CHAPTER XLV. LES TERNES

ARRONDISSEMENT XVII. (BATIGNOLLES-MONCEAU)

ANUMBER of small dwellings lying without the city bounds to the north, in the commune of Clichy, were known in the fifteenth century as "les Batignolles," i.e. the little buildings. Separated from Clichy in the nineteenth century, the district of les Batignolles was joined to Monceau. New streets were built, old erections swept away: Avenue de Clichy, in part the Grande Rue of the district, was first planted with trees in 1705. At intervals along its course, and in the short streets connected with it, we find eighteenth-century houses, none of special interest. At No. 3, the Taverne de Paris is decorated with paintings by modern artists. A famous restaurant, dating from 1793, stood till 1906 at No. 7. At No. 52 of Rue Balagny, opening out of the Avenue, we see the sign "Aux travailleurs," and on the façade, words to the effect that the house was built during the war years 1870-71. At No. 154 of the Avenue, we find the quiet leafy Cité des Fleurs. Rue des Dames was a road leading to the abbey "des dames de Montmartre" in the seventeenth century. Rue de Levis was in long-gone ages a road leading to what was then the village of Monceaux, its name derived perhaps from the Latin Muxcellum, a mossy place, more probably from Monticellum, a mound, or from Mons calvas, the bald or bare mount. The Château de Monceaux was on the site of Place Levis. The official palace of the Papal Nuncio was in Rue Legendre, No. 11 bis. The modern church St-Charles we see here, built in 1907, was previously a Barnabite chapel. Rue Léon-Cosnard dates from the seventeenth century, when it was Rue du Bac d'Asnières. In the old Rue des Moines we find one of the few French protestant churches of Paris.

Avenue de Villiers, leading of old to the village of Villiers, now incorporated with Levallois-Perret, was, from its formation in 1858 to the year 1873, Avenue de Neuilly. Puvis de Chavannes died at No. 89, in 1898. Avenue de Wagram in its course from the Arc de Triomphe to Place des Ternes dates from the Revolution year 1789, known then as Avenue de PÉtoile. Avenue MacMahon began as Avenue du Prince Jerome. Avenue des Ternes is the ancient route de St-Germain, subsequently known as the old Reuilly Road—Reuilly is half-way to St-Germain—later as Rue de la Montagne du Bon-Air, to become on the eve of its debut as an Avenue, route des Ternes, the chief road of the terra externa, the territory beyond the city bounds on that side. The village Les Ternes was taken within the Paris boundary line in 1860. The barrière du Roule was surrounded in the past by a circular road, now Place des Ternes. We find important vestiges of the fine Château des Ternes in the neighbourhood of Rue Bayen, Rue Guersant and Rue Demours. The church St-Ferdinand built in 1844-47 was named in memory of the due d'Orléans, killed near the spot.

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