Passy
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Passy is an area of Paris, France, located in the XVIe arrondissement, on the Right Bank. It is traditionally home to many of the city's wealthiest residents.
Passy was formerly a commune. It was annexed to Paris in 1860.
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People with ties to Passy
- Benjamin Franklin
- Honoré de Balzac
- Gioacchino Rossini
- Félix Antoine Appert (1817-1891)
- Paul de Kock
- General Charles Edward Jennings de Kilmaine
- Alphonse de Lamartine
- Pierre Bretonneau
- Louis-Guillaume Le Veillard, the first mayor of Passy.
- Giuseppe Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi spent two summers, (1848 and 1849), in Passy, during the maestro's time in Paris
- William Kissam Vanderbilt, the American railroad tycoon, kept a home in Passy
- Virginia Oldoini, Countess di Castiglione, Early important photographic artist, Courtesan, supposed secret agent, mistress to Napoleon III, lived in a house he bought for her in 1857 and lived on in the area until the mid 1870s.
- Pierre-Louis Pierson, Photographic Artist, Collaberated with the Countess of Castiglione, to create some of the most iconic photographs of the nineteenth century from the 1850s to the 1890s at his home in passy.
Benjamin Franklin in Passy
Passy is known to Americans as the home of patriot Benjamin Franklin during the nine years that he lived in France during the American Revolutionary War. For much of this time, he was a lodger in the home of Monsieur de Chaumont.
Franklin established a small press in his lodgings, to print pamphlets and other material as part of his mandate to maintain French support of the revolution. He called it the Passy Press. Among his printing projects, he produced passports, even developing a special typeface known as "le Franklin." He also printed a 1782 treatise from Pierre-André Gargaz titled "A Project of Universal and Perpetual Peace," that laid out a vision for maintaining a permanent peace in Europe. It proposed a central governing council, with representatives of all of the nations of Europe, that would arbitrate international disputes.
He also worked on his scientific projects at a laboratory shared with others installed by Louis XV in the Château de la Muette.
When Franklin returned to America, the new ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, wrote, "When he left Passy, it seemed as if the village had lost its patriarch." At the time of Franklin, Passy was a village separate from Paris.
Places in Passy
There is now a rue Benjamin Franklin and a square de Yorktown near the Trocadéro.
A lively street in the area is Rue de Passy, which goes from La Muette to the Place de Costa Rica just behind the Trocadéro. It has boutiques and chain stores along its length.
The Cimetière de Passy, located at 2, rue du Commandant Schœlsing, is the burial place for many well-known persons including American silent film star Pearl White, the painters Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, and composer Claude Debussy.
Honoré de Balzac lived and wrote in Passy, and his house is now a museum (Maison de Balzac).
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