A seventh-floor walk-up near the Champ-de-Mars where Richard Osborn gave the almost penniless Henry Miller a room through the winter of 1930–31 — the hungriest stretch of his first Paris year.
Henry Miller reached Paris in 1930 with almost nothing and spent his first winter close to destitute. What kept him going was other people's rooms, and the most important of them was this one.
Richard Osborn, an American working at a bank in Paris, had a seventh-floor walk-up at 2 rue Auguste-Bartholdi in the fifteenth, near the Champ-de-Mars. He took Miller in for roughly November 1930 to March 1931, gave him a room and left him money for food each morning.
The account is blunt about what the winter was: Miller came close to starving in that flat. That is the material behind the writing — Tropic of Cancer is a book about hunger and dependence written by someone who had recently experienced both, at this address.
Osborn is barely remembered and the fifteenth arrondissement is nowhere near the Montparnasse of the legend, which is precisely why the address is worth having. The famous version of Miller's Paris is cafés and talk; this is the part where an acquaintance with a salary kept him alive.
The building is private and now occupied by the École Koenig. The address certainly survives; how much of the 1930 fabric does is not documented, and this record does not claim more than that. There is nothing to see beyond the street.
Miller arrives in Paris with almost nothing.
Richard Osborn shelters him in the seventh-floor flat at 2 rue Auguste-Bartholdi.
Tropic of Cancer is published in Paris.
An American working at a bank in Paris who took the nearly penniless Henry Miller into his seventh-floor flat for the winter of 1930–31, gave him a room and left him money for food each morning. He is barely remembered, and Miller's first Paris winter probably depended on him.
Miller sheltered there through the winter of 1930–31 and came close to starving. It is the material behind Tropic of Cancer — a book about hunger and dependence, written by someone who had recently lived both at this address.
No. It is a private building in the 15th, now occupied by the École Koenig, with nothing marking it. The address survives, though there is no documentation establishing how much of the 1930 building does. It is worth knowing about rather than visiting — and worth noting how far it is from the Montparnasse cafés Miller is usually pictured in.
Lived here · 1930–1931
Richard Osborn, an American working at a Paris bank, sheltered the nearly penniless Miller in his seventh-floor flat from about November 1930 to March 1931, giving him a room and money for food. Miller came close to starving that winter.
The drawing room by the Champ de Mars where Ezra Pound the composer made his debut — the Villon songs, heard by invitation before anyone believed he'd really done it.
Visit the placeThe address of the Auberge de la Ferme, the small restaurant where George Orwell took his second Paris kitchen job in 1929 — the chaotic, filthy kitchen that fills the second half of Down and Out in Paris and London under the invented name "Auberge de Jehan Cottard". Identified by archival research in 2021.
Visit the place
The tower at the era's edge of vision — and in the twenties and thirties, a champagne advertisement three hundred meters tall, fizzing in lights over everyone's night walks.
Visit the place
Blaise Cendrars's final home — the ground-floor apartment in the 7th arrondissement he moved to in August 1959 and where he died on 21 January 1961.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
