The Paris AtlasCharting the artists, works, and places worth returning to.

Apartment · Saint-Germain-des-Prés (6th) · 6e arrondissement

173 boulevard Saint-Germain

The buildingStill standing
Getting inOutside only
What's there nowSomeone else

Private, above the shops on a busy stretch of the boulevard.

Where Djuna Barnes lived with the sculptor and silverpoint artist Thelma Wood during the 1920s — the relationship that Nightwood was written out of.

Address
173 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris
Years
Barnes and Thelma Wood lived here during the 1920s

The place, briefly

Djuna Barnes and Thelma Wood lived together at this address during the 1920s. They had met in Paris in 1921, and the relationship ran for most of the decade: intense, jealous, drink-soaked and eventually destructive on both sides.

It matters for the work because Nightwood, the 1936 novel Barnes is chiefly remembered for, comes directly out of it. The character of Robin Vote is drawn from Wood, and the book's account of obsessive love is close enough to the life that Barnes's friends recognised it immediately. T. S. Eliot, who edited the novel and wrote its introduction, is the reason it found a publisher at all.

The boulevard Saint-Germain in the 1920s was the spine of literary Paris, and Barnes was in the middle of a crowd that included Natalie Barney, Sylvia Beach, Peggy Guggenheim and James Joyce, whom she interviewed and admired.

The building is private.

Key facts

Barnes lived here
During the 1920s
With
The artist Thelma Wood
What came out of it
Nightwood (1936), whose Robin Vote is drawn from Wood
Access
Private — exterior only

Timeline

  1. 1921

    Barnes and Thelma Wood meet in Paris.

  2. 1920s

    The couple live at 173 boulevard Saint-Germain.

  3. 1936

    Nightwood is published, with an introduction by T. S. Eliot.

On the map

Questions before you go

Who was Thelma Wood?

An American sculptor and silverpoint artist, and Djuna Barnes's partner through most of the 1920s. The character Robin Vote in Nightwood is drawn from her.

Can you visit?

No — it is a private building on the boulevard.

Writers who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes

American · American writer and illustrator (1892–1982). She was a New York newspaper reporter for eight years before she was a novelist, spent the 1920s and 1930s in Paris, and wrote Nightwood, the 1936 novel T. S. Eliot took to Faber and introduced.

Lived here

Barnes and the artist Thelma Wood lived together at this address during the 1920s. The relationship is the material behind Nightwood.

— Barnes, Djuna (1892–1982)

Within walking distance

Office · Saint-Germain-des-Prés (6th)

Galerie Cahiers d'Art, 14 rue du Dragon

Christian Zervos's hybrid of art magazine, publishing house and gallery on the rue du Dragon, where Kandinsky showed watercolours in 1935 — and where the Picasso catalogue raisonné was compiled.

Visit the place
The same terrace in colour, the awning cream and green, glasses of beer on the tables in afternoon sun

Bar · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

La Reine Blanche

The cheap bar across the boulevard from the Café de Flore where James Baldwin drank through his first Paris years, and where he met Lucien Happersberger in 1949.

Visit the place
Brasserie Lipp today, red awning lit at dusk with the neon LIPP sign above the door

Restaurant · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Brasserie Lipp

Beer, potato salad, and choucroute after a day's work. Ernest Hemingway considered it one of the best places in Paris.

Visit the place
The Café de Flore today, white awning and red seats behind the terrace planters

Café · Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Café de Flore

A few doors from Les Deux Magots and part of the same Left Bank circuit. Later became more associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Visit the place

The 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.

One email a week. No spam, no selling your address. Unsubscribe anytime.