The brief, mournful fate of the luxurious Normandie (France's Art Deco floating paradise) - Trash Talking Paris (Cleaning the 'cave') - A fab used book market - Buy Local? & A book review: Paris Noir
A unique look at Paris and its soul....
The intriguing mystery of France’s majestic SS Normandie...the regal liner that keeps on giving...
Trash Talking Paris (which leads to)- The Marché du Livre Ancien et d'Occasion (Bag a book kill, scope out the ducks & swagger home, all for €10).
Need help with a portable (cell) in Paris?
Buying Local in Paris (oooh, Good luck)!
Outré Paris Books - New Section
New 60secondparis Section: Paris Books: Suggestions on books awash in Paris atmosphere or insights; real, magical or otherwise. Recommendations to stir your heart and mind and offer a rare glimpse into what Paris was truly like during varied periods. Reader Beware: As a cliche-free & non-hawking newsletter no titles about Being, Eating, Thinking etc...Parisian. Non!
STORY - The Art of the SS Normandie: Can’t fly to France to see the art? Try Brooklyn!…
Reading about the SS Normandie is like watching a medical drama where the dying patient’s organs get transplanted so others may live. Built at unimaginable cost in the midst of the Great Depression, she was France's wildly successful attempt at creating the world’s most sophisticated, fastest, largest and elegant ocean-liner ever. The SS Normandie was a beacon of art, glory and style for the world.
But, ...to start: The SS Normandie.
Below: “Normandie's first-class dining hall was the largest room afloat. At 93m/305ft, longer than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, passengers entered through 6m/20ft tall doors adorned with bronze medallions by artist Raymond Subes. It sat 700 at 157 tables!” Source
The photography is made circa 1935 in France and the author in unknown., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
We start in the Dining Hall
Raymond Subes was a legendary French metal worker of the Art Deco period and one of France's most celebrated artisans. His work is adored across the planet.
One of many spectacular endeavors are his high bronze doors crafted for the Normadie’s dining room. At 20 ft/6m height the doors were fronted with 10 finely wrought medallions, 9 displaying idyllic French regions, and the 10th, Normandie's sister-ship, Île-de-France. (Subes also did decorative work on the ocean liners Île-de-France, the Lafayette, and the Atlantic).
In this fabulous pic from Ocean Liners Magazine you can (…squint!) just make out the Normandie's massive doors and 10 original medallions. Note the tux & gown-clad swanky 1st class passengers lolling about...(they clearly knew how to loll back then…)_
Sehttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Normandie_doors.jpge Source
Luckily, if you live near NYC you can glimpse those very medallions today — and don’t need a first class ticket to France, but a Metro card to Brooklyn, NY. Specifically, Our Lady of Lebanon Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn Heights.
There, during a renovation decades back the church* bought the Normandie's medallions. The fate of the actual doors seems unclear, but 6 of the original 10 medallions now adorn the church's Henry Street entrance....as below.
The Medallions: Upper left: Cathédrale Saint-Pierre in Lisieux. Upper right: Église Notre-Dame in Saint-Lô. Middle left: rue de l'Horloge and tour de l'Horloge in Évreux. Middle right: église Saint-Pierre and the place du Marché-au-Bois in Caen. The Lower left is shows the Tour du Gros-Horloge in Rouen. And lower right, Montagne and fort du Roule in Cherbourg.
3 Cocktail Party Tidbits: 1-*Mansour Stephan, the church's pastor at the time of the acquisition, must have adored everything French: hearing of a new colored-glass technique by French artist Jean Crotti, (called Gemmaux) he wanted the church to be the world's first with all Gemmaux windows. Crotti had production problems back in France and the windows never ‘paned’ out. 2-The Normandie's Captain's Table is also in the church. And, 3 - as per The New York Landmarks Conservancy website , parts of the marble flooring from the 1939 World's Fair French pavilion were also used in a renovation. Gotta wonder if there's some sort of historical reference (a plaque, etc) giving worshipers the history to all that artwork?
The remaining 4 medallions are on the Remsen street doors. (See details below..)
Upper left medallion: Le Havre, with sister ship (Ile de France) leaving the harbor. Upper right medallion: Château of Alençon. Lower left medallion: Château of Dieppe. Lower right medallion: Château of Falaise.
FROM SHIP TO SHORE: So, how did these medallions (& the Captain’s table), get from the the SS Normandie, pride of France's artistic design prowess, to Brooklyn?
