The streets on the other side

The map below shows the northeast corner of the 9th arrondissement with a line around the area I plan to report on. Once again, there’s a blue marker showing approximately where I live. Down the middle of the Boulevard de Rochechouart, the northern boundary of the area delineated, is a median planted with trees and shrubs, with bike paths on either side. The eastern boundary of my slice of Paris is rue du Faubourg Poissonière; on the south is rue Condorcet  and, on the west, rue des Martyrs. For the time being I’ll not be dealing with these boundary streets, just the ones inside the borders.

View The Other Side in a larger map

Click on the link below the map for a bigger version and you can zoom in to see all the street names. From left to right, the “vertical” streets running roughly north-south are called Viollet Le Duc, Lallier (a diagonal, southwest to northeast), Bochart de Saron, Rodier, Turgot, Gérando (another SW-NE diagonal), Rochechouart and Lentonnet. (Yes, there’s a rue Rochechouart in addition to the boulevard, causing occasional misdeliveries of letters, packages, etc.) As I introduce you to each street in turn, I’ll explain where its name comes from, because place-name etymology is something I love and it often leads to interesting stories.

The “horizontal” east-west streets are Cretet, Jean-Baptiste Say and Trudaine, on the west side of the area, and Delta, Dunkerque, Pétrelle and Thimonnier on the east side. There are also the Place and Square Anvers in the middle and a little Square Pétrelle, which I don’t recall ever having visited. (Ooh, an Adventure!) A blue M in a white circle means a Métro station: Métro Anvers is just north of the square of that name, and Métro Barbès-Rochechouart is at the northeast corner of the outlined area.

The eastern border street, the Faubourg Poissonière, is the boundary between the 9th arrondissement and its eastern neighbor, the 10th. So Métro Barbès-Rochechouart marks the point where three arrondissements meet: the 9th, the 10th and, lying to the north of both, the 18th. Eventually I may talk about the jurisdictional hassles this can cause when it comes to getting official help in clearing up problems at that intersection.

Next time: a little history of the area and our first street, Place Anvers.

Introduction

Welcome to my changing world. I live in Paris, France, in a borderland.

A little over nine years ago – 22 years after settling in Paris – I moved to Boulevard de Rochechouart. That name, which even the French sometimes have trouble pronouncing (it’s “roe-shuh-schwar,” more or less), belongs to one north-central stretch of the semicircular boulevard marking the old northern boundary of Paris (see map; the middle blue marker is me!). Down the street from me, to the west, this same busy street is called Boulevard de Clichy; to the east, it’s Boulevard de la Chapelle.

View Boulevards de l'exterieur in a larger map

Clichy and Rochechouart boulevards form the border between the city’s 9th and 18th arrondissements. I live on the side that’s in the 18th. These two densely populated districts differ dramatically in character – the 9th more bourgeois, quieter, quintessentially Parisian in many ways, the 18th more working class, rowdier, and filled with foreign tourists and immigrants.

Among the reasons for the difference is this: until 1860, in the place of what’s now the boulevard, there stood a wall. Inside was Paris. Outside was a borderland. I may eventually delve more deeply into that history, but for now my main purpose is to explore a microcosm of Paris on the other side of the boulevard.

Why that side and not my own? Partly because I simply find it more interesting. The concept behind the blog is a detailed look at the evolving commercial and personal life of a tiny sliver of Paris – about a dozen streets in all. The area north of me has long been devoted largely to two businesses: the cloth trade and tourism. South of the boulevard the economic activity seems much more diverse and less static.

Indeed, the idea for The Other Side of the Boulevard came to me as I walked a familiar path through the 9th to meet a friend, reflecting for the umpteenth time on how I’d never noticed this shop, that restaurant. Were they new, or had I simply not really looked at them before? If only there were a record of all the businesses in my immediate neighborhood, I thought – one that would keep track of the changes. And then of course it occurred to me that I could make that record myself: a little slice of Paris, door by door, street by street.

In the next post, I’ll introduce my chosen 12-street slice and tell you a bit more about it before getting down to the door by door chronicle.