Paris 1951: Connecting the Dots

So far I've been concentrating on the two business cards and trying to learn something of the businesses they represented, but there are also a number of postcards in the envelope labelled Paris 1951. Ten of them, to be exact. And three photos, one of the Eiffel tower and two aerial shots.

All of the postcards seem to have been manufactured between the wars judging from the models of the cars and buses. They appear to be black and white photos, hand colored and printed on card stock
varnished on the illustrated side published by "E. R." with the notification "Paris" and "Reproduction Interdite." Most have a one-line description/title on the front, the rest have it on the back. Some are numbered.

La Madeleine - Present Day

Place Vendome - c.1900

From west to east we start with the first card at the front portico of La Madeleine, the Greek style temple in the 8th arrondissement, facing east toward Boulevard des Capucines. The second card is Place Vendome, facing north looking directly at Napoleon on his column and, past him, up the Rue de la Paix. Both those streets meet at Place de l'Opera.

Le Louvre - c.1900

 

La Bourse - Present Day

Traveling east from Place de l'Opera along Rue Reaumer we come to the third card, La Bourse, seen from the southeast corner. Turning 180 degrees and heading toward the river leads to the fourth card, Le Louvre and what appears to be a low aerial view of the courtyard from behind and above the Arc de triomphe du Carrousel. (Honestly, I think I like the old view better, with all the gardens and trees rather than the paved over courtyard of today, even with the pyramid.)

L'Hotel-de-Ville - Back Then (Even the trees are the same now)

Continuing up the river we come to the fifth card, L'Hotel-de-Ville, although the photograph was taken from across the Pont d'Arcole on Ile de la Cite just outside the front door of the Hotel Dieu.

Card number six is a general view of Paris looking down the Seine. Aside from a background of low, gray, smoggy, obscuring haze worthy of 19th Century London (which the colorist has rendered in full lung-choking grit), the most notable feature of this card is not the seven bridges of the title but the fact that it looks west from just above L'Hotel-de-Ville to the location of the seventh card which is the only one that is no longer identifiable from its title.

Le Palais de Justice (5 Quai Horloge) - Present Day

The seventh card is titled Le Palais de Justice. The building itself, although cleaned up nicely, has no signage or any indication of its function other than flying both the French and EU flags over a small, plain black door and a couple of serious security cameras, merely the number 5 Quai Horloge on the side shown in the postcard, mostly because the grand main entrance worthy of a national supreme court is around the corner. The facade shown in the view does have a few impressive medieval towers, though.

Pantheon looking up Rue Soufflot - Today

The tour now continues across the river and south down Boulevard Saint-Michel to Place Edmond Rostand where the next photograph was taken from just behind the fountain at the base of Rue Soufflot looking east to the Pantheon. The scene today looks pretty much as it did then except for the increased numbers of people and cars and the fact the corner tobacconist has been replaced by a McDonald's.

Les Invalides

The last two postcards are linked together and require a trip westward, still on the Left Bank, to a spot almost due south of where we started: Les Invalides. The first view is looking north at the exterior and dome. Once again the gardens in the card have been paved over although the building itself has been cleaned. The last card is Napoleon's Tomb.

If one traces this path on a map, starting at La Madelaine and proceeding generally in the shortest direction to the next card (La Bourse being the major exception), it forms a circuit around central Paris less than ten miles long, a kind of open sack with the Sorbonne at its bottom and Place de la Concorde and Quai D'Orsay in the open mouth.

Is there a story to go with this tour beyond a simple afternoon walkabout? Perhaps the three original photographs might help clarify.