from the 1890s than from the 1970s online, it seems.

So I started with the New York Times online archives. I love this resource; it is a treasure trove of detail. One of the first things I found was a short notice from May 1934, titled “To Be Wed in Paris Today.” It began, “Mrs. Dawson Callery announced tonight that her daughter, Mrs. Mary Callery Coudert of New York City would be married in Paris tomorrow to Carlo Frua Dangeli of Milan.”

That one sentence told me a lot. It included the names of both of Mary’s husbands and her mother. It put her in Paris in the 1930s. And it implied that her family was of sufficient consequence that her marriage plans were considered of interest to the readers of the New York Times.

With the name “Coudert” to add to the mix, I found a longer article, dated April 1930. It had three subtitles under the main title, “Mrs. F.R. Coudert Jr. Off to Seek Divorce.” Then “Incompatibility Is Given as Ground as Wife of Lawyer Sails for Paris,” followed by “Her Plan a Surprise.” And finally, “She Had Actively Aided Husband in Race for District Attorney—To Have Art Studio in France.” The headline writer was apparently too excited by this event to make do with a single heading.

The article mentioned the marriage breakdown between her and her Republican lawyer husband, “a member of one of New York’s distinguished families.” She had apparently sailed to France without telling anyone other than immediate family, leaving “her 5-year-old daughter with Mrs. Frederic R. Coudert Sr.” In between details of her first marriage and her husband’s political ambitions, the article writer added one further note: “Mrs. Coudert has long been interested in art and is desirous of developing her artistic talents, especially in sculpture, according to her friends…She plans eventually to have a studio in Paris, it is said.” That was all.

Finally, I found her 1977 obituary. Whereas the anonymous writer of 1930 had described her as “interested in art,” this article explained that Mary, the daughter of a wealthy Pittsburgh family, had been “encouraged to pursue an interest in art from the age of 12, when she constructed a bear cub out of clay… She later attended the Art Students League in New York City, where she studied under Edward McCartan. In 1930, she continued her studies in Paris under Jacques Loutchansky.” A small example of her art, with her trademark attenuated figures, is shown below.

What a difference a few decades can make. In 1930 she is a faithless wife, abandoning husband and child for an mere “interest” in art; by the time of her death, she is a serious artist who has followed a clear program of study, with no mention of what was involved in moving to Paris. The obituary listed her most important shows and noted specific artworks, and only briefly mentioned her marriages at the end (the second one lasted only two years). It tactfully omitted the names of those with whom she was believed to have had affairs, such as Mies van der Rohe.

Apparently, at the time of her death in Paris she was an artist with a considerable reputation. She had received important commissions – including one for the United States pavilion at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958, another for the proscenium arch in the Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center) in New York in 1966. The one shown below was created for a New York school; the theme was the fables of La Fontaine and Mary Callery designed it so that children could climb on it (safety requirements being what they are, this is no longer permitted).

But four more decades have passed and her reputation has changed yet again. Her works are not on display in the cultural institutions that own them, as far as I can determine (if anyone reading this is in New York and can check Lincoln Center for me, I would like to know if her piece is still there). There remain only some public art installations in office buildings or outdoors. Although she is considered one of the Abstract Expressionists, a recent retrospective of these artists by the Museum of Modern Art, which we saw when it came to Toronto, does not include a single mention of her.

What she is remembered for now is not her work, but her collection. She amassed an enormous body of modern art, including works by Picasso, Matisse, Fernand Leger, Alexander Calder, Salvador Dali, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Man Ray and many others. It has been sold off and dispersed, but one catalogue from a Christie’s sale in 2009 indicates its range.

And here is something curious. In many of the documents associated with her collection, including gallery records, she is listed as “Mrs. Meric Callery.” It sounds like Mary, but it is a man’s name. The twice-divorced Mary seems to have used a name that makes her sound like someone’s wife (back when women were often known only by the name of their husbands). Perhaps the name started as a mistake, something that some official wrote down in error, assuming that since she was calling herself “Mrs.,” the first name had to be a man’s.

In the decades since her death, it seems that Meric Callery the collector has overshadowed Mary Callery the sculptor. If she is remembered at all, it seems, it is as a wealthy patron of the arts. Her second husband shares this reputation, and although their marriage ended in 1936, she emerged with the wherewithal to continue collecting art.

The artists all seemed to know her. Picasso drew a picture of the back of her head (shown above). Man Ray both photographed her and sketched her (that is his photo portrait of her and his surrealist sketch shown above). Alexander Calder made her a brooch featuring her initials. She bought artworks, made introductions, encouraged those she knew to offer commissions.

How seriously did they take her as an artist in her own right? Impossible to tell. How good was her art, really? I like it, but I’m not a critic. What happened to turn Mary Callery the artist into “Mrs. Meric Callery” the wealthy benefactress?

I have many questions (and a growing file of research findings about her life), but it would take a professional to tell me why her art is now largely forgotten. If you happen to know an art historian or art critic, do please ask on my behalf.

Text by Philippa Campsie

*Some of the biographical details now contained in the Wikipedia entry are those that I have contributed, but it is still pretty bare bones.

