"A LOST DISTRICT AT THE CITY'S EDGE..."

INDUSTRIALIZATION TRANSFORMS AN IDYLLIC SPOT ON THE BANKS OF THE BIÈVRE

  

   Painting at the Auberge Ethchegorry (detail), the inn that occupies the site today

Reasons for the intense industrialization: The outskirt is...

• In the east where prevailing winds blow pollution

• Next to the river

• Near a railroad station

Zoom

The Gare d'Austerlitz railroad station, 

enlarged in 1867...

was one of five stations that were deliberately built on the outskirts, to keep industry and its workers away from the center. A sixth station, the Gare d'Orsay, was linked to Gare d'Austerlitz, so that wealthy travellers coming to the International Exhibit of 1900 would not be deposited in the 13th (please scroll down).

Making things worse: Tanning on the Bièvre River, which was a stinking open sewer that was fully covered over only in the 1950's. 

 Zoom (please scroll down)

 

Today, all that is left is...

• A street name where the underground river runs into the Seine:

Zoom

          Rue de Bièvre, in the central 5th, is built over the river. 

• A historical journal's attention:

• Two paintings at City Hall:

      The Bièvre River by Henri Coelas, at City Hall

  The tanners of rue Croulebarbe by Henri Coelas, at City Hall

# # #

Evoking the gloom has made this detective story classic:

Fog on Tolbiac bridge by Léo Malet (first published 1956), illustrated by Jacques Tardi (Castermann, 1988)

"Get out of here, Belita. 

Go dump your flowers wherever you like,
but get out of this place.

It will crush you, as it has others.  

 It stinks too much of misery, shit and misfortune." 

*    *    *

Next,

Disease, crime and revolt

DISEASE, CRIME AND REVOLT

THE SHAME OF PARIS, CITÉ JEANNE D'ARC WAS CALLED

(BUILT IN 1884)

"The modern Court of Miracles... those who live there have fallen 

to the last rung of misery."

-- Belinda Carter, Paris treizième

Rue Jeanne d'Arc seen from the church steps (toward 1900) 

The posthumous account of a man who
 spent his youth among the most indigent
of the capital — notably of Cité Jeanne d'Arc — 
and tells what he has seen...

Disease  

...in its dark, funereal corridors, among the stairs, corners and sordid recesses and in the midst of its shadow, the infection lurks and prowls, always in search of prey, the devouring specter: tuberculosis.

 -- A Kid, autobiographical novel by Auguste Brepson, 1927

Crime: 

The young man

in the postcard below

wears the cummerbund

of the "apaches,"*

the first modern street gangs

*From the frightening reputation of the American West's Apaches 

The cummerbund, often red

Zoom (please scroll down)

It was often worn by métro diggers who won major strikes in 1901. The apaches appropriated it for its prestige and by evoking strikers, to show that they did not work.

Revolt: Strikers make the cité a bastion (in May 1934), part of the turbulence that leads to the victory of the Socialist Popular Front:*

(In power, 1936-1939)

* Wikipedia and this blook

The besieged of Cité Jeanne d'Arc surrendered this morning  (in French) / zoom

When a Communist deputy from the 13th urges workers to vote, he is assaulted and arrested. Residents build barricades at both entrances to the cité and light fires in front of them (surely remembering La Commune), throw everything the can get their hands on at the police (as in the early 1830's and 1848), and push them back twice. 

The whole neighborhood has risen up, acclaiming the defenders of the cité who sing the Internationale and acclaim the soviets.

-- Paul Vaillant-Couturier, editor of l'Humanité (the Communist daily),

cited in Histoire et histoires du 13e, n° 6, winter 2011.

Remains of the cité: this plaque... 

On the corner of rues Jeanne d'Arc / Docteur Victor Hutinel

 [...] hovels in a neighborhood that undergoes rapid industrialization [...] A center of revolt as much as of squalor and delinquency, the Cité Jeanne d'Arc brings muscular repression, but also philanthropy.

