Historic Paris by Jetta Sophia Wolff

LES TERNES ARRONDISSEMENT XVII. (BATIGNOLLES-MONCEAU) A number 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 Lévis 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 Lévis. 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