On December 7, 2024, Notre-Dame de Paris was reborn. Five years after the catastrophic fire that raged through the 861 year old cathedral in 2019, consuming it's roof and causing the famous spire to fall to the ground in flames, official ceremonies reopened the cathedral to the world.
For the past few days, I have been listening to documentaries on the historic renovation of the cathedral. In so doing, I am struck by similarities that exist between the plight of Notre-Dame de Paris and our own Pike Place Market. I will explain.
But first, a little bit about the cathedral.
Notre-Dame de Paris.
Postcard from Paris, 2018. ML.
The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris is a masterpiece of French Gothic architecture which is comprised of these key characteristics: soaring heights, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and intricate stained glass windows. Notre-Dame de Paris was constructed between the 12th and 14th centuries, its first stone laid in 1163. In its almost 1000 years of existence, Notre-Dame de Paris has been a part of the French culture and landscape--emotional as well as physical.
Notre-Dame is built on the ruins of ancient Paris, where the Gaullic tribe called Parisii once lived on the banks of the river Seine on what is now known as the Ile-de-la-Cite, in the third century BC. It is from the Parisii that Paris derived its name. Adding to its significance to French history, Notre-Dame is used as the landmark from which all distances in France are measured. There is a plaque on the ground in the Place du Parvis in front of Notre Dame Cathedral that marks the center of Paris. It marks Point Zero. From there, we measure distances in France to Paris. Such significance is Notre-Dame de Paris to the French people and its psyche.
Notre-Dame de Paris has witnessed much history in the way of celebrations and majesty. It ultimately would face great peril during the French Revolution when mobs desecrated the building."Many of its statues were destroyed, its fittings and fixtures were plundered and the building fell into a period of decay and neglect." - Rebuilding Notre-Dame
It would take a 19th century French poet and novelist to influence national opinion to prevent the cathedral from being completely destroyed.
Enter our first Victor.
Victor Hugo, famed novelist author, was alarmed by the peril of the church having fallen into a sad state of disrepair and neglect in the early 1800s. Hugo sensed that history was at risk and that the architecture of this history of medieval Paris, Gothic architecture specifically as represented in Notre-Dame, would be negated if the cathedral were to be destroyed.
Hugo set out to save the church from destruction by writing a novel literally named for the cathedral, titled 'Notre-Dame de Paris' published in 1831. The title would be changed over the years to be called 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.’
In the novel, the cathedral is the backdrop of the setting and integral to the story.
Hugo employs a subtext in the novel of two competing worlds--architecture and the printing press. Because the French public was not valuing the centuries old Notre-Dame, it was just as ready to demolish it. At the time, no one cared about the history of this old church. No one really cared what the architecture represented. Hugo believed that architecture helped to tell the story of Paris and of it's ideals of the past. Then the printing press came along, and architecture was not needed to tell history. Mass produced writing would take care of that. These two conflicting ideals of communication were at odds.
First page of Victor Hugo’smanuscript draft “Notre-Dame de Paris,” 1830.
"Early in Victor Hugo's novel of medieval Paris, Notre-Dame de Paris, the antagonist, Claude Frollo, utters a terrifying line. He directs the eyes of two visitors from a book on his desk to the massive silhouette of Notre Dame cathedral beyond his door, Frollo then announces: "This will kill that."
"That" is the cathedral, "this" is the machine that produced the book on his desk: the printing press. "Small things overcome great ones," Frollo laments, "the book will kill the building."
For Hugo -- "the history of architecture is the history of writing. Before the printing press, mankind communicated through architecture. From Stonehenge to the Parthenon, alphabets were inscribed in "books of stone." Rows of stones were sentences, Hugo insists, while Greek columns were "hieroglyphs" pregnant with meaning.
The language of architecture climaxes in the Gothic cathedral. For centuries, Hugo asserts, priests had controlled society, and thus architecture: the squat lines of Romanesque cathedrals reflect this oppressive dogmatism. But, by the High Middle Ages, the Gothic cathedral liberates man's spirit. Poets, in the guise of architects, gave flight to their thoughts and aspirations, in flying buttresses and towering spires." - "The Engines of our Ingenuity," University of Houston.
