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49-454: The quartier du Petit-Montrouge is delimited by Rue Daguerre and Boulevard Saint-Jacques to the north, by Rue de la Tombe-Issoire to the east, by Boulevard Romain Rolland to the south, and Avenue de la Porte de Châtillon and Rue des Plantes and Rue Gassendi to the west. It is bordered to the north by the quartier du Montparnasse , to the east by the quartier du Parc de Montsouris, to the south by

98-400: A flow of conceived lines. That could not be seen in my town. The sun of Art then shone only on Paris." While the area attracted people who came to live and work in the creative, bohemian environment, it also became home for political exiles such as Vladimir Lenin , Leon Trotsky , Porfirio Diaz , and Simon Petlyura . But, World War II forced the dispersal of the artistic society, and after

147-412: A good number of them HLM. In 1964, there were 95,000 new HLM apartments. The residences were often constructed in large complexes, by le chemin de grue ("the way of the crane"). The new, large apartment buildings were perfectly rectangular, to allow a crane to roll along a track and place components on both sides of the building simultaneously, saving both time and effort. The greatest increase in

196-415: A great architectural diversity. The residential areas are composed of buildings of all styles. There is no great number of Haussmanian edifices, the quartier having largely been untouched by Second French Empire urban redevelopment. They are mostly found by the town hall and on Rue Alésia. Entirely Haussmanian streets, like Rue du Lunain, are rather rare. Façades in plaster are more common, testifying to

245-490: A meeting place where cultural ideas and connections were hatched and mulled over. The cafés at the centre of Montparnasse's night-life were in the Carrefour Vavin, now renamed Place Pablo-Picasso. In Montparnasse's heyday (from 1910 to 1920), the cafés Le Dôme , Closerie des Lilas , La Rotonde , Le Select , and La Coupole —all of which are still in business—were the places where starving artists could occupy

294-523: A publishing house and in its final years the largest privately held printing press in France, was founded in Petit-Montrouge in 1836 by the priest Jacques Paul Migne . This firm published numerous religious works in rapid succession and at modest prices, ensuring their wide circulation to the lesser clergy and the laity. Its premises were destroyed by a fire on 12–13 February 1868. Attribution: This article

343-400: A rise in rents that would have forced poor families to move to the outlying districts. Another factor that led to the marginalization of this sector of society was the exponential increase in migration to the city, headed by people belonging to the sector of society already mentioned, and from the agrarian sector, in search of work and a life in civilization. The population moved predominantly to

392-449: A table all evening for a few centimes . If they fell asleep, the waiters were instructed not to wake them. Arguments were common, some fueled by intellect, others by alcohol, and if there were fights (and there often were) the police were never summoned. If you could not pay your bill, people such as La Rotonde's proprietor, Victor Libion, would often accept a drawing , holding it until the artist could pay. As such, there were times when

441-685: A tiny city grant, the museum was a non-profit operation. The Gallery of Montparnasse was one of the first to introduce abstract expressionism in France in the 1940s, and still holds contemporary art exhibitions today. SNCF , the French rail company, has its head office in Montparnasse near the 14th arrondissement. Prior to the completion of the current Air France head office in Tremblay-en-France in December 1995, Air France had its headquarters in

490-600: A tower located next to the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Montparnasse and in the 15th arrondissement ; Air France had its headquarters in the tower for about 30 years. The Vandamme Library (Bibliothèque Vandamme) is located in the neighbourhood. 48°50′37.10″N 2°19′25.72″E  /  48.8436389°N 2.3238111°E  / 48.8436389; 2.3238111 HLM (Housing) An habitation à loyer modéré ( HLM , pronounced [aʃ ɛl ɛm] , lit.   ' housing at moderate rent ' ),

539-472: Is 20 apartments. Construction of HLM is mainly financed by funds collected on Livret A , a type of savings account regulated by the Caisse des dépôts et consignations . In 2011, the French people have placed 280 billion euros on this type of savings account. In the early 1960s, “bidonvilles” housed most low-income immigrants. Bidonvilles were housing developments, commonly referred to as “shanty towns” located in

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588-619: Is a form of low-income housing in France , Algeria , Senegal , and Quebec . It may be public or private, with rent subsidies . HLMs constitute 16% of all housing in France. There are approximately four million such residences, housing an estimated 10 million people. The standard of living in the HLM housing projects is often the lowest in the country. 72% of French HLMs built before 2001 (and 95% of those built between 2001 and 2011) are small buildings or individual houses. The average size of buildings

637-469: Is also well known by drivers for its traffic congestion . The east sector of the quartier was recently made the object of a pilot development, named quartier vert , consisting principally of reducing automobile traffic, in favour of non-polluting modes of travel and highlighting the vegetational heritage. This experiment, subsequently extended to other quartiers of Paris, is diversely welcomed by residents, drivers, and retailers. The Ateliers catholiques ,

