Recalled in the memoir
The Big Sea
Hughes begins his Paris story here: arrival from Rotterdam, seven dollars, checked bags, coffee and rolls, and a bus marked Opéra.
Gare du Nord
Still standing
Walk straight in
Still the same
Paris's great northern railway terminus: an operating 1864 station, a monumental Second Empire façade, and the place where the American poet Langston Hughes began his first Paris day with seven dollars.
- 112 Rue de Maubeuge, 75010 Paris
- 1846–present; present station opened 1864
Illustration
The place, briefly
Gare du Nord is one of Paris's main railway gateways, serving northern France and international routes as well as suburban trains, the RER and the Métro. The station is open to travelers and passersby; its principal street façade faces the rue de Dunkerque in the 10th arrondissement. You can enter the public concourses without buying a train ticket, although controlled platforms require a valid journey.
The first northern terminus opened here in 1846, but Paris outgrew it almost immediately. Jacques-Ignace Hittorff designed the station that stands now: a classical stone front attached to a vast industrial train shed, opened in 1864. Twenty-three statues crown the façade. The larger figures represent international destinations; the smaller ones stand for cities in northern France reached by the railway.
Early one February morning in 1924, Langston Hughes, a young American poet who would become one of the defining voices of the Harlem Renaissance, arrived here on the night train from Rotterdam. His ticket and French visa had reduced his money to seven dollars. He checked his bags at the parcel counter, bought coffee and rolls, discovered that spoken French moved much faster than the language he had learned at school, and went outside looking for the center of Paris.
A bus marked Opéra gave him his route. From the Opéra he walked through wet snow to the Concorde, chose the Seine over the Champs-Élysées, and reached the Louvre. The station is therefore the first stop in Hughes's Paris geography: not a retrospective literary landmark, but the place where the uncertain day actually began.
Hughes later told the story in The Big Sea, his 1940 autobiography about childhood, seafaring, the Harlem Renaissance and his first travels abroad. His parcel counter is gone, but a visitor can still leave the main hall by the rue de Dunkerque side and follow his route south toward the Opéra. Even without taking a train, the façade is worth crossing the forecourt to see: its statues turn a transport timetable into architecture.
Key facts
- 1846 — the Embarcadère du Chemin de Fer du Nord
- Opened 19 April 1864, designed by Jacques-Ignace Hittorff
- Arrived here from Rotterdam in February 1924 with seven dollars
- Coffee and rolls inside the station
- A bus marked Opéra, then a walk through the snow to the Louvre
- A working international and suburban railway terminus
- Public concourses are walk-in; travel and controlled platforms require a ticket
In images
Timeline
The first northern railway terminus opens.
Hittorff's enlarged station opens on 19 April.
Langston Hughes arrives from Rotterdam with seven dollars, checks his bags, and begins walking Paris.
Eurostar begins carrying passengers between London and Paris.
On the map
Related books
Writers who knew this place
Langston Hughes
Visited by · 1924
Hughes arrived here from Rotterdam early one February morning in 1924 with seven dollars, checked his bags, and had coffee and rolls before beginning his first walk through Paris.
Within walking distance
Le Chat Noir
The legendary Montmartre cabaret where poets, singers, painters, cartoonists and musicians made the room itself an artistic creation — crowned by an extraordinary shadow theater.
Visit the place
Rue des Trois Frères
A freely walkable nineteenth-century Montmartre street of slopes, cobbles and apartment façades, and the deliberately imprecise location of Langston Hughes's second Paris attic in 1924.
Visit the place
Place du Tertre
Montmartre's historic hilltop square, now shared by restaurant terraces and licensed artists—and the setting of Langston Hughes and Anne Marie Coussey's last Paris dinner together in 1924.
Visit the place
Pigalle
The strip along the boulevard de Clichy below Montmartre, where the studios and the cabarets shared a pavement until only the second kind was left.
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.