My favorite little shop in Paris, Plaques & Pots, one of the last living vestiges of the historical belly of Paris that was the Les Halles Quarter, will be closing at the end of July.

Been a long time coming–rather, going. It isn’t easy making a living selling enamel plaques, enamel street numbers, butcher’s paper, and pottery handmade upstairs in an quarter otherwise devoted to cafés, clubs, restaurants, and mass fashion. Owner Josette Samuel, in photo, is now ready to move on.

If you live in Paris or will be visiting in July, take advantage of a last chance to visit this authentic remnant of Les Halles, even if only for a vision of the passing of time in the quarter as it pursues its drive to urban uniformity.

The wholesale and retail food industry left this area for modern installations in Rungis, south of Paris, in 1969, so Josette’s goods long ago lost their place at Les Halles. Still, I’ve to got applaud her stubborn gumption in taking over (five years ago) the shop formerly called Papeterie Moderne and trying to make a go of selling old-fashion practical-cum-decorative products in a space that’s probably smaller than your kitchen. For more about the shop, read the article I wrote soon after Josette purchased the shop.

While at Plaques & Pots, 12 rue de la Ferronerie (tel. 01 42 36 21 72), you might pick up an antique street number for yourself or for friends.

Or a street sign (left) or even some old butcher’s paper (right) that she inherited from the previous owners.

By the time you get here there may not be any clay pots left, such as this one (photo right). Knowing that I’ve always been a fan of this shop, even before she took it over, Josette gave me one of the last pots as a farewell-to-the-boutique gift. Handmade in the Les Halles Quarter.

Several other vestiges of Les Halles from its by-gone centuries as the center of the food trade in Paris continue to hold their own. Among them:
- E. Dehillerin, a family-operated store for kitchen and pastry utensils and cookware, 18-20 rue Coquillière.
- La Poule au Pot, a bistro with a décor dated 1935, serving traditional rustic fare including one of the best onion soup’s in Paris, 9 rue Vauvilliers.

- Julien Aurouze, a family-run pest exterminator that was trapping rats around Les Halles as early as 1872, 8 rue des Halles. Those are sewer rats caught in the quarter in 1925 hanging in the window on the right below.

The oldest and most lasting of the remnant of historical Les Halles is the Church of Saint Eustache, 1532-1640, which may well be the most under-visited, touristically speaking, of the major churches of Paris. It’s a Renaissance church within a Gothic body with great accoustics for its famous organ.

The enormous proportions of its interior are worth a look, but I’ve come here today to photograph one of the most endearing church sculptures in Paris, “Departure of the Fruits and Vegetables from the Heart of Paris 28 February 1969” by Raymond Mason.

“Departure” (completed in 1971) is so fitting at Saint-Eustache not only because the central food market that had existed since the Middle Ages was the raison d’être for the church but because this is a wonderful sculptural retelling of Paradise Lost, the departure from the Garden of Eden. (Having recently written an article about musicals in Paris, I note that it is also reminiscent of the departure from Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof.) Or, as the sculptor has written of that departure 40 years ago, “It’s the man of the Middle Ages that’s leaving.”

Plaques & Pots, formerly Papeterie Moderne, now joins the procession in the departure of signs and numbers from the heart of Paris July 2009.

Wishing Josette all the best in her future endeavors.

During my backpacking days in the early 80s, I developed a fondness for the bustle of European train stations, the excitement of currency change, the stock-broker-like fascination for the names up on the big board, the grandchild-like fascination with the old ladies in southern Europe who would watch your luggage for a small fee as you explored the city or went searching for a place to bed down, and the mild-to-pronounced seediness of the station neighborhood.

Each major station was different in that it represented that city or region or country yet clearly was connected with other places, people, and culture. Not only was the train station of Berlin or Paris or Belgrade or Rome specific in its own right, but the atmosphere of each lent itself to imagining stations, and all that went with them, elsewhere: Brussels, Amsterdam, Vienna, Rome, Prague, etc. Everywhere I went the grand station announced: You have arrived—and tomorrow you can be someplace totally different.

The early 80s was, in a sense, the tail end of post-war train travel, particularly in France where the arrival of the first line of the TGV, the high-speed train, opened between Paris and Lyon in 1981. Extensions and new lines from Paris would follow: south to Nice, Montpellier, Bordeux; west to Brittany, north to the Chunnel, and, since 2007, east to Champagne, Lorraine, Alsace, and Germany.

Paris is unique in Europe in that it sustains four train stations for long-distance regional and international traffic—Nord North, Est/East, Lyon, and Montparnasse—and two for less distant regional traffic—St. Lazare and Austerlitz.

With each new tentacle of the TGV the corresponding train station in Paris has been renovated and modernized. The renovation of Gare de l’Est, the East Station, is the most recent of these.

Hall within west entrance of Gare de l'Est. Photo GLK.

Over the past week I’ve made periodic stops at Gare de l’Est to get a feel for the place. I’ve been there in the morning, in the afternoon (to interview the shop owner), during early evening rush hour, and during late evening downtime. The station is a 15-minute walk from my apartment. My initial intention was to go there once to write an article about a boutique in the station that sells products from the Lorraine region. But then I also decided to mention a shop outside the station, a caterer that sells Alsatian fare. And that turned into the broader investigation about Alsace and Lorraine in Paris that resulted into the article I posted yesterday in this sites Paris/Boutiques section.

Thursday night, leaving friends in the 18th arrondissement who had invited me over for dessert and digestif (one of those city invitations you get when you call a friend at 10pm and find out that he’s in the middle of dinner with another friend), I decided to walk home. It was 1:30am. It was a relatively mild evening, it had stopped raining, I had my coat on, and I had research to do.

On my way home I walk by Gare du Nord and checked out what brasseries were still busy at that hour and how safe the area felt at 2am (quite, it seemed to me that night). From there I wandered around the streets surrounding Gare de l’Est.

Once at home I realized that there was more to write about than I’d put in my boutique article. Among other things, I hadn’t mentioned a famous 40-foot long painting at Gare de l’Est (photo above). So I went back today for more research, which I’ll soon write up for an article in the Paris/Explorations section.

Like other stations, Gare de l’Est and its surroundings have surrendered to progress the excitement, seediness, and currency exchange of French train stations as I remember them from the early 80s. What it has now is history, and a smooth ride to Lorraine and Alsace, and, for me, an easy walk home.

East entrance to Gare de l'Est. Photo GLK.