686-493: Is described in John Glassco 's 1970 book Memoirs of Montparnasse . Virtually penniless painters, sculptors, writers, poets and composers came from around the world to thrive in the creative atmosphere of Montparnasse and for the cheap rent at artist communes, such as La Ruche . Living without running water, in damp, unheated Ateliers , many sold their works for a few Francs just to buy food. Jean Cocteau once said that poverty

735-500: Is where his career as a photographer began, and where James Joyce , Gertrude Stein , Kiki of Montparnasse , Jean Cocteau and the others filed in and posed in black and white. The rue de la Gaité in Montparnasse was the site of many of the great music-hall theatres, in particular the famous " Bobino ". On their stages, using then-popular single name pseudonyms or one birth name only, Damia , Kiki , Mayol and Georgius , sang and performed to packed houses. And here too, Les Six

784-531: The Black Sun Press in Paris in 1927, publishing works by such future luminaries as D. H. Lawrence , Archibald MacLeish , James Joyce , Kay Boyle , Hart Crane , Ernest Hemingway , John Dos Passos , William Faulkner , Dorothy Parker and others. As well, Bill Bird published through his Three Mountains Press until British heiress Nancy Cunard took it over. The cafés, bistros and bars of Montparnasse were

833-460: The Catacombs of Paris open to the public is between Place Denfert-Rochereau and Rue Rémy Dumoncel. The quartier is also known for the discount fashion retailers and wholesalers of Rue d'Alésia, with relatively attractive prices, concentrated in great number between Carrefour Alésia and Rue des Plantes. Carrefour Alésia, an obligatory point of passage between the southern suburbs and the centre of Paris,

882-633: The Paris region) and the baby boom , contributed to a deficit of an estimated four million residences. Eugène Claudius-Petit , the Minister for Reconstruction and Urbanisation, promoted a scheme of massive construction of socially subsidised residences to address this problem. The new system took its foundations from the HBM ( habitation à bon marché  – "inexpensive housing") system, which had been created in 1889 and financed mainly by charitable sources rather than

931-412: The quartier has seen a rise in its standard of living, like Paris as a whole. It is today particularly sought-after because of its numerous stores, its parks, its atypical architecture, and the absence of large HLM (rent-controlled housing) complexes. There are no famous monuments in the quartier of Petit-Montrouge. The major tourist attraction is in fact underneath the quartier, since the section of

980-423: The state . The level of social construction did not significantly rise until minister Pierre Courant launched an ambitious plan in 1956, warranted by the increased rate of immigration from France's former colonies . Courant's plan had the goal of construction of at least 240,000 residences each year, and it was an unexpected success: from 1956 on, there were more than 300,000 new residences built annually, with

1029-461: The English painter Nina Hamnett arrived in Montparnasse, on her first evening the smiling man at the next table at Café de la Rotonde graciously introduced himself as "Modigliani, painter and Jew". They became good friends and Hamnett later recounting how she once borrowed a jersey and corduroy trousers from Modigliani, then went to La Rotonde and danced in the street all night. Between 1921 and 1924,

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1078-577: The Gare Montparnasse. The Pasteur Institute is located in the area. Beneath the ground are tunnels of the Catacombs of Paris . In the 18th century, students recited poems at the foot of an artificial hillock of rock rubble from the Catacombs of Paris . Ironically, they decided to baptise this mound Mount Parnassus , named after the Mount Parnassus celebrated in Ancient Greek literature . In

1127-458: The Parisian landscape. Office buildings are almost absent from this residential and shopping quartier , with the notable exception of the extreme south of the quartier , bordering on the commune of Montrouge. Until the 1960s it was a working class quartier , composed primarily of workmen, employees, merchants and members of the middle class. These groups of people arrived in the neighborhood during

1176-462: The Renovation of Paris, led by Napoleon III and the architect and urban planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann. This displacement was a forced migration. The class that suffered most in the past from the medieval living conditions of old Paris was exiled to the suburbs by Haussmannization, since the slums were cleaned up and replaced by apartments for the bourgeoisie. The renovations of the city center entailed

1225-522: The alternative to the Montmartre district which had been the intellectual breeding ground for the previous generation of artists. The Paris of Charles Baudelaire , Robert de Montesquiou , Zola , Manet , France , Degas , Fauré typically indulged in the Bohemianism cultural refinements of Dandyism . The cultural scene during the late-1920s for expatriates in Montparnasse and the 6th arrondissement

1274-657: The café's walls were littered with a collection of artworks. There were many areas where the artists congregated, one of them being near Le Dôme at no. 10 rue Delambre called the Dingo Bar . It was the hang-out of artists and ex-patriate Americans and the place where Canadian writer Morley Callaghan , who came with his friend Ernest Hemingway , both still unpublished writers, met the already-established writer F. Scott Fitzgerald . When Man Ray 's friend and Dadaist , Marcel Duchamp , left for New York City, Man Ray set up his first studio at l'Hôtel des Ecoles at no. 15 rue Delambre. This

