I already made a post about a new park in the 17th arrondissement, not far from where I live. It was opened in 2007 and has since been baptised “Parc Clichy-Batignolles Martin Luther King”. We are in the area which was supposed to become the Olympic Village, if Paris had been chosen for the 2012 summer games (now we must wish good luck to London). The plans have been slightly revised and there are now rather firm plans of what will happen here in the next four or five years.
This is what the area, "Clichy-Batignolles", may look like when the project is completed. Some 3500 apartments plus some 100.000 m² (25 acres) of office space, commerce, schools, gymnasiums... are planned, as well as a prolongation of a metro line (line 14). The park installations will be considerably enlarged. Everything will be planned “ecologically”.
I made the tour of the area the other day. A large part has been occupied by services linked to rail cargo – including what already is a park. The demolition of existing installations is now ongoing. There seems to be a good chance of getting some nice views when you later live, work or just walk around here.
One of the few buildings which will remain is the warehouse for our Opera’s scenic equipment. It dates from 1895 and was designed by Charles Garnier, the creator of “Opéra Garnier” (and the Casino in Monte-Carlo etc...) (see previous posts). Part of the building is today occupied as a second scene by “Odéon – Théatre de l’Europe”.
Just behind this building you can find one of the few remainders of the last walls surrounding Paris, the Thiers Wall, built 1841-44 and destroyed 1919-29, without ever having really served. However, when it disappeared it offered space to build the boulevards that now run around Paris (“Boulevards des Maréchaux”). It seems that these remains of the wall will be saved.
Very close, there is additional trace of this wall, which has been saved and integrated in another new, small park, "Jardin des Hauts-de-Malesherbes”, close to the “Green Tower” (see previous post). You can read the construction years 1842-43.
I ended up my tour in what is already a park, now about two years old. (See also top picture.)
Posts
