Boulevard Montmartre dates from the seventeenth century, lined in olden days on both sides by handsome private mansions; we see it now a thoroughly commercial thoroughfare, one of the busiest in the city. A modern journalist called its _carrefour_--the point where it meets the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre--"_carrefour des écrasés_." From the house, now a newspaper office, at No. 22 an underground passage ran in past days to the Café Cardinal opposite, leading to an orangery. On the site of No. 23 stood the gambling-house Frascati, built on the site of the old hôtel Taillepied. The Café Véron at No. 13 dates from 1818, opened through the gardens of the hôtel Montmorency-Luxembourg. Passage Jouffroy at No. 10 was cut, in 1846, across the site of an ancient building known as the Maison des Grands Artistes. The théâtre des Variétés, at No. 7, first set up at the Palais-Royal in 1770 by "la Montansier," was built here in 1807 on the grounds of the hôtel Montmorency-Luxembourg. No. 1 is the site of the Café de la Porte Montmartre, founded by Louis XV, a meeting-place of Parisians hailing from Orléans, nicknamed Guépins.
Boulevard Poissonnières (seventeenth century) begins where hung till recent years an ancient sign at No. 1--"Aux limites de la Ville de Paris"--recording the inscription once on the old wall there. Most of the houses are those originally built along the boulevard, and many old streets run into it on either side. At No. 9 we see Rue St-Fiacre, dating from 1630, when it was Rue du Figuier, a street closed at each end by gates till about 1800. The restaurant Duval at No. 10 of the boulevard was an eighteenth-century mansion. No. 14 is known as Maison du Pont-de-Fer. No. 19, now l'École Pratique du Commerce, was till a few years ago the home of an old lady who, left a widow after one happy year of married life, shut herself up in the house she owned, refused to let any of its six large flats, and died there in utter solitude at the age of ninety. No. 23, designed by Soufflot le Romain in 1775 as a private mansion, became later the _dépôt_ of the famous Aubusson tapistry.
Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, named from the church Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle in Rue de la Lune, dates from the seventeenth century (_see_ p. 59). No. 21 was built after the Revolution with the stones of the old demolished church St-Paul (_see_ p. 12). No. 11, in 1793, with some of the stones of the Bastille. The theatre, le Gymnase, which we see at No. 38, erected in 1820 on the grounds of a mansion, a barracks and a bit of an old graveyard, was known during some years as the théâtre de Madame la duchesse de Berri, who had taken it under her patronage. Its façade was rebuilt in 1887.