Because of the popularity of 'Notre-Dame de Paris' hearts changed towards the old Gothic cathedral, the novel renewed interest in France's medieval past. Not long after the publication of the novel, plans were set to renovate the decrepit cathedral. A major restoration would take place in the immediate years to come. The renovation that took place between 1844 and 1869 produced the Notre-Dame that we in this era think of when we think of Notre-Dame de Paris: the spire and the grotesques (also known as gargoyles.)
So, today, we witness the Notre-Dame reborn with the rebuilding of the cathedral roof, replacing it's spire using the same plans and techniques and raw materials used by the original craftsmen centuries ago. We owe today's rebirth not only to the thousands of people from all over the world who helped make this renovation possible but we must reflect that today in a way could only happen because of the passion to save the building three centuries ago. Notre-Dame de Paris was saved by the passion of a person named Victor.
How is Seattle, Washington connected to Paris, France in this tale of two Victors?
Interestingly, in Seattle, we have a cultural icon that also sits at the heart of our city, that has also faced down dark days. When the Pike Place Market was founded in 1907, the market became incredibly popular with the locals. The market offered a setting for farmers to sell directly to the public. It grew and expanded and thrived over ensuing years and decades. Eventually, the Pike Place Market would face a series of challenges.
Since 1907, Market has faced three significant threats.
1) World War II. Americans of Japanese decent were quite sadly and unjustly, interred during the war, their farmland confiscated. The absence of the Japanese farmers, who made up a large percentage of farmers at the Market, reduced the supply of fresh produce and gradually customers dropped out.
2) The Supermarket. Agriculture in general, was once designed for local economies. The National Highway System of interstate freeways put into motion by President Eisenhower in 1956 modernized mass transit of the roads. Road and air transportation made it possible to distribute fresh produce far and wide. Mass transportation and the Supermarket became active competitors to “Meet the Producer.” Selling direct to the customer was not lucrative or competitive in the marketplace with the advent of the “Supermarket.”
3) Urban decay. The once vibrant setting fell into abandon and decay. By 1949 only 53 market stalls remained, down nearly 90 percent from a decade earlier. (Source: Seattle Times.)
The Pike Place Market, in the 1950s and 60s, sitting amidst brothels and peep show palaces was threatened to be turned into a parking lot. Joni Mitchell’s lyrics “They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot” was almost the fate of this beloved marketplace.
I wrote quite a bit about these challenges in my August 2020 blog.
Where some saw blight and an ideal location of a parking lot, others saw culture, history, vibrancy.
Artist and Seattle resident of the mid 20th century, Mark Tobey, a champion of the Pike Place Market, wrote referring to the Pike Place Market, "What do we want? A world of impersonal modernism, a world of automobiles? I've studied and painted the Paris stalls, the markets of London, Mexico and China, and none is as interesting as ours."
Enter our second Victor.
One of those people who saw promise was Victor Steinbrueck, architect, Professor at the University of Washington, and newly minted President of the “Friends of the Market” initiative to Save the Market.
Victor Steinbrueck is wildly credited with saving the Pike Place Market from the threat of the wrecking ball and developers. Steinbrueck was active in historic preservation in Seattle and led the fight to preserve the market beginning in the 1960s. Because of Steinbrueck's advocacy, the Market was designated with historic status in 1971.
A collection of Victor Steinbrueck’s sketches and story vignettes of the Pike Place Market. Published by University of Washington Press in 1978.
All these decades later, the Pike Place Market still stands. The pandemic is a most recent threat that the Pike Place Market has endured. Yet that same spirit that gritted its teeth to make it through the pandemic is the same spirit of the man who gritted his teeth and led the charge to beat back the wrecking ball. This man, whose passion and championship of the Pike Place Market, his name was Victor.
And as I write this, I have another insight. The two people who are credited with saving historical landmarks in different times and place--their name literally describes the outcome of their efforts: VICTOR.
Sir Winston Churchill said "History is written by the victors." In this tale of the two Victors, Victor Hugo and Notre-Dame de Paris and Victor Steinbrueck and the Pike Place Market, we find historic victories for their causes.
Our tale ends with happy endings.
Mary Lamery is a lifelong resident of Seattle, Washington, USA and native of the Pacific Northwest.
Lamery paints regional landscape in a manner that leans towards 19th century French Impressionism. Her landscapes invite the viewer to add to the backstory of the composition through personal identification with the paintings and story telling of the experience.
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