France Revisited asked Lesley Schwarzman and Laura Barton to attend on our behalf the press opening of Cézanne and Beyond, a major exhibit showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until May 17, 2009. Here is Lesley’s report.

“There is more Cézanne within a 4 mile radius of the Philadelphia Museum of Art than in all of Paris,” says exhibit organizer Joseph J. Rishel, referring to the Cézanne and Beyond exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Cezanne collection at the Barnes Foundation in nearby Merion, PA.

The French artist Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) is widely considered to be the father of modern art. His life and work have inspired artists for a century. The current exhibit shows some fifty paintings, watercolors and drawings by Cézanne and includes one hundred paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures by eighteen other artists from Cezanne’s time up to the present.

Over the past hundred years, particularly beginning with the posthumous retrospective of Cézanne’s work in 1907, artists have looked to him for inspiration—and he has provided it in various ways. Some found inspiration in his single-minded artistic vision, others in his close observation of nature, and still others in his simplification of shapes and colors.

As neither a trained artist nor an art historian, it was especially rewarding for me to be accompanied at the exhibit but an artist who has herself been inspired by Cézanne: Laura Barton, who lives just outside of Philadelphia in West Chester, PA. (The fact that Laura and I went to high school together, that it was Laura’s birthday, and that we were going out to lunch afterwards all added to the pleasure.) Laura echoed the chorus of artists displayed in the exhibit in saying that “Cézanne’s simplification of shapes and color inspired me to get the true essence of an object or scene with as little fussing around as possible.”

One of my favorite works in the show is Cézanne’s painting of his wife, whom he is said to have adored, sitting dignified yet relaxed in a red armchair.

Go to the show, running through May 17, to see how Matisse and Picasso interpreted that painting on their respective canvas, featuring their respective loved one. Click here for more information about the exhibit.

Here is one of my favorite recent works by Laura Barton that also reveals her inspiration from Cézanne. Click here for more information about Laura’s work.

By Gary Lee Kraut

I didn’t come looking for Parisian dining when I set out to explore French restaurants in Philadelphia. I came instead to examine the ways in which chefs and restaurateurs present French cuisine in the City of Brotherly Love and to decide which I would recommend and return to given the opportunity.

The round-up that follows is the fruit of extensive though not exhaustive investigation. Some will contend that I was more interested in the overall experience of French dining in Philadelphia than the cuisine itself. They would be right.

As with all restaurants reviewed and described on France Revisited, I’m looking to enjoy the company of table companions (Bingo! on all accounts) and to find a client-friendly atmosphere, knowledgeable service, fresh produce, cooking skills no less promising than the menu, a price no more ambitious than the combination of the previous four, and anything else that marks a meal.

What I encountered along the way are entrées, toilettes, crêpes, musiques, and Georges.

The Entrée
La Minette, at 6th and Bainbridge, was the first of the restaurants I tested for this article so it was here that I first encountered French restaurant talk à la Philadelphie. Since I’d recently debarked after seven months in France, it confused the francophied emulsion between my ears to have the waiter ask what I wanted for my entrée immediately after I order what I thought to be my entrée.

I know of course that we Americans call the main course the entrée. But I know, too, that in French the entrée indicates the entrance to the meal, meaning the appetizer, whereas le plat (principal) refers to the main dish or course. So having ordered what my mind was telling me was l’entrée only to have a man dressed as a French waiter ask me what I then wanted for my entrée threw me for a loop. I must have shown an expression of foreign incomprehension because he looked back the same way.

It isn’t easy coming home.

After trying a half-dozen other French restaurants in Philadelphia I realize that everyone, including the French restaurateurs, uses the same faux French restaurant terminology. The appetizer is called the hors d’oeuvre even though everyone knows that an hors d’oeuvre is what you have when you’re waiting for a wedding reception to begin, and the main course is called the entrée, even though those who have been to France know that the entrée is what you order when someone else is footing the bill.

I understand that this linguistic pirouette is simply an effort to make the wining and dining experience in America French yet accessible and that it is an English-language phenomenon rather than a Philadelphia phenomenon. Still it’s unnerving to me. I say that out of habit rather than snobbery. It’s like an Englishman who comes to America and hears people windging about how pissed they are; he naturally wonders why they don’t ever suggests going to a proper pub so that they can all get pissed together.