1323-461: The centre of which is now called Place Michel Audiard. Still at this site today is a building in the French Directory architectural style, which was the old city hall annex of Montrouge (44, rue Du Couédic, 48°49′48″N 2°19′51″E  /  48.83006°N 2.33088°E  / 48.83006; 2.33088 ). From a topographical point of view, Petit-Montrouge is situated on a plateau atop

1372-427: The commune of Montrouge, and to the west by the quartier de Plaisance. The quartier du Petit-Montrouge was created at the same time as the 14th Arrondissement in 1860, when Paris annexed a part of the commune of Montrouge. Montrouge was originally divided into two distinct sectors, Grand-Montrouge (corresponding to the current commune of Montrouge) and Petit-Montrouge, the church housing development launched around 1840,

1421-575: The early 20th century, many Bretons who were driven out of their region by poverty arrived by train at Gare Montparnasse , in the heart of the Montparnasse district, and settled nearby. Montparnasse became famous in the Roaring Twenties , referred to as les Années Folles (the Crazy Years), and the 1930s as the heart of intellectual and artistic life in Paris. From 1910 to the start of World War II , Paris' artistic circles migrated to Montparnasse as

1470-423: The flow of traffic is redistributed to the whole of the left bank of the capital by Rue d'Alésia, Avenue du Maine , and Avenue du Général Leclerc (which constitutes the backbone of the quartier ). A network of more or less perpendicular streets serves the entire quartier , testifying to a belated urbanization. The belated urbanization of the quartier (after 1840), together with the availability of land, led to

1519-464: The hillsides of the left bank of the Bièvre . Overall it is flat. The centre of the quartier (as well as the centre of the arrondissement) is Place Hélène et Victor Basch, better known as Carrefour Alésia ( 48°49′40″N 2°19′37″E  /  48.827889°N 2.326816°E  / 48.827889; 2.326816 ). That is the point of convergence of the old routes of Chartres and Orléans , from which

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1568-513: The metropole with little to no running water or utilities. The largest bidonvilles were located in Champigny with the majority population being Portuguese immigrants and a similar number in Nanterre with the majority population being Algerian immigrants. The Movement for France (MPF), which was a political party, pushed for the betterment of living conditions initially stating that social demands such as

1617-408: The need for shelter were basic and thus universal. MPF’s agenda slowly changed from housing being a universal need, to an exclusive right for citizens and the working class. The new HLM buildings improved living conditions; however, social commentaries coined the term Sarcellitis which is used to describe living in a depressing environment. The dramatic change from living in bidonvilles would overlook

1666-462: The neighboring neighborhoods of the old wall d'octroi, mainly towards the faubourgs du Temple, Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau15 but also in the suburbs, mainly in the communes of Belleville, Ménilmontant, Charonne, Ternes, Montrouge, Vaugirard, and Grenelle. For this reason, Haussmann's work was especially applauded by the wealthy classes, while part of the Parisian people felt that Haussmann's works destroyed their roots and social connections. Since then

1715-626: The nine Muses of arts and sciences in Greek mythology . The hill was levelled to construct the Boulevard Montparnasse in the 18th century. During the French Revolution many dance halls and cabarets opened their doors, becoming gathering points for artists. The area is also known for cafés and bars, such as the Breton restaurants specialising in crêpes (thin pancakes) located a few blocks from

1764-531: The number of Americans in Paris swelled from 6,000 to 30,000. While most of the artistic community gathered here were struggling to eke out an existence, well-heeled American socialites such as Peggy Guggenheim , and Edith Wharton from New York City, Harry Crosby from Boston and Beatrice Wood from San Francisco were caught in the fever of creativity. Robert McAlmon , and Maria and Eugene Jolas came to Paris and published their literary magazine Transition . Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse would establish

1813-458: The number of HLMs came in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when many planned communities , or ZUP ( zones à urbaniser en priorité : "priority urbanisation zones") were constructed. They were built mostly in the suburbs of Paris . A total of 195 ZUP were created, producing over two million new, mostly HLM, residences. The emphasis shifted to improving the standard of living in the residences already in existence. In 1968, for example, only 41% of

