AMONG THE COALYARDS AND THE MEAT-MARKETS
ARRONDISSEMENT XIX. (BUTTES-CHAUMONT)
In this essentially workaday district we see many houses old and quaint,
but without architectural beauty or special historic interest. Round the
park des Buttes-Chaumont, a large expanse of greenswards and shady
alleys, dull, squalid streets branch out amid coal-yards and factories.
Beneath the park are the ancient quarries which erewhile gave so much
white stone and plaster of Paris to the city builders. The name Chaumont
is derived, perhaps, from _mons calvus_, _mont chauve_, i.e. bald
mountain. In Rue de Flandres, formerly Grande Rue de la Villette, we see
a Jewish cemetery. Nos. 61 to 65 are on the site where the well-known
institution Ste-Perine, come hither from Compiègne, was first
established in Paris as a convent community in the seventeenth century,
removed to Chaillot in 1742, then to Auteuil, its present site. We find
ancient houses, some old signs, along the course of this old street, and
at No. 152 an interesting door, pavilion and bas-relief.
Rue de Belleville marks the bounds of the arrondissement. Along its
course and in the adjacent streets we see many vestiges of the past. Rue
des Bois shows us some fine old gardens as yet undisturbed. In Rue de
l’Orme, Elm Road, opening out of it, we find the remains of an ancient
park. Rue Pré-St-Gervais was a country road till 1837. From the top of
the steps in the picturesque Rue des Lilas we have a fine view across
the neighbouring _banlieue_. In the grounds of No. 40 we come upon three
benches formed of gravestones. Rue Compans was in the eighteenth century
and onwards Rue St-Denis. The church of St-Jean-Baptiste, quite modern,
is of excellent style and workmanship. The lower end of Rue de
Belleville leads us into arrondissement XX.