While on the subject of language, I note that La Minette has an unfortunate name that would translate as the kitty if referring to your pussy cat, the darling if referring to your precious loved one, and that hot chick if referring to a girl who probably has a fake ID, none of which is terribly appetizing when you want your duck served medium rare and a glass of pinot.

Nevertheless, I found La Minette, opened in the fall of 2008, to be quite earnest in its effort to be a French bistro. The décor is pleasant industrio-French, the music is a-notch-too-high French, the menu is appetizingly classic and varied French. This isn’t wow food, and the kitchen might try adding some condiments and sauces to enhance its dishes, but still I’d go back, and I’d know what to say when asked about my entrée.
Les Toilettes
Olivier Desaintmartin owns and operates the French restaurants that are the most authentic of the seven that I tried in Philadelphia.

By authentic I mean that they’re effortlessly French. Olivier doesn’t seem to be trying too hard to be the proverbial French chef-restaurateur. That could be because he actually is a French chef-restaurateur, yet some French people try to be too French sometimes—I come across them all the time in France.

Olivier’s Caribou Café, at 11th and Walnut, is simply a welcoming place to go for a meal, a snack, or a drink. What I like about Caribou is that it’s essentially an American bar that serves French food. Sure the waiters here, as in all of these restaurants, have a you’ll-love-it-it’s-French approach to describing some dishes, something that doesn’t happen in, say, Mexican or Chinese restaurants in Philadelphia, but at least they’re polite about it.

Altogether, Olivier and Caribou don’t come across as looking up or down on anyone. As a result I enjoyed a good, moderately-priced meal here that would be worth repeating.

Olivier’s second restaurant, Zinc, around the corner from Caribou on 11th,  is a small, cozy restaurant with a zinc bar. Zinc promotes itself as a bistro à vins, which is quite the fashion in France, where every awning promises something à vins (bar à vins, bistro à vins, restaurant à vins) to indicate that the owner knows something about wine, as though other bistros are operated by people who know about nothing but water, with or without gas.

Similarly, Olivier, 47, who comes from Picardy, in northern France, tells everyone that he’s from Champagne because he thinks that it gives him extra mileage in running French restaurants, as though being French weren’t enough.

He came to the U.S. in 1986 to become the hands-on chef of a new French restaurant then about to open in New York, the soon-to-be great Le Bernadin. After a year he moved onto other opportunities but I’ll spare you the C.V. because what really interests me about Zinc—after the warm oyster and spinach in a puff pastry, the thick pork chop au gratin, and the pinot—is the fact that the word “Toilette” on the door of the WC is missing an s.

You see, in French the loo is always plural, les toilettes, even if there’s just one; in a restaurant or in someone’s home you would ask Où sont les toilettes, s’il vous plaît? One wonders if maybe Olivier is lying about more than being from Champagne; perhaps he isn’t from France at all but rather from Belgium since, in a quirk of European linguistics, while the French write toilettes the Francophone Belgians write toilette. Notice the missing, though silent, s.

Hence the following Belgian joke:

Why is it “toilettes” in France and “toilette” in Belgium? Because in Belgium you find a clean one on the first try while in France you have to look into several before find one that’s clean.

(By the way, Zinc only has one and it was clean that night.)

When I inquired about Olivier s-less toilette he told me that a French [Belgian?] waitress who worked there made the sign to make him happy and that he didn’t want to disappoint her by changing it. Then he told me that he would be going to France soon and was planning on getting a correctly spelled enamel sign while there.

I’m not going back to either of Olivier’s restaurants until he does. Then I’ll be happy to return.

(Post note, 6 weeks later: Olivier has put up the new toilettes sign. See my Blog entry of Feb. 26, 2009.)

Noises
One of my pet restaurant peeves is the music, perhaps because I spend most of my time in a country that isn’t big on restaurant music (though it’s been creeping in), perhaps because I prefer the rhythms of table conversation, perhaps because restaurants make such awful musical choices. If you can’t choose the right music and set it at the right volume how can you choose fresh salmon and time it right?