In 1934 a movement that announces the Popular Front appears: the insurgents raise barricades [...].

And the name "Résidence Jeanne d'Arc," for this City-run housing for the elderly:

That is the sole trace.

*     *     *

Next,

Vanished industry

VANISHED INDUSTRY

ONE EXAMPLE: THE SAY RAFFINERIE WAS THE WORLD'S MAIN SUGAR REFINERY AND A HOUSEHOLD WORD 

(1832*-1968)

*An example of capitalism's take-off after the Revolution of 1830

The plant

Zoom (a series of photos of the time)

Zoom (for more pictures, please scroll down)

This aerial view of 1950 shows the establishment's extent. In fact it was much larger, since the part that is now a park with a supermarket is cut off. 

The establishment covered both sides of rue Jeanne d'Arc, which had been built for repression after the working-class insurrection of June, 1848.

When the riot mentioned on the preceding page broke out in  1934, it was finally used as intended: 

      Adapted from a map of 1892 / zoom

 # # #

A worker remembers:

"We held on thanks to coffee and sugar, which we consumed on the spot because we were searched at the exit.

My fingers bled and I would cry every night." 

-- Suzanne Chaveau, employed at Say from 1942 /
 cited in The Say refinery or Jamaica in  Paris, 2012 (in French)

Paris treizième

Working hours: 6 a.m.- 6 p.m., six days a week.

Accidents, explosions and fires: This explosion led to 41 victims,

some of whom were buried alive.

(In 1908)

Explosion at the Say refinery, Paris treizième

It was Say's third catastrophe since 1904, and other establishments had their own.

-- A Rich Industrial Past," Histoire et histoires du 13e," n° 19, 2020 (in French)

The explosion of October 10, 1915, « Paris treizième »

"The President of the Republic Raymond Poincaré on the site of the catastrophe"

"Unfortunately accidents are not rare," says the text before going on to other things.

# # #

The trace of the refinery now

History of Paris

The Say raffinery

"An industrialist from Nantes, Louis Say in 1832 buys the terrain of the 'Jamaican refinery,' then in Ivry, behind the barrier derrière of the Two-Windmills [useless erudition]: All the area in front of us. Its cauldrons produce two or three tons of sugar daily as of 1832, and its success makes it world-size with the arrival of 'indigenous' [?] beet sugar; the Say refinery is famous for its social works: In 1863 Constant Say creates bonuses and retirements for the infirm and elderly, and in 1868 a fund to help the sick and wounded. In 1900, this manufactory, which closed in 1968, was the world's most important, with 600t. [?] per day." 

The sign mentions palliatifs, 

not working conditions and accidents.  

*    *    *

Next,

A Third-World revolutionaries' training ground

A THIRD-WORLD REVOLUTIONARIES' TRAINING GROUND

FOREIGN WORKERS LIVED IN THIS CHEAPEST OF NEIGHBORHOODS, ON THE TUMULTUOUS LATIN QUARTER'S EDGE

Zoom

"Chou En Lai lived in this building during his stay in France from 1922 to 1924"

Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, who both worked at Renault,

shared a 10-meter room minutes from Cité Jeanne d'Arc.

Zoom

Zoom

Chou would help Deng become "the architect of modern China" (initiator of Chinese state capitalism) after the death of Mao Zedong (in 1976).

They may have crossed paths with Ho Chi Minh, who did odd jobs while writing/illustrating/publishing a Vietnamese political paper and who lived for a time near place d'Italie, the roundabout at the end of the street:

Later Aimé Césaire, poet of the Négritude movement and Communist deputy from Martinique, would live two streets away.

Zoom (© Assemblée nationale)

24 rue Albert Bayet

 Those plaques alone recall the tie 

between the neighborhood and the storms to come.

End of this section.

*     *     * 

Next section,
IV.4.3.
A past that is forgotten yet indelible