Short Take on a Big Ship: Normandie entered service in ‘35 and had her maiden voyage in ‘36. A exalted symbol and the pride of French design, no expense was spared on creating her sumptuous design and lavish interiors. The product of earlier French ship design, and improving on other majestic liners, she was decked out all in Art Déco and Streamline Moderne style….“the most extravagantly decorated liner of her day, perhaps..all time …the main dining room was in hammered glass, bronze and Lalique and was longer than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Three decks in height. She had the first theater ever on a liner and a complete stage. Her indoor pool was an 80ft/25m tiled artwork, with graduating levels. …The only liner with an outdoor regulation-sized tennis court. It's Winter Garden had exotic birds..sprays of water, greenery, ...creating an almost tropical jungle retreat. The main lounge was decorated with glass panels by Dupas and featured the largest Aubusson carpet afloat. Each first class cabin was done in totally different decor, resulting in 400 different concepts and themes altogether. Of two deluxe apartments...each had four bedrooms, private terrace, servants' quarters private dining salon...” Source. Many sculptures and wall paintings made allusions to Normandy, the province of France, after which Normandie was named.
She may have been the most regal vessel afloat, but hers was a short reign.
The Fall of France & the Loss of Normandie
In the wake of France’s shockingly unexpected collapse to Germany in 1940, the US government seized the Normandie...and later (post Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor) decided to strip then re-purpose her as a troop transport. Prior to the retrofitting Normandie’s furnishings, the decorations and unique artworks, were removed, and many later sold off via art auctions. One particular treasure, the huge Dupas glass mural panels, was donated to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
SINKING: During conversion in 1942 sparks from a welders torch started a blaze among, oddly, the life preservers (…made of kapok) that would burn, witnessed by tens of thousands of New Yorkers, for many hours. The mountain of water sprayed to save her eventually caused her to keel over early the next morning. A charred hulk. The remnants of what had once been a shining symbol of France’s artistic world prowess vanished under the auctioneer's hammer. Kinda.
WATCH YOU TUBE Pathé NEWS COVERAGE: ‘Normandie Meets a Fiery End’ : Footage & efforts to fight blaze, (voiced in inimitable British accented 1940’s style and ‘Oh My Gosh, Hurry!” music)!
Tragic Fact: “The New York Fire Department responded within 15 minutes, but were horrified to learn the French fittings on the Normandie were not compatible with their hoses. Less than an hour after the fire broke out, the ship was a raging inferno” SOURCE
In 1946 Normandie sold for a paltry $161,000 as scrap (to NJ’s Lipsett Scrapyard). A harsh end...and yet, it seems much of Normandie was saved...(Did the US government record what artistic gems were removed prior to the retrofitting and subsequent blaze? Gotta wonder...)!
The Normandie may be gone, but she isn't forgotten. Especially with much of her still about: Subes' Art Deco door medallions are in Brooklyn, New York. Other Normandie furnishings hang in famed New York cultural venues like the Met as well as private galleries. It seems Malcolm FORBES bought the Normandie Panel in 1981 (as a wedding gift for, and on the day of, one son’s wedding) …but it was sold in 2017. (I’d often marvel at the Toy Boat Galleries display at Forbes’s (then) 5th Ave head office while working there years back).
Here’s a link to Normandie glass works in Houston, Texas (US),
Writing this I began to wonder if other Normandie salvaged/auctioned art was still out there…and available for purchase. The answer is.....oui! So, if you want to own a part of storied French maritime history all you need is a rather hefty bucket of cash.
For a ship that sank some 80 years ago, there seems to be no shortage of her treasured artwork floating about. Assuming it is all legit.
A quick but hardly exhaustive search for Normandie items turned up two French Art Deco Bronze and Glass Wall Lights for but €7,615.73 (not including shipping) and, at the same gallery, a raft of Curved Verre Églomisé Panels...(Kudos if you know what this is, I had to Goggle it).
And, assuming you've still wads of gelt, this New York Gallery has 5 listings for SS Normadie interiors. (Again, Curved Verre Églomisé Panels!
Normandie Commemorative Bronze Medallion see this site
Dining Room Brass Doorknobs (a bargain at btwn USD 12-18K) see this 2007 site
To end I leave you with an E-Bay site …offering a raft of Normandie collectibles.
RESULT: My Normandie treasure-hunt was a rush job. Just imagine the possible cache of past possessions you could locate after a serious canvassing of the galleries, sales sites etc., possessing her art. Meanwhile….
Two Normandie Architectural Footnotes: There are many more.
The Normandie Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico has one of the Normandie's two original signs on its roof!
New York's The Normandy building on the upper west side is mentioned as having been named after the Normandie.
Why didn’t France bid for the Normandie? While France had a questionable government during WWII, it then had 5 presidents in the short-lived Provisional Government of the French Republic (1944–1946). Gotta think buying a sunken ship, even the famed treasure that was the Normandie, paled in comparison to the screaming needs of kick-starting the country’s post-war moribund economy and following four years of hellish Nazi occupation, rationing and and so on….
SS Normandie & The Big Screen? (You know, movies….etc.)