France Revisited is therefore happy to announce the 2009 winner of worst musical choices in a French-like business in Philadelphia. In the restaurant category the Musical Frog goes to Coquette for its loud, supermarket Christmas music. Admittedly it was December, but couldn’t they at least have found some bad French supermarket Christmas music? There were only two other tables going that evening so I asked the waitress to turn it down, which she did one inadequate notch. On the plate, meanwhile, the onion soup missed the boat, but the fat sea scallops and clams were quite nice. They also have an oyster bar, but I don’t expect to go back to try it.

In the café category, the Musical Frog goes to Miel, the French bakery/café in the French Quarter. The bakery part was welcoming enough, with good croissants and pretty-looking cakes. But while trying to take advantage of the café part I was attacked as if by mosquitoes by a scratchy rap played over the loudspeaker as though someone had set a bad clock radio circa 1985 and forgotten to turn it off. Why the staff was oblivious to this I don’t know. I would return to the take-counter, but if Miel ever wonders why so few people linger over coffee I think I have the answer.

Rittenhouse Square and the War to End All Wars
Rittenhouse Square—with its curved walkways à la Parc Monceau in Paris and its central sculpture “Lion Crushing a Serpent” by French sculptor Antoine-Louis Bayre (the original, which belongs to the Louvre, is at Atlanta’s High Museum as part of its “The Louvre and the Masterpiece” exhibition until September 2009)—is the center of what Philadelphia has designated as its French Quarter. Facing out onto the square is the restaurant that received the most Franco-Philly buzz in 2008, Parc.

Parc is one of many restaurants and bars owned by Stephen Starr, the region’s most prolific restaurateur. Each establishment is highly stylized in its own way. Here the style is a cross between a grand old train station café and Le Grand Colbert, the historical brasserie in Paris where Diane Keaton is dining with Keanu Reeves before being joined by Jack Nickelson.

I found the fare at Parc pleasant and palatable—onion soup, onion tart called pissaladière, mussels, a hefty lamb shank, a thick duck confit, a heavy pot de crème—the service smiley and attentive, and the noise level mind-boggling. They could be blasting Jingle Bells over the sound system and you wouldn’t hear it over the shouting—except in the handsome restrooms that continue the old train station theme.

Of all Philadelphia’s French restaurants Parc has the décor where a deaf Parisian arriving at the train station from heavy shelling in Verdun would feel most at home. For the hearing, this is the place to dine if you want to feel like you’re in Paris’s Gare de l’Est or Gare du Nord train station when word arrives that the Germans have just signed the Armisitice ending WWI up near Compiègne.

Parc, as I say, has decent food, it’s well laid out, it’s well staffed, and it’s loud—and those are the reasons for its success. Like a shell-shocked warrior I’m iffy about returning to the fray, though, however gentile this fray may be. Yet I would return for breakfast or for morning or afternoon coffee so as enjoy a moment of relative calm overlooking Rittenhouse Square.

Crêpes
Beau Monde mostly serves crepes. There are other dishes on the menu as well. In fact, some of those other dishes are actually inside the crepes, such as a boeuf bourgignon crepe and a coq au vin crepe. I stayed away from those.

When you go for a crepe you want to keep it simple, that’s what I say. You don’t want actual prepared dishes in your crepe; you just want them to make a buckwheat crepe, put a few savory edibles on top, fold the crepe shut, let it sit on the griddle for a minute, then call it an entrée (one doesn’t normally order an entrée in a French creperie because the crepe is the entrée: refer to La Minette if confused by that sentence). Then repeat with a wheat crepe and sweet edibles and call it dessert.

Get fancy with the flour if you like but not with the ingredients. Cookbook writers may disagree but they’re just trying to impress you with their creativity. Believe me, keep it simple.

My dinner companion said that he was disappointed because his crepe wasn’t anything special but I think he missed the point: crepes aren’t anything special, they’re just thin pancakes with tasty, non-special stuff inside. Of course they’re special in that you might not have them very often, but generally speaking they’re nothing special. Many people feel the same way about sex.

Anyway, the stuff inside the crepe was good enough for me, but I must warn you that Beau Monde’s menu of supplementary stuff to put in a crepe is so confusingly priced that it’s best not to even think of adding anything extra like a roasted leek to your Cajun gumbo crepe. Keep it simple, that’s what I say.

