Rue de la Roquette

The street of the Rocket , very old street of the suburbs of the east of Paris, made it possible to join the Couvent Rocket since the Porte Saint-Anthony. Today in the 11 {{E}} district, it connects the Place of the Bastille to the Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise.

Origin of the name

The name of the rocket (or rochette) would come from a small plant to veined flowers yellow pale or blanchâtres the purple one and which pushed " in the décombres" , derived from Latin eruca , who means cabbage .

Another explanation: The name of the rocket would come from the word rock (rock).

History

The Rocket

In the middle of the marshes

With the XV {{E}} century, the suburbs of the east of Paris gather only some hovels and, especially, marshes and marshes flooded by the brooks going down from the hills of Ménilmontant or Field-the Bishop. In the south, the district surrounding the Abbaye Saint-Antoine-of-Fields develops since the year 1200. To a few hundred meters in north, Popincourt starts to become extensive. Near, one finds a hamlet named the Cross-Faubin.

It is under the reign of Henri II that were built in the middle of the rockets the first residences. Y lived then of many personalities which appreciated the proximity of the capital, their properties being generally extremely distant:

Germain Tests, Receveur of the town of Paris, made build towards 1545 one of the first country cottages;
Nicolas Séguier, alderman of Paris, secretary of the king;
Florimont Robertet, baron de Bury, Secretary of State and Treasurer of France under Charles VIII, Louis XII and François Ier;
the Rocquet of Tribouille, whose homophonic agreement with the place would be sheer coincidence;
Philippe Hurault, count de Cheverny, Minister of Justice of Henri III

This last sold its residence with the Duchesse of Mercœur in 1599, which made there build two houses that it transformed into small Monastère.

Alexandre Dumas names the Beautiful-Esbat place in its book the Forty-five .

The Hospital ones of Notre-Dame

Thomas Morant, baron of Mesnil-Garnier, adviser to the the Large Council of the King, acquires the property in 1611, then resells it in 1636 with the Hospitalières of the Charité Notre-Dame about Saint-Augustin, which install there in 1639 a branch for women having wiped some reverse of fortune. Francoise d' Aubigné, widowed Scarron, marchioness of Maintenon, withdraws there with its maidservant in 1660, its pension being dealt with by the queen-mother, Anne of Austria. The hospital will comprise 80 nuns and 17 beds in 1690, year when they will become the " Girls of Saint-Joseph" , thus separating from their colleagues of the Royal Place.

The field of the nuns did not occupy less than 50 Arpent S. the buildings were surrounded by cultivated gardens, with, inter alia, of the vines and a Oranger IE. Small a Cimetière was located on current the Rue Leon-Frot.

Following the fire of the Hospital in 1772, starting point of long series of measurements, Lavoisier is charged to examine the new project concerning with the creation of four Parisian hospitals. He proposes, in 1787, the " house of Roquette" like hospital which can serve the parishes of Saint-Paul and Holy-Marguerite, putting forward what the establishment is already a hospital and which nuns are devoted to the service of the patients. But the revolution will grant very an other destination to him, because in the An III, the administration of the Old people's homes in fact a spinning mill, the nuns having had to give up the field in 1790.

Prolongation and prisons

The street of the Rocket starts with the carries Saint-Anthony and comes to the doors from the convent, on small places entitled " Low-cour" , the transverse street naming Street of the Wall-of-the-Rocket. Dismantling, the beginning of the XIX {{E}} century, of the old conventual buildings, allows the connection of the street Saint-Andrew, which leaves the back of the convent then to join, while turning towards the south, the Rue of Charonne.

In 1830, the architect Hippolyte Lebas builds a prison for young prisoners on the northern part of the street. 6 years later is inaugurated just opposite a second prison, named " Deposit of condamnés" , which will receive especially the futures convicts and the condemned to dead. 69 people will be guillotinées in front of the door of the " Large Roquette". The latter will be closed and destroyed in 1900. The Small Rocket, it, will become a prison for women in 1920 until its closing in 1974.

Knights of the Arquebus

The manpower of the Royal Company of the Knights of the Crossbow and the Arquebus of the town of Paris, created on the initiative of Saint-Louis, is fixed at 200 by the future Charles V in 1359. The francs Archer S carried out their drive then Sunday, inside the Enceinte of Philippe Auguste, very close to the rampart, initially between the streets Saint-Denis and Mauconseil, then between the Saint-Anthony door and the Porte of the Temple. But with the wire of the time and the enlarging of their body, the exercises had to take seat outside the Saint-Anthony door. By a concession granted in 1673, they gave up the site to leave room to new the boulevard and settled until the Revolution with the angle of the street of the Rocket.

The town hall of eleventh

Of 1860 with 1865, the Mairie occupied the site of the n° 65 of the street of the Rocket. It was then transferred on current the Place Leon-Blum (Voltaire place before 1957), between the Avenue Parmentier and the Boulevard Voltaire. The construction of this town hall began in 1862 under the direction of Gancel, on the directives of the architect Bailly, who, charged by Haussmann with creating an ideal town hall, had put his ideas in practice in the 4 {{E}} district. The frontage of the building, composed of a ground floor and two stages, is decorated sculptures carried out by Henri-Charles Maniglier representing the Justice, the Mariage and the study. Above the cornice are two statues of children carried out by the same sculptor and surrounding the Blason of Paris, itself surmounted of a clock. In the village hall occupying the back part of the building is presented a decoration of Victor Prouvé, school of Nancy, is painted in 1907 and is entitled Séjour of peace and joy .

During the Common of 1871, the Conseil of Paris had to flee the town hall in flames and temporarily settled in the town hall of the 11th district at the end of May 1871.

Other places

At the beginning of the street of the Rocket, the passage of the Horse-White was, with the XVII {{E}} century, a wood warehouse. Today protected inheritance, it still includes/understands courses carrying of the names of month.

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