Little Paris in New York

As New York City’s French residents — some 60,000 strong — get ready to celebrate Bastille Day on July 14, a small but intense coterie of downtown New Yorkers is pushing for the designation of a new neighborhood, “Little Paris.” The heart of their effort is Centre Street, appropriately spelled the French way, between Broome and Grand Streets. One block to the west is Lafayette Street, named after the most famous Frenchman to fight in the American Revolution.

This valiant struggle — storming Community Board 2 with a citizen petition — is headquartered at Coucou French Classes. Coucou founders Léa and Marianne Perret point out that what New Yorkers now call Soho was in the late 1800s a flourishing quartier français.

Coucou itself is located across the street from the old Police Headquarters Building at 240 Centre Street. Opened in 1909, the Beaux Arts headquarters was inspired, according to the Perrets, by “the famous Paris City Hall, l’Hôtel de Ville.” Indeed, the original 1978 write-up of the building for the Landmarks Preservation Commission notes that it is sited “like the traditional French Hôtel de Ville within a confined urban space.” Today it presides regally over a street of French enterprises.

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Post by Baru Santang | Sep 23, 2021