The Normandie saga certainly warrants full cinematic treatment. A cinematographer’s life’s dream! You’d need a vast, multilingual cast, and of course have principal photography in Paris, New York, ….On the plot side, there are some compelling backstories to weave in, as in:
Nazis & The Mob: When the Normandie arrived in NY in 1939 notorious mobster “Lucky” Luciano was in prison and supposedly wondered if a possible threat against the ship could get him sprung (pardoned). While never acted upon many rumors still circulate of an arrangement between the gov’t and the ‘mob’ to protect the NY docks from Nazi interference. This rumor not only persists but is taken as gospel by many. This and other rumors were probably greatly fueled after the release of Alfred Hitchcocks’ film Saboteur, which used actual (post-fire) Normandie footage (that Hitchcock rushed to shoot!) edited in to show a saboteur smirking from the back of a cab as it passes the burnt vessel. (‘Hitch’ later said the Navy raised hell with Universal about that scene, as it suggested both sabotage and that the US Navy wasn’t doing its job).
Artistic & Financial Challenge: The sheer scale of the challenge in recreating the unimaginable splendor of the ships’ interior, her pioneering artwork, the 400 individually styled and decorated rooms…(the Barbar styled swimming pool), tennis courts and the longer than Versailles Hall of Mirrors grand salon…and too many other deluxe touches might be too rich for a studio to tackle. (Though surely France could pony up some euros, non)?
That’s all I got.
Additional SS Normandie info:
The Met website re Normandie
https://brooklyncatholic.blogspot.com/2009/09/our-lady-of-lebanon.html
A Ships Tale: https://richardrabel.com/art-deco-new-york-and-the-ss-normandie
https://brooklyncatholic.blogspot.com/
Sehttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Normandie_doors.jpge Source
Interested in that Brooklyn angle? The Brooklyn Blog with the story of the door medallions
STORY 2 Paris Trash Talk: Trash, the Economy & an amazing used book market (The Marché du Livre Ancien et d'Occasion ).
One widely feared and oft' procrastinated Parisian drudgery is the clearing out of one's cave/cellar. If an old building (let's say a century or older) this usually involves spelunking into a dark, dank and depressing subterranean realm, padding about earthen floors in a nether-place crammed with perhaps your one sole antique, itself a precious atoll surrounded by a sea of items of either doubtful utility or long forgotten provenance. Or, both.
Our 1880’s basement is the stuff of horror flicks: eerily strung anemic light-bulbs, whispering drafts, narrow, catacomb-like corridors, musty odors, stains, plus evidence of flooding and things which scurry about. Our cave is a hybridized trove of long faded relatives' possessions from hither but mostly, very yon. Plus, unknown accretions from previous lives, travels and questionable Brocantes buys (garage sale/antique sales), as in dilapidated manual typewrites, rusty movie cameras...). While in the cave recently and making (what I thought was) speedy progress la patronne (boss) suddenly arrived...
Patronne “What the fu…? Stinky books from crazy aunt Edna*. Really? A broken sword? You've dragged them from NY, to Montreal, to Saskatchewan to....for gods sake, get rid of them”!
*real person.
Moi: “Hey, these could be valuable..I’m sure a book store will ….buy …them...and....(my pleas ended when the first volley of daggers, like silently fired Katyusha-rockets, flew from her irises into my chest..)
“Okay, ...okaaay…gone.”
Saying Adieu - So, dumping trash in Paris is kids play . Once you've held the wake for your precious items, visit the Ville de Paris website, type in encombrants,* and be whisked to a page where you list all the junk, trash, and Crazy Aunt Edna's priceless books, for hauling. Free, Gratis. Gone. you’ll set an ID number to tape on stuff when you place it outside (usually at night or early ayem) and that's it. Fin.
*Demande de retrait des encombrants/Removal of bulky items
Here’s the link: https://teleservices.paris.fr/ramen/
This is when I began worrying about the Paris economy. I placed my junk outside for hauling the next morning. But next morning came an e-mail from the city saying a crew passed by but found nothing. Everything placed outside the building had magically, a la Harry Houdini, vanished in the night. This isn't surprising and has happened in the past. Lots of folks are keen to repair a broken lamp or a wobbly fan. But my pile was rotten, nasty stuff: A 20-kilo clump of decades-old decayed, fused together, fungus-covered bathroom tiles. Gone. Cracked plastic storage boxes with dozens of crazy aunt Edna's soggy books, a literary stew. Gone. This wasn't repairable stuff. It was stuff that could gag a rat. Gone.
Years back I lived just off 5th on New York's kinda' swanky upper east side (15 steps from the Guggenheim) and often found discarded gems by my building that neighbours had jettisoned when moving ( once, a teak Venetian blind set that within minutes was decorating my living room windows). Being handy, I'd scoop up these low-hanging urban fruit, …easily repaired items. They had use and value.