Crepes naturally cost a few more pesos in Philadelphia than in Paris, which can cause greater expectations than one should actually have. I’m not surprised to pay a bit more here than in Paris, just as in Paris you shouldn’t be surprised to pay $20 for an ordinary hamburger (but good frites) and an imported beer (Bud). As far as I’m concerned words that wear hats, as true French crêpes do, deserve a mark-up.

Overall I liked Beau Monde well enough because a crepe’s basically a crepe as long as the crepe batter is decent, freshly poured, and immediately served. Not sure how recent the pouring was her but in any case a little beer in the batter would help.

Crepes, by the way, though found throughout France, are actually regional fare from Brittany and by extension neighboring Normandy, regions where creperies proliferate. In the absence of grapes to ferment, they ferment apples in those regions, so hard cider is the drink of choice to go with a crepe. Hence the Vermont cider served at Beau Monde which, though flatter than what I’m used to in France, did the trick

A Philly Francophile friend swears by La Creperie, located near Rittenhouse Square, but regrettably I didn’t get there on this trip. I checked it out online though and found the words “Our décor is tastefully French with an exotic accent” quite intriguing. The menu looks authentic enough, though I have my doubt about the list of “pizza crepes,” which sounds like a contradiction in terms to me. Think crepe, think simple, that’s what I say.

Georges Perrier
Georges is another French word with an s, as in Georges Perrier, who has been the region’s most prominent figure in French cuisine for more than three decades now. Having earned much kudos throughout his career, he is the French chef of the Philadelphia region who is the most incontournable, a French term that means you can’t get around mentioning him. His restaurant Le Bec-Fin put Franco-Philly dining on the map in the 1970s and became an dining institution by the mid-1980s.

I did not include Le Bec-Fin on this recent testing expedition, however, for the simple reason that two years ago I had a good meal here and didn’t deem it appropriate to $400+ for dinner for two for another merely good meal. In my review at the time I noted that at Le Bec’s price and for Le Bec’s pretensions one should get not good but excellent. I don’t even like to iron a shirt for anything less than very good.

Do not consider those comments a review of Le Bec-Fin circa 2009. First, because two restaurant years is like twenty human years. Second, because Le Bec-Fin has changed since Georges Perrier declared last year that he was getting out of the race for guidebook stars, and today’s menu shows more palatable numbers.

The Perrier enterprise is nevertheless incontournable as far as Franco-Philadelphia goes, and I would have been remiss to ignore his restaurants altogether. So I chose to test his Brasserie Perrier, just a block away from Le Bec-Fin, and found it much to my liking. The waiter was knowledgeable, the onion soup with its sherry-spiked veal and chicken stock was by far the best of the four onion soups I tried in Philadelphia during this period, the mussels were fresh and meaty, the frites were tasty and plentiful, the salmon was well timed, the gruyere burger (the cheese and the medium rare made it French) was tender and delicious, the atmosphere, music and all, had a nice sense of well-being with a touch of class, and the bill was appropriately moderate.

It was the best French meal I had in Philadelphia during this trip. Then a week after I ate there the restaurant, which opened in 1997, suddenly closed, something having to do with amicable relations with the landlord, said the sign out front. I am proud to say that I enjoyed one of the last onion soups at Brasserie Perrier.

But incontournable Georges Perrier and quite contournable moi are clearly out of sync. I hit his calling-card restaurant in a slump and his fine brasserie while the chef-entrepreneur was flipping the bird bidding a sweet adieu to the landlord. On the promise of the defunct Brasserie Perrier, next time I’m in Philadelphia I’ll try his so-called “steakhouse bistro,” Table 31.

But that’ll have to wait, as will other French restaurants such as Patou and Bistro St. Tropez. Here at France Revisited we take our French Philadelphia experiences as they come… then grab a Philly cheese steak on the way out of town.

