Passage Longueville
Géricault Life
1789 Les licteurs rapportent à Brutus les corps de ses fils (detail) Jacques Louis David, Louvre
Introduction
In 1792, the Hôtel de Longueville was not simply a singe-purposed structure dedicated to the manufacture and sale of tobacco, but rather a community of newly-minted businesses organized around the Passage Longueville, a short street in the heart of the Tuileries.
Passage Longueville
“The beautiful palace of the Duc de Choiseul has just been sold to a company of entrepreneurs. This mania to build new streets grows and grows! A new street will pierce the superb garden of this palace, one will cross the Hospital of Quinz-vingts, one through the Hôtel de Longueville and its tobacco manufactory, another through the Conti palace, and another through the ancient Hôtel d’Aligre. …In the end, our sensibilities must rebel: Paris will become like a sieve!” Correspondance Littéraire Secrete N° 8 de Paris le 19 Fevrier 1780 – Annonces, affiches et avis divers ou Journal général de France, Du vendredi 31, Décembre 1779.
This street ‘piercing’ the Hôtel de Longueville became known as the Passage Longueville. Originally designed to connect the rue St.-Thomas du Louvre with the rue St.-Nicaise and the Place du Carrousel, the Passage Longueville transformed the spaces within the Hôtel de Longueville and the surrounding area. The Hôtel de Longueville became both a destination for those doing business with the tobacco tax farmers and a thoroughfare. With the departure of the tax farmers a decade later, the Hotel de Longueville was open to businesses of all kinds, and became one of the most important cultural sites in Paris. A young artillery officer who would become the emperor of France, artisans – Géricault’s father, his mother, grandmother, uncles, cousins – the Vernets, and other key figures in Géricault’s life lived or worked nearby. Countless others from Paris, France, and abroad flocked to the Hôtel de Longueville and the shops along the Passage Longueville to shop for art – furniture, wallpaper, books, and products of all kinds; to eat, drink, dance, be entertained and mystified; to gamble, buy insurance, and travel. For roughly fifteen years the Hôtel de Longueville would be a hub of commerce, culture, and transportation, one of the most important and frequently visited in Paris. And yes, tobacco products were made and sold there, too.
Today, the Louvre pyramid stands roughly where the Hôtel de Longueville once stood. Yet, we can find no modern study of the Hôtel de Longueville. The only mention of the Passage Longueville I can locate appears in Paris guide books from the late 18th century, contemporary affiches and announcements, and in rare 19th-century volumes. Some very good modern studies mention events or individuals connected with the Hôtel de Longueville. Yet, such studies tell us very little about the people living and working there as a community, or their interests and shared experiences. Archival and other evidence suggests members of this community and their experiences had an strong impact on Théodore Géricault and his family.
We begin by identifying nearby buildings, and by establishing the physical dimensions of the Hôtel de Longueville in 1792 and the three largest business tenants in the space. The first two maps situate the Hôtel de Longueville in relation to other sites in the Tuileries. Clicking the link in blue below each will open a scalable map in a new window. The third identifies the three largest business concerns at the Hôtel de Longueville in 1792.
Tuileries Map (detail Verniquet) courtesy of David Rumsey Maps. (Click the blue link for a larger view.)
Key buildings visible (high-resolution map in a new window) include the Tuileries palace and gardens; the Cour de Manege (the National Assembly met in the adjacent building); the Place Louis le Grand (Place Vendome); the Couvent de Jacobins, (home to the Jacobin club and Robespierre); and the Palais Royal (famed for commerce of all kinds).
Tuileries Map (detail Jaillot) courtesy of David Rumsey Maps.
The Jaillot map (scalable map in a new window) allows us to see the Louvre and the Jardin de l’Infante; then buildings connecting the Louvre to the Galeries du Louvre (home of the Vernets). We can also see a number of small streets and buildings, such as the Hôtel d’Elbeuf (Elbœuf) and the Quinze-Vingts. The Jaillot map (1775) allows us to view the Hôtel de Longueville before the introduction of the street within the structure, and how such a street would simplify movement within the Tuileries.
Hôtel de Longueville – Main Tenants – January, 1792; Map (detail Verniquet) courtesy of David Rumsey Maps.
We turn now to the physical dimensions of the Hôtel de Longueville. The structure was about 130 meters long and 65 meters wide – roughly 20 meters longer and wider than a modern football (soccer) field. Rectangular courtyards, passages, and structures organize the space around an axis (the Passage Longueville) running east west. Most buildings were of stone and had attics and cellars. Most buildings near the Place du Carrousel were two stories high, those of the palace at least three. (Apartment blocks in Paris at this time were often much higher, up to seven stories.) A scattering of sheds and other wooden buildings featured in most of the courtyards. The connecting passages were wide enough for people to move through comfortably. Interior spaces originally designed for nobility, or royalty, were more than comfortable. As noted, the Robillards leased the palace and the buildings along the rue St.-Thomas du Louvre, and had access to the tobacco manufactory near the Place du Carrousel (above).
The western section of the Hôtel de Longueville structure consisted of two large rectangular buildings, each with a large interior courtyard and gate opening onto the Passage Longueville. The northern rectangle ‘faced’ onto the rue Saint-Nicaise; the southern rectangle ‘faced’ onto the place du Carrousel. Étienne Anisson Duperon (Duperron) leased all the space attached to the the entire western part (upper rectangle) of the structure facing onto the rue St. Nicaise, (see map above).
Étienne Alexandre Jacques Anisson Duperon, the director of the Imprimerie Royale, (royal printing works), owned a number of properties in the Tuileries and lived on the rue des Orties nearby, where he ran the royal printing works in the Galeries du Louvre. His intelligence, connections, and wealth allowed him to prosper. Duperon established his own business, the Manufacture Républicaine de Papiers Peints (Republican Wallpaper Manufactory) within his space at the Hôtel de Longueville in January, 1792, and leased other parts to other entrepreneurs.
The Encan National, or national auction house, was the third significant new business established at the Hôtel de Longueville in January, 1792. The two partners, Pierre Charles Marie Famin and Savinien Edme Fauvelet (de Charbonnieres), ran what was essentially an auction house/pawn-shop for the well-off, those who possessed fine curtains and furniture, but were in need of ready cash, perhaps for an urgent trip abroad. In addition to the auction house indicated on the map (Encan), Famin and Fauvelet also sub-leased apartments within the palace of the Hôtel de Longueville from the Robillard tobacco concern in December, 1791.
Read the related piece: Commerce-Culture in the current issue. We will continue our examination of this community of entrepreneurs and artists next month.