Parc de Choisy

Last updated June 28, 2019

The Parc de Choisy is a public park located in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, near the Quartier Asiatique between avenue de Choisy, rue George-Eastman, rue Charles-Moureu, and rue du Docteur-Magnan. It was created in 1937. The nearest metro station is Tolbiac.

The 13th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, this arrondissement is referred to as treizième.

Quartier Asiatique Asian quarter of Paris, France

The Quartier Asiatique, also called Triangle de Choisy or Petite Asie, is the largest commercial and cultural center for the Asian community of Paris. It is located in the southeast of the 13th arrondissement in an area that contains many high-rise apartment buildings. Despite its status as a "Chinatown", the neighborhood also contains significant Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian populations.

Tolbiac is a station of the Paris Métro. It is at the crossroads of two main roads, the Avenue d'Italie and the Rue de Tolbiac. It is near the Asian Quarter and the Parc de Choisy.

History

The Parc de Choisy (1937), like the Square Saint-Lambert in the 15th arrondissement (1933), was built on the site of a former gas factory. The designer was Édouard Crevel (1880-1969), who had become chief architect of the city of Paris in 1935. He was also the architect of the George Eastman Dental Institute(French: Institut dentaire George-Eastman), a dental college, next to the park. After World War II, he became architect of the Ministry of Reconstruction, rebuilding structures destroyed or damaged during the war.^[1]

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Like other Paris parks of the 1930s, Most of the park was built as a modern version of the French formal garden of the 18th century, rather than the picturesque style of the parks of the Second Empire and the Third Republic. The Eastman Institute, at one end of the park, played the rôle of the château with which the central alley and rows of trees were aligned. Like a French formal garden, it had broad lawns and a large basin of water with fountains. The edges of the park were given more natural groves of trees, winding paths and a small stream, in the more traditional Second Empire style.^[2]

The French formal garden, also called the jardin à la française, is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV and widely copied by other European courts.

The Second French Empire, officially the French Empire, was the regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.

The French Third Republic was the system of government adopted in France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War, until 10 July 1940 after France's defeat by Nazi Germany in World War II led to the formation of the Vichy government in France.

Features of the Park

The park is a large rectangle between two avenues, with a Latin cross of paths lined by trees. The brick structure of the Eastman Institute is at one end, with the basin and fountains in front of it. One alley crosses the park from east to west, meeting the grand esplanade. Unlike the traditional formal French garden, the densest groves of trees are close to the "château", rather than at the most distant end. The park features a rich assortment of flowerbeds.

The park, like most Paris parks of the 1930s, has an open-air theater at one end. and two large playgrounds, with concrete structures in the style of the period. Near the entrance of the park on avenue Choisy, there is a round table made of porphyry which came from the Pavilion of Finland at the 1937 Paris Exhibition.^[3]

Porphyry is a textural term for an igneous rock consisting of large-grained crystals such as feldspar or quartz dispersed in a fine-grained silicate rich, generally aphanitic matrix or groundmass. The larger crystals are called phenocrysts. In its non-geologic, traditional use, the term porphyry refers to the purple-red form of this stone, valued for its appearance.

The Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne was held from 25 May to 25 November 1937 in Paris, France. Both the Palais de Chaillot, housing the Musée de l'Homme, and the Palais de Tokyo, which houses the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, were created for this exhibition that was officially sanctioned by the Bureau International des Expositions.

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References

Notes and citations

↑ Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 200-201
↑ Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 200-201
↑ Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 201

Bibliography

Jarrassé, Dominique (2009). Grammaire des jardins Parisiens. Parigramme. ISBN 978-2-84096-476-6.
Racine, Michel (2007). Guide des jardins en France -Tome Nord. Paris: Les Editions Eugen Ulmer. ISBN 978-284138-300-9.

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Coordinates: 48°49′41″N2°21′36″E / 48.828°N 2.360°E / 48.828; 2.360

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[1] Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 200-201

[2] Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 200-201

[3] Jarrassé, Dominique, Grammaire des jardins Parisiens, p. 201