1862-1140: The other artists who gathered in Montparnasse were Jacob Macznik , Pablo Picasso , Guillaume Apollinaire , Ossip Zadkine , Julio Gonzalez , Moise Kisling , Jean Cocteau , Erik Satie , Marios Varvoglis , Marc Chagall , Nina Hamnett , Jean Rhys , Fernand Léger , Jacques Lipchitz , Max Jacob , Blaise Cendrars , Chaïm Soutine , James Joyce , Ernest Hemingway , Yitzhak Frenkel Frenel , Michel Kikoine , Pinchus Kremegne , Amedeo Modigliani , Ford Madox Ford , Toño Salazar , Ezra Pound , Max Ernst , Marcel Duchamp , Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti , Henri Rousseau , Constantin Brâncuși , Eva Kotchever , Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore , Paul Fort , Juan Gris , Diego Rivera , Federico Cantú , Angel Zarraga , Marevna , Tsuguharu Foujita , Marie Vassilieff , Léon-Paul Fargue , Alberto Giacometti , René Iché , André Breton , Alfonso Reyes , Pascin , Nils Dardel , Salvador Dalí , Henry Miller , Samuel Beckett , Emil Cioran , Reginald Gray , Endre Ady , Joan Miró , Hilaire Hiler and, in his declining years, Edgar Degas . Montparnasse

1911-545: The river Seine , centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. It is split between the 6th , 14th , and 15th arrondissements of the city. Montparnasse has been part of Paris since 1669. The area also gives its name to: Students in the 17th century who came to recite poetry in the hilly neighbourhood nicknamed it after " Mount Parnassus ", home to

1960-436: The street. This type of construction is also found in the dead end streets (the "villas"), occasionally with real architectural treasures. Certain streets, like Rue Bezout, form an authentic architectural museum offering to the visitor a variety of styles, sizes, eras of construction, and volumes. Concentrated in this quartier are also numerous Faubourgian buildings, predating the 1860 annexation, of one or two storeys, rare in

2009-594: The unsightly buildings, but the environmental challenges (via police brutally) would soon follow in the coming years within the newly formed HLM communities. The French government hoped that by sheltering low-income populations, it would bring the standard of living up, but it instead stratified a hierarchical system.  Surveillance of immigrant groups (in HLMs) were issued by government officials to procure cultural information on immigrant communities so as to better acclimate them into French society. This racially motivated approach

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2058-627: The war Montparnasse never regained its splendour. Wealthy socialites like Peggy Guggenheim , an art collector who married artist Max Ernst , lived in the Hôtel Lutetia and frequented the artist studios of Montparnasse, acquiring pieces that would come to be recognized as masterpieces now in the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy . The Musée du Montparnasse opened in 1998 at 21 Avenue du Maine and closed in 2015. Although operating with

2107-466: The working class past of the quartier . Buildings of the 1930s are more present in the south, particularly in the ancient zone of fortifications. Finally the post-war architecture is also well represented, for better and for worse. One of the characteristics of the quartier is the importance of the individual home. Many plots were built only in façade, leaving the place for city houses or artists' workshops, often adorned with private gardens, invisible from

2156-580: The world ." They came to Montparnasse from all over the globe - from Europe, including Russia, Hungary and Ukraine , from the United States, Canada, Mexico , Central and South America, and from as far away as Japan. Manuel Ortiz de Zárate , Camilo Mori and others made their way from Chile where the profound innovations in art spawned the formation of the Grupo Montparnasse in Santiago . A few of

2205-411: Was a community where creativity was embraced with all its oddities, each new arrival welcomed unreservedly by its existing members. When Tsuguharu Foujita arrived from Japan in 1913 not knowing a soul, he met Chaïm Soutine , Amedeo Modigliani , Jules Pascin and Fernand Léger virtually the same night and within a week became friends with Juan Gris , Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse . In 1914, when

2254-411: Was a luxury in Montparnasse. First promoted by art dealers such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler , today works by those artists sell for millions of euros. In post- World War I Paris, Montparnasse was a euphoric meeting place for the artistic world. Fernand Léger wrote of that period: "man...relaxes and recaptures his taste for life, his frenzy to dance, to spend money ...an explosion of life-force fills

2303-438: Was formed, creating music based on the ideas of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau . The poet Max Jacob said he came to Montparnasse to "sin disgracefully", but Marc Chagall summed it up differently when he explained why he had gone to Montparnasse: "I aspired to see with my own eyes what I had heard of from so far away: this revolution of the eye, this rotation of colours, which spontaneously and astutely merge with one another in

2352-415: Was originally a translation of this version of fr:Petit-Montrouge (quartier parisien) in the francophone Misplaced Pages. 48°49′42.62″N 2°19′37.39″E  /  48.8285056°N 2.3270528°E  / 48.8285056; 2.3270528 Montparnasse Montparnasse ( French: [mɔ̃paʁnas] ) is an area in the south of Paris , France , on the left bank of

2401-475: Was perpetuated by the Fifth Republic officials because they believed the immigrant communities were incapable of living in France. The lack of assimilation was a result of inequality and discrimination thus keeping immigrants in the HLM suburbs. The low level of construction during and between the two world wars , the rural exodus that had started to take place in France (directed mainly at Île-de-France ,

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