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Walking on cast iron in Paris

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Parisian Fields

Every day, hundreds of thousands of feet pound, skip, saunter, or slog across them. Yet very few people stop to look at the cast iron embedded in Paris’s roads and sidewalks. Some pieces are intricately designed; many glisten with the patina of feet and the passage of time. They are beautiful artworks in their own right, insights into history and clues to the everyday workings of Paris.

Welcome to the world of cast-iron manhole covers, sewer grates, street tree covers, and other pieces of urban street furniture embedded underfoot.

Time and countless feet have polished into high relief this seemingly simple cast-iron manhole cover (the French translation is regard de chaussée or plaque d’égout). The design consists of geometric shapes spaced in concentric rings. The closer we look, the more we see the honourable scars of time.

The manhole covers allow city workers to go beneath the ground to service a labyrinth of pipes, wires, and other necessities of modern urban life. (It also allows urban explorers access to the vast network of tunnels underneath the city.)

Others, such as the one shown above, allow access to the pipes that deliver gas to buildings.

On my first trip to Paris, I was intrigued by the signs that announced “Eau et gaz à tous les étages” (water and gas supplied to all floors) and I still tend to notice these signs on buildings when I walk through the city. Pumped water to all floors meant water for drinking and cooking as well as flushing toilets. Pumped water was a great convenience, but sometimes breakages meant the water supply to the entire building had to be turned off. For the solution to this problem, look down, not up.

Open this kind of access and use a special long-handled tool to turn the valve off. Then the water that was leaking from the broken pipe on the third floor will stop dripping down to the ground floor. (The recriminations are a little harder to stop.)

The Parc de Bercy is a modern urban park in the old wine warehouse area. The buildings that have survived remind us of a former industrial era. Cast-iron covers such as the one shown above speak of another underground technology: telecommunications. And the greenery tells us this cover been here for some time.

I am particularly fond of the image shown above. It bears witness to the way in which trees are respected in Paris. In so many cities—I see this everyday in Toronto—trees are tightly surrounded by impermeable asphalt pavement or bricks. The stunted growth and premature deaths of so many trees on busy urban streets testify to how little water gets through to the roots.

The shape of the grate above intrigues me. Does anyone know who made it? I would love to have one of the two pieces with the straight edges as examples of beautiful industrial design. I would put them in our garden, or even my study, as art objects.

Not all trees survive. However, even in death there is something dignified about the way the trunk has been left to indicate something of interest. The generous grating testifies to the care that allowed the tree to grow to the size it did.

Visitors to Paris are sometimes intrigued—well, okay, I was intrigued—by the collections of exterior drain pipes that collect water from roofs as well as interior waste water (not sewage). Where does the water go? Follow the route of the pipes and you will see.

The cast-iron pipe disappears underground to join the larger water collection system. It collects the water that drains from streets, sidewalks, and courtyards and disappears down drain covers such as this one.

Once you are aware of these features of Paris streets, you will find it is hard to go very far without seeing them. You will also find that if you re-examine many of your photos of Paris street scenes, you will be amazed by the number of drain covers, manhole covers, and other bits of cast iron lurking in your photos. Look closely and try to decipher the clues on each one.

This one came from the foundry of Noel Chadapaux in Paris. Who was he? I am not entirely sure, but Google Books turns up his 1878 patent for “enamelling side culverts.” This is important work in the public health field. The name also led me to a website containing hundreds of photographs of French manhole covers.

When I looked at the manhole cover shown above, I did a double take. There in the streets of Paris was a name I had known as a car-crazed teenager.

I was one of many car fanatics at Delta Secondary School in Hamilton, Ontario. I was particularly inspired by our English teacher, Mr. Smith, a quietly impressive man who owned a screamingly fast Chrysler 300F, which had a fully synchronized Pont-à-Mousson four-speed transmission. Later I would learn that the transmission had proven itself in the Chrysler-powered French luxury car, the Facel Vega.

Back then, all I knew was that Pont-à-Mousson was a factory somewhere in France. Now a manhole cover on the streets of Paris rekindled half-forgotten memories of four-barrel, full-race cams, solid lifters, low-back-pressure-exhaust, and other essential elements of teenaged fantasies.

Thanks to the Internet, I now know that there are others who share my interests. At the website “Manhole Miscellany,” I found out more about Pont-à-Mousson (PAM). The foundry dates back to 1854, but in 1970, along with several other firms, it merged with the firm of Saint-Gobain, which got its start as a firm that made mirrors. Alas, the Pont-à-Mousson bridge across the Moselle River depicted in the company logo (which still appears on all its products) was destroyed in the Second World War.

(My researches also turned up the fact that there is an International Manhole Museum near Venice in Commacchio. Who knew?)

I took the picture above because I liked the bamboo and the colour of the walls in a quiet little enclave. Later I saw the chasse-roue. Now I see the manhole cover and drain.

Or consider this one. It is one of dozens that I have taken for other reasons. But now I see numerous examples of the cast-iron artwork that I previously overlooked.

Baron Haussmann is remembered for creating Paris’s wide boulevards, lined with uniform facades. But let’s not forget that his legacy includes a functional water and wastewater system, bringing eau et gaz to tous les étages while taking away sewage from tous les étages as well. For modern-day Parisians, the second achievement may be even more important than the first.

Text and photographs by Norman Ball.

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