Henry Miller
Lived here · 1930
Miller and his wife June stayed here briefly in 1930 — one of a string of short-term Montparnasse addresses in his first Paris year. The building still operates as a hotel.
15 rue Delambre
Still standing
In, as a customer
A successor, same room
A Montparnasse hotel where Henry Miller and his wife June stayed briefly in 1930, in the unsettled first months of his Paris decade. It still operates at the same address as the Hôtel Lenox Montparnasse.
- 15 rue Delambre, 75014 Paris
- Henry Miller stayed here briefly in 1930
The place, briefly
The rue Delambre runs between the boulevard du Montparnasse and the boulevard Edgar-Quinet, a short street off the junction where the Dôme, the Rotonde, the Coupole and the Sélect all stand. In the 1920s and 30s it was full of cheap hotels serving exactly the population those cafés attracted.
Henry Miller and his wife June stayed at 15 rue Delambre briefly in 1930. It is one of a string of short-term addresses from his first Paris year, alongside the Hôtel des États-Unis that autumn and, later, the Hôtel Central shared with Alfred Perlès.
The sequence is the point. Miller's first two years in Paris are a list of rooms held for weeks at a time, and no single one of them is the important address — the churn is. He was thirty-eight, had published nothing, and was moving every time the money ran out.
The building is still a hotel and still bookable, now trading as the Hôtel Lenox Montparnasse. There is a well-repeated account that the business preserves the older Grand Hôtel des Écoles name in its operating identity, which would make the continuity of the site unusually clean; the sources here confirm the address and the current hotel rather than that lineage, so the record keeps the older name as a historical alias and stops there.
Key facts
- Henry Miller and his wife June
- Briefly, in 1930
- Off the Montparnasse café junction — the Dôme, Rotonde, Coupole and Sélect are all a minute away
- One of a string of short-term rooms in Miller's first Paris year; the churn is the story
- Still a hotel — the Hôtel Lenox Montparnasse — and bookable
Timeline
Miller and June stay briefly at 15 rue Delambre.
They lodge at the Hôtel des États-Unis on the boulevard du Montparnasse.
Miller shares a room at the Hôtel Central with Alfred Perlès.
On the map
Questions before you go
Did Henry Miller stay at 15 rue Delambre?
Yes — he and his wife June stayed there briefly in 1930, one of a string of short-term addresses in his first Paris year. The building still operates as a hotel, the Hôtel Lenox Montparnasse.
Was it the Grand Hôtel des Écoles?
That is the widely repeated account, and it would make the site's continuity unusually clean. The sources used here confirm the address and Miller's 1930 stay, and confirm that the building is a hotel today — but not the name lineage itself, so the record keeps Grand Hôtel des Écoles as a historical alias rather than asserting it.
Why did Miller move around so much?
Money. He arrived in Paris in 1930 at thirty-eight with nothing published and very little of anything else, and his first two years are a list of rooms held for a few weeks at a time — hotels, borrowed flats, a shared room with Alfred Perlès. No single address from that period is the important one; the churn is what the period was.
Writers who knew this place
Within walking distance
The Dingo Bar
The American bar where Ernest Hemingway met F. Scott Fitzgerald in late April 1925 — two weeks after The Great Gatsby was published.
Visit the place
Black Manikin Press (4 Rue Delambre)
Edward Titus's Montparnasse bookshop and small press, where D. H. Lawrence settled terms on 5 April 1929 for the cheap Paris edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover that finally undercut the pirates.
Visit the place
La Coupole
The giant brasserie of the Boulevard du Montparnasse, opened in December 1927 with a party the quarter never forgot — Blaise Cendrars was in the opening-night crowd.
Visit the place
Le Dôme
The noisy common room of Montparnasse and the setting of 'With Pascin at the Dôme' — the café for watching the show, not for working.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.