Still Missing the Samaritaine – Wednesday, 4 May

how it looked, back in the day....

Back in the day, my favorite department store was La Samaritaine – built in the 1870s, right on the banks of the Seine at Pont Neuf, a gorgeous building featuring beautiful curving ironwork and stunning stained glass, it was a manageable size, had the best views of Paris from its rooftop cafés and resto, sold just about everything, was easily accessible by bus and Métro (the Pont Neuf station was in its basement), was buzzing with activity, and since it was in the center of town just steps from the Louvre, you were probably walking past it anyway at some point!  It stood on the site of the one-time home of the Three Musketeers.  And it was 1/2 block from my hotel on my first solo trip in 1988, so I got to know it pretty well early on!  One particular shopping trip remains burned in my memory – I was walking through the electronics department looking for a charger for my Palm Pilot in September 2001 when I saw footage of planes hitting the World Trade Center on the TV screens in that department.

Anyhoo, it closed suddenly in 2005 – employees came to work one day and were welcomed by signs on the doors saying that the Fire Marshal had declared it unsafe.  It was supposed to be renovated and re-opened by 2013, but apparently mixed-use redevelopment plans met with lengthy complications.  In 2010 it was finally announced that a Japanese firm had been chosen to redesign the building as a combination hotel/apartments/offices, with a small retail component.  On recent trips the exterior was still intact, but now some of the building along rue de Rivoli has been torn down, the majority of the building is covered with scaffolding, and large crews of workers can be seen welding and hauling and building between the cracks in the panels covering the scaffolding.  I look forward to checking out the “small retail component” sometime in the future, and I dearly hope that they restore rooftop access to the public, because I’m sure that I won’t be able to afford the hotel or one of the apartments!

pretty much the same view today

Walking home from lunch today, I crossed the Seine on the Pont Neuf and snapped a couple photos.

I also stopped into the lovely Square Dauphine for a bit – it sits between the two bridges of Pont Neuf.  Guys playing pétanque, people walking dogs, small children trying out their tricycles and bicycles-with-training-wheels, people eating & drinking in the cafes, and couples enjoying each other’s … um … company – everyone enjoying this fine day as much as I was.