PALACE OF WOMEN. That is what I call it. However, when I lived there I would sometimes call it…read more"Palace of the Farm" and other times "Palace of the Closed". I like to play with words. It is the only way I can learn other languages. Femme= Women. Ferme (noun) = Farm. Ferme (verb) = Close or Shut.
Women came from the Farms to live in this Closed or Closeted environment.
In the early 1900's women were flooding into Paris from the rural areas surrounding the big city and they were easy prey for the dark elements of the city. Young, naive, country girls arrive to try and make some money to send home during tough times and they found that many men wanted to put them to work. on their backs.
The Salvation Army created this safe haven and it stands today as a refuge for women who come to the big city and want to study or work or just live. The people who work at the front desk were very helpful and gave me a warning that sometimes men would circle around and to beware. Perhaps having a gazillion women in the same building attracts the same energy that they had wanted to repel? I found this interesting, and would study the men who seemed to repeatedly visit and search for my eyes.
I had won a prize to study any classical architecture that I wanted in France as long as it was built between 1630 and 1830 (the influential times of Ange-Jacques Gabriel.) I chose to study the cloistered space of monasteries throughout France and a friend in Texas told me that I MUST live here... from 1641-1904 a convent existed on this site and in 1910 they built a "hôtel populaire pour hommes célibataires" a popular hotel for celibate men ;) err, single men, anyway. It became a place for single women in 1926.
Also of interest - Cyrano de Bergerac is rumored to have been buried in the cemetery of the original convent in 1655 thanks to his aunt Catherine de Cyrano who was the prioress. They say that he rests under a piece of furniture in the current Library at the Palace of Women. Every time I would sit in the Library and read, a couple of young gigglers would make noise moving furniture and whispering for no apparent reason. Oh, the irony. Shhhhh...
I loved living here because it was monastic in scale, extremely inexpensive, the location was incredible AND it was safe. Imagine, $300/ month to live with over 600 women in the 11th arrondissement in the Bastille district! I had my own small cell with bed, sink, closet, shared dormlike bathroom down the hall, shared enormous kitchen in the basement. Tea room and Restaurant and library on the main floor.
It is a beautiful brick building with many art nouveau flourishes. A couple times a year they have the most amazing sale in the basement... better than any flea market or vintage sale elsewhere.
There is a guard at the front door and you must check in and out upon arrival and departure.
If you are a young woman looking for an inexpensive place to live in Paris and you are ok following the rules, you are in luck. Men are not allowed anywhere near the 630 bedrooms or even up the stairs. The guard near the stairs/elevator area always seemed jovial and, at the same time, frustrated. There were times when I had to laugh because the old saying "get thee to a cloister" pretty much fit my living environment. It reminded me of college a bit, a very conservative, Catholic college.
Actually, it would have been heaven on earth had my love for women been more expressed at that time. And yes, I was studying the cloistered spaces of monasteries, and I was closeted. Cloitre means not only cloister, but also closet. I would make an amazing cunning linguist.