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut
Links and addresses for businesses in order of appearance in this article

La Minette, 623 South 6th Street (across from Beau Monde), tel. 215-925-8000. www.bistrolaminette.com.
Caribou Café, 1126 Walnut Street, tel. 215-625-9535. www.cariboucafe.com.
Zinc, 246 South 11th Street, tel. 215-351-9901. www.zincbarphilly.com.
Coquette, corner of 5th Street and Bainbridge Street, tel. 215-238-9000. www.coquettebistro.com.
Miel, 204 South 17th Street, tel. 215-731-9191. www.mielpastry.com.
Parc, 227 South 18th Street, tel. 215-545-2262. www.parc-restaurant.com.
Beau Monde, corner of 6th Street and Bainbridge Street, tel. 215-592-0656. www.creperie-beaumonde.com.
La Creperie, 1722 Sansom Street, tel. 215-564-6460. www.lacreperiecafe.biz.
Le Bec-Fin and Le Bar Lyonnais, its downstairs bar and dining area. 1523 Walnut Street, tel. 215-567-1000. www.lebecfin.com.
Table 31, a “steakhouse bistro”. www.table-31.com.
Georges Perrier also operates the restaurant Georges’ in the affluent suburbs west of Philadelphia known as The Main Line. www.georgesonthemainline.com.

Though it’s unlikely for a traveler to set out solely to visit French Philadelphia, every visitor to the City of Brotherly Love inevitably passes views and reminders of French culture and Franco-American relations. Glimpses of Franco-Philly connections from the time of the American Revolution to the present are found in ways great and small throughout the area from Penn’s Landing to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and beyond: from the statue of George Washington, made by a French artist, that stands in front of Independence Hall, to the influence of French neo-Renaissance architecture in the design of Philadelphia’s City Hall; from the Eiffel Tower on the counter by the entrance to The Book Trader to the layout of the Ben Franklin Parkway, planned and designed by Frenchmen; from extraordinary French works of art in Philadelphia’s art museums to the city’s many venues for French cuisine.

The area between 17th and 19th Streets has even been officially designated as Philadelphia’s French Quarter, though that quarter’s well-heeled midtown comforts and commerce are not to be confused with the wrought iron balconies and flashed breasts on Bourbon Street, New Orleans.

Exploring French arts
The most Philadelphian—and American—of sights are often graced with French-made sculptures. As mentioned above, the statue of George Washington that stands in front of Independence Hall is by a Frenchman, Alexis Bailly. The statue of Washington that stands at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution is by another Frenchman, Jean-Antoine Houdon.

The sculpture Lion Crushing a Serpent by French sculptor Antoine-Louis Bayre graces Rittenhouse Square at the central crossing of curved paths à la Parc Monceau in Paris. The statue at Drexel University of Alsatian Vintner, whose big toe is rubbed by students with a wish for good grades, is the work of Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, creator of that most American of French-made monuments, The Statue of Liberty.

The collection of decorative works at The Athenaeum reveals a French touch as does the alabaster Louis XVI-era clock at the Rosenbach Museum. There’s also French Empire furniture at the Physick House, 322 Spruce Street, where Louis-Philippe, duc d’Orléans, lived in exile from Revolutionary France in 1796. He would eventually become King of the French from 1830 to 1848.

But it’s in Philadelphia’s major museums that French works go beyond particular points of Francophile interest and become centerpieces of world-class collections.

Philadelphia’s museum mile is the Ben Franklin Parkway, which was planned and designed in the early 20th century by Frenchmen Paul Cret and Jacques Gréber, who drew their inspiration from the Champs-Elysées, with Logan Square (traffic-wise a circle) as its Place de la Concorde and the Philadelphia Museum of Art as its Arc de Triomphe. Twin buildings—the Philadelphia Free Library and the Municipal Court—modeled after those on Paris’s Place de la Concorde, border the square. The Rodin Museum borders the Parkway as does site of the future home of the Barnes Foundation collection.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rodin Museum, and the Barnes Foundation are the repositories of world-class collections of French art from 1850 to 1920. The richness of these collections is due in particular to the wealth, artistic curiosity, and civic-mindedness of three American collectors who helped transformed Philadelphia from a Francophile city into a major outpost of French art in the United States:

1. John G. Johnson (1846-1917), a lawyer, also once director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum, donated 1200 paintings to the City of Philadelphia. Though his vast collection was Eurocentric rather than specifically French, he was a relatively early buyer of works by Manet, Monet, and Degas. His collection served as the foundation of what would become the extensive survey of European—largely French—art from 1850 to 1900 that occupies a major wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

What the wing lacks in poster-famous works it more than make up for in the breadth of the collection. Allow me to do some French name dropping: Corot, Degas, Manet, Courbet, Boudin, Monet, Paris work by Mary Cassatt (who was born in Pittsburg and raised in Philadelphia), Cézanne, Puvis de Chavannes, Millet, Delacroix, Renoir, Pissarro, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec, Rousseau, Chagall, Bonnard, Vlaminck, Vuillard. Wow!