Sure, to each their own, but I can't help linking Paris's worsening economy with the disappearance of truly abject trash. (Neighbours say they don't even bother with the city website. They leave things out. And...pooof!""). My theory was kinda’ reinforced when I forgot to toss a rusted old wire clothes-dryer. Propping it up against my building one night, a man slipped up behind me waiting for me to finish.
“Can I have that?”
Me: “Sure.”
“You putting anything else out tomorrow?”
segue to....
Story 2a - Sidebar- Book Market - Marché du Livre Ancien et d'Occasion & just restored Parc Georges-Brassens:
Cleaning out the cave left me with about half a Ford pick-ups’ worth of good books which I gave to a cool, young couple who manage some tables at the fantastic used book market bordering Parc Georges-Brassens in the 15th. The Marché du Livre Ancien et d'Occasion sits on the restored site of the famed meat-fish (and horse!) market.
Only open weekends, this atmospheric gem caters to all tastes, genres, & price ranges. Here be rare & used books, BD's, posters, old photos, vintage maps, and all the related literary arcana you could wish for. (You can bag a book kill, swagger home, and all for €10). Many English books!
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
Better still, ...catty-cornered from the entrance is a superbe boulangerie bursting with scrumptious treats, plus there are great people-gawking (let’s be honest) resto's lining the streets. The parc was just stunningly re-designed and, by the pond, resembles a mini Versailles, with ducks undulating about, and wide serene, inviting spaces to explore! Plus, many serpentining footpaths, comfy reading nooks and …Okay, think I just won the Gold Medal for longest off-subject tangent....
Story 3 - Can You Hear Me Now? Need a cell before hitting Paris Terra Firma? These links may help. Or, not.
From Frances' Orange site: “Compare, subscribe and save on your Internet and mobile phone plans with Selectra! Call our English helpline”. Should you need, here’s the number: +33 977557227
Dealing with French Cell Problem? Try an English help line!
https://en.selectra.info/broadband-phone-france/providers/orange/contact
FYI: French carrier Orange is supposedly the only telco with a dedicated English-speaking customer support helpline, available at 09 69 36 39 00 (+33 9 69 39 39 00 when dialed from abroad). It is not free!
Story 4 - Yet Another Reason to Beware ‘Buy Local’.
Talk about timing: Just as the recent Paris 'Made in France' exhibition was underway the Gov't released a report exposing fraudulent 'Made in France products...’
Have you always been a tad suspicions about 'Buy Local'? It seems a meritable concept --support, nurture and develop locals making and offering products of equal quality & price. I’m always up for buying local jams, honey & and food stuffs, but, while hardly a materialistic boy, too many basic items can't be had locally. (“Hanes T-shirts (“Exhibit A your honour!”) are a no-go option. And even if available, not at anywhere near affordable prices. (I buy Tee's from Muji or similar outlets, but where these items hail from is a mystery).
Oh have I tried! A few years back, visiting Bordeaux... I laid out 70 balles (slang for euros) for water-proof boots. Happily ponied up after the woman in the stall, standing in a small pool of rainwater, showed my hers. “Dry as a bone” she cooed! Two weeks later in a lightly rainy Paris, I got home and had to peel the soaking spongy masses off my feet. Adios 70 balles!
There are great bargains to be had locally...but you need to hunt and have the time to hunt! Reality is, no-one in France is producing comfy Levi-style jeans for a price that doesn't stray into the lofty, financial 3-figure ‘No-Fly’ zone of most people’s budgets. Back to Muji!
And now we learn that Buy France is more of a whimsical notion than reality: A ton of merch & food labeled as Made in France...ain't!
A French government investigation found lots of folks marketing the Made in France label were fraudulent. Companies included cosmetics makers, an underwear brand, a mattress seller, etc. (Seriously, …underwear? Si!, seems the briefs in question, highly touted on social media, were made in Spain. ¡No me digas!)
Finally: Review of the amazing Paris Noir. A book that will change you!
Paris Noir - One of the first utterly absorbing and un-put-down-able Paris books I devoured was the hard to categorize (just check out the reviews!) Paris Noir! It is a book awash in the almost achromatic heavy atmosphere of a long faded Paris: serpentine streets, kind-hearted reprobates, folks with one foot on legal terra-firma and the other in some murky indefinable realm of a pre-WWII Paris, one under the boot of Germany, and one afterwards. It mixes magic, wonder and some historical accuracy and….well, so much more. Much of the tale is told in 5th rate bistros and dark dingy bars, often at the hours of night which do not appear on clocks, and that seem known only to a select coterie of 5th rrondissement denizens who seem to appear and fade as needed.
fin