Rue Nationale

Arrondissement 13

Number 79

Initially called the Rue des Deux Moulins (the Two Mill road) the road at the bottom left of this image was extended to the Boulevard Massena by Haussmann in 1863 and then renamed the Rue Nationale in 1870. This south-facing photograph shows its junction with the Avenue d’Ivry on the right of the red building, built on the site of the Panhard & Levassor factory.

Hazan (WTP) describes finding the site of the former Panhard & Levassor factory on the Boulevard Massena at the corner between the Avenue d’Ivry and the Rue Nationale. The 1891 three-level structure has been preserved.

This is not the case with the rest of the area. But even so, unlike most of inner Paris, it has not been gentrified. From the 1970s many migrant boat-people from Vietnam settled in the area between Rue de Tolbiac (to the West), the Rue Nationale (to the North East) and the Avenue d’Italie (to the South).

In 2017, the Marguerite-Durand historical library of gender and feminism, named after the founder of La Fronde in 1897, survived an attempt to close it. Its wealth of archives can be found at 79 Rue Nationale. After nearly two years of works the library re-opens on December 3 2019.

PLACES