Meanwhile, more quietly, in the museum’s permanent collection, the medieval wing pays homage to the French arts with a portal from the Abbey Church of Saint Laurent, near the Loire River, a fountain and cloister from Roussillon (southwest France), and various medieval religious sculptures, paintings and stained glass windows.

2. Jules Mastbaum (1872-1926) made his fortune as a movie theater magnate and began collecting the work of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) six years after the sculptor’s death. Along with the purchase of many pieces that Rodin had signed, Mastbaum gained permission from France (Rodin willed his private collection and models to the State) to make new bronze castings of a number of major pieces. In 1926 he commissioned none other than Cret and Gréber, who were responsible for the creation of the Ben Franklin Parkway, to design the museum building and gardens that would become home to the world’s second largest Rodin collection outside of the French national collection, primarily on display at Paris’s Musée Rodin. When Mastbaum died as the Philadelphia project was getting underway his widow honored his commitment to the city, and the Rodin Museum was inaugurated in 1929.

As decided by Mastbaum, visitors are greeted by The Thinker in a replica of the Rodin Memorial at Meudon, outside of Paris. At the top of the stairs leading to the portico stands The Gates of Hell, which he begun in 1880 when commissioned to create an entrance to a museum of decorative arts and which morphed into an intensely personal vision of Dante’s Inferno (The Thinker there represents Dante himself) that Rodin frequently revisited for the rest of his life. The Burghers of Calais, Rodin’s most defining work, is the centerpiece of the museum. As a museum experience, travelers familiar with Paris’s Musée Rodin will find Philadelphia’s Rodin Museum comparatively cramped and dark. Yet the works are enough to draw anyone deeper in Rodin… and back to Paris.

3. Albert Barnes (1872-1951) followed up his medical training with the co-development of an antiseptic silver compound called Argyrol. In his mid-thirties he bought out his partner and within several years had amassed enough a fortune that, combined with an intense interest in art and in education, led to his collecting great modern works of art and displaying them for study. With 181 works by Renoir, 69 by Cézanne, 59 by Matisse, and numerous works by Degas, Van Gogh, Seurat, Manet, Monet,  Picasso, Soutine, Rousseau, Modigliani, and others, the Barnes’s collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century masterpieces is as substantial a homage to French artists (and to other artists who lived in France) as can be found anywhere outside France. Hundreds of other works complete the collection, including African sculpture, antiquities, and Old Masters, but the overwhelming scent of the Barnes is Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early Modern French.

In 1922 he created the Barnes Foundation to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts.” He then hired Paul Cret, who several years later would be commissioned to design the Rodin Museum, to design the foundation’s gallery and adjacent residence in Merion, a western suburb of Philadelphia.

By the 1980s the foundation’s dwindling endowment had come into conflict with the collection’s rising value, the collection’s suburban home had come into conflict with its enormous drawing power, and the foundation’s by-laws had come in conflict with easy remedy. As a result, the Barnes Foundation was painted in legal controversy for years. The courts had been called upon to “help” Girard College (see below) evolve and to “enable” Johnson’s collection to be serve the public good, and now the Barnes collection has obtained judicial permission to move to Philadelphia’s museum row along the Parkway, near the Rodin Museum. (The foundation had previously gained court permission to put on a traveling show of dozens of its most celebrated works, which took place from 1993 to 1995 and included a triumphant exhibit in Paris’s Orsay Museum.) Given the time that it will take to resolve outstanding issues and to create the new home for the collection, the works will remains just where Barnes left them for another several years.

With the eventual move of the Barnes to the Parkway, the totality of French works in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the Rodin, and in the Barns can well be considered as a single collection, no matter who overseas the individual works. City officials might then have to extend Philadelphia’s “French Quarter” out to the Ben Franklin Parkway!

Valley Forge
A plaque at Philadelphia’s City Hall indicates the place where in 1781 French troops under Rochambeau camped during their march south to Yorktown. For a broader sign of the French-American alliance that was essential to American victory in the Revolutionary War, head out through the western suburb to Valley Forge National Park.

In 1777 and 1778, while the British occupied the America’s Revolution-era capital, Philadelphia, Washington’s army encamped and trained and gathered their force along the ridges of Valley Forge, 25 miles west of the city. Though the British were only a day’s march away, they didn’t attack the encampment because the Americans held such a favorable position, besides which the British felt confident staying put since, after all, they occupied the capital city.

Colonial regimens from throughout the United States gathered here from December 19, 1777, with an initial encampment of about 10,000 soldiers, to June 19, 1778, when about 20,000 decamped, with another 10,000 having passed through during that period. Despite about 2000 deaths, due more to disease rather than the legendary harsh winter, Valley Forge witnessed the transformation of a rag-tag army into a lean, mean, ready-to-fight machine.

Valley Forge may have been little more than a well-positioned demonstration of force initially, but by the time the army decamped it had gained in men, strength, training, and unity, and it was prepared to go on the offensive, secure in the knowledge that France had officially thrown its weight on their side.

On Feb. 6, 1778, on the heel of news of American success against the British at Saratoga that reached Europe at the end of 1777, Louis XVI’s France signed the Treaties of Amity and Commerce and of Alliance Eventual and Defensive Between His Most Christian Majesty and the Thirteen United States of America. News of the treaty reached the American coast in March 1778. That Treaty of Alliance, as it was called, was ratified by Congress on May 4 and two days later celebrated at Valley Forge in an all-out parade and feu de joie ([gun] fire of joy).

Many early French enthusiasts of the American cause spent time here that winter and spring, including Louis Duportail (chief engineering officer), Pierre L’Enfant (who later designed Washington, D.C.), Louis Tousard (an artillery expert), and two of the five major-generals, Marquis de Lafayette and Baron DeKalb. Baron Von Steuben, the Prussian officer who honed the troops with intensive drilling, largely spoke French while here. It was he who oversaw the Francophile feu de joie of May 4, 1778. The statue of Von Steuben that overlooks those parade grounds was erected in 1915 by the National German-American Alliance.

The oddity of European aristocrats overseeing American Revolutionary soldiers wasn’t lost on Von Steuben who wrote that winter to a fellow baron: [I do not try to introduce] the entire system of drills, evolutions, maneuvers, discipline, tactics, and Prussian formation into our Army. I should have been pelted had I attempted it, and should inevitably have failed. The genius of this nation is not in the least to be compared with that of the Prussians, Austrians, or French. You say to your soldier [in Europe], “Do this” and he doeth it; but I am obliged to say “This is the reason why you ought to do that,” and then he does it.

Valley Forge Supervisory Ranger (and historian) Bill Troppman, my source for much of this information, is himself of German and French Huguenot decent. Concerning the latter, he notes that some descendents of French Huguenots (Protestants) also fought on the British side since many of them had fled religious intolerance France when Huguenots became fair game after 1685—they were not about to turn around and support the reigning French Catholics.

Washington’s headquarters, a private home that he rented while at Valley Forge, is the main remnant from that period at Valley Forge National Historical Park, along with some entrenchments. Nevertheless, an informative Visitors Center, various monuments, reconstructions of soldier and officer cabins, guided tours, Washington Memorial Chapel, and reenactments reveal the importance of the 6-month encampment at Valley Forge as a turning point in the American Revolution.

Among the monuments is the United States Memorial Arch, erected to commemorate the arrival of General George Washington and his Continental Army into Valley Forge. Dedicated in 1917, at a time when America was aiding the French in WWI, the arch was designed by Paul Cret, the Frenchman who was responsible for the design of the Philadelphia urban projects noted above. It is a simplified version of the Triumphal Arch of Titus in Rome (A.D. 81) which marked the capture of Jerusalem by Emperor Titus in A.D. 70, the same arch that inspired Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

The 1778 Treaty of Alliance with the French is celebrated annually at Valley Forge the first weekend in May.

Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte
One of the greatest insults a river-born city can suffer over time is being cut off from the river that is its raison d’être, as Philadelphia has been largely cut off from the Delaware, a fact definitively confirmed by the construction of I-95. Philadelphians have an easier time getting to the Jersey shore at Atlantic City, 60 miles southeast, than to the immediate banks of the Delaware. Not that the view of South Jersey on the opposite bank is much to look at.

Perhaps that’s why Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844), a reluctant King of Naples then King of Spain in his brother Napoleon’s empire, chose to go upriver when looking to develop a suitable estate to call home during his exile from France after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815. Soon after his arrival in the United States he took up residence in the heart of Philadelphia at 260 South 9th Street. He lived there until 1816, when he moved to an estate he named Point Breeze, overlooking the Delaware from Bordentown, New Jersey, 25 miles northeast of Philadelphia. There, Joseph took the comparatively discreet name of Comte de Survilliers and settled into a life of refined and peaceable exile.

More information on France Revisited about Joseph Bonaparte is found by clicking here. To truly delve into the subject, the best source is Philadelphia resident Patricia Tyson Stroud’s The Man Who Had Been King (2005), winner of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities Annual Book Award and recipient of a Prize from the International Napoleonic Society.

Stephen Girard
No one could ever accuse Joseph Bonaparte as being American. But there is another Frenchman from that period who is in many ways an archetype of the American success story: Etienne-cum-Stephen Girard (1750-1831). In 1776, while his ship headed to New York Harbor, Girard was forced to seek refuge in the Port of Philadelphia due to the British blockade. He soon made Philadelphia his permanent residence, and in 1778 he officially became an American under the name Stephen Girard.

Little by little he built a fortune in commerce and banking, eventually becoming one of the wealthiest men in America. He willed much of his fortune to the City of Philadelphia and to local causes, in particular for the creation of a school for the education of poor, white, male orphans. Girard College, now located just off Girard Avenue, has evolved along with America and American case law. Now open to girls and to all creeds and races, it is a private boarding school for grades 1 through 12 for children from families with limited financial resources, each headed by a single parent or guardian. All Girard students receive full scholarships. Girard’s remains are entombed in the school’s central building, Founder’s Hall.

Click here and go to portrait #9 to see how a French engineer came to write a historical novel about Girard.

French Philadelphia: the book, the producer, the publisher
Whatever part of French Philadelphia you might wish to explore, whether by armchair or on foot, one of the best places to start is, well, French Philadelphia, a 108-page guide to the French cultural and historical presence in Philadelphia and surroundings. The book proceeds by neighborhood in revealing the extent of French ties and influences in William Penn’s City of Brotherly Love. Produced for the Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie, it was begun by the late Annette H. Emgarth and expanded by Lynn H. Miller,

As Lynn H. Miller writes in the book’s introduction, “[French] statesmen, adventurers, and soldiers arrived through the period of the War of Independence (1776-1783), thanks to France’s support of the would-be new nation. With the French Revolution (1789), the upheaval that followed in the French West Indies, and the aftermath of [Napoleon’s defeat at] Waterloo (1815), Philadelphia received many thousands more French people uprooted from their homelands. Their cultural, social, political, and economic impact left deep impressions on Penn’s fundamentally English town.”

Lynn, who contributed the article about Frenchtown, New Jersey for France Revisited’s Franco-Philly series, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Temple University and a member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie.

Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie leads the way in Franco-Philly associations for Philadelphian interested in France. The first Alliances in the United States were created in Boston and Baltimore in 1901, with Philadelphia’s being formed in 1903. It now has 400 members and about 1200 students in its French classes. For the past 20 years it has been run by Executive Director Martine Chauvet, born in France and now a 40-year resident of Philadelphia.

French Philadelphia is published by Philadelphia’s Francophile publishing company Beach Lloyd Publisher, founded by Joanne Silver. Joanne, having taught French in high schools in suburban Philadelphia for 30 years prior to creating Beach Lloyd Publisher, named the company in honor of her father, a Navy medic who took part in the D-Day Landing at Omaho Beach. Her company’s mission is “to recognize the strong historical and ideological ties that bind France and the United States, and to view those ideals globally.” Beach Lloyd publishes books in English and in French, particularly memoirs and classroom guides concerning individuals in France during WWII and French-speaking Holocaust survivors. French Philadelphia is also available in French under the title Philadelphie à la française.

In 2008 Joanne was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French government in recognition of her work in advancing the cause of French culture, education and the arts and of her active contribution to the expansion of French culture throughout the world.

By Gary Lee Kraut

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut