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.
People who knew this place
Arthur Rimbaud
Rimbaud's first arrival in Paris, in August 1870, ended on the platform. The fifteen-year-old had run away from Charleville and travelled without a ticket; he was arrested on arrival at the Gare du Nord and held at the Mazas prison until his schoolteacher Georges Izambard paid what was owed and took him home. He came back thirteen months later as Verlaine's invited guest.
Within walking distance
10 rue Cail
The cheap room near the Gare du Nord where Gauguin lived with his young son Clovis after the crash took his income — the same city as the place Saint-Georges, and a different world.
Visit the place
Salle d'Harcourt, 40 rue de Rochechouart
The modest concert hall where the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune was first performed on 22 December 1894 — a piece often treated as the beginning of modern music, premièred in a room almost nobody has heard of.
Visit the place
39 rue Bleue
Where Paul Cézanne lodged when he arrived in Paris in 1861 at twenty-two, having finally won his banker father's permission to paint — and where he lasted a matter of months before retreating to Aix.
Visit the place
5 rue Lamartine
The Paris offices of the Chicago Tribune, where Henry Miller worked as a proofreader in 1931 — the only steady paid work of his Paris decade, taken on the night shift while he wrote Tropic of Cancer.
Visit the placeReferences
References
The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document Gare du Nord, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.
1The Big Sea
MemoirAlfred A. Knopf, New York, 1940Used forFirst-person evidence and historical context used in preparing the Gare du Nord page.
2Histoire de la Gare du Nord
WebsiteSNCF Gares & Connexions, 2023Used forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Gare du Nord page.
3Stepping Back in Time: Langston Hughes' writings reveal Black Montmartre
PeriodicalSFGATE, 2003Used forContemporary reporting or criticism used to document the historical reception and context of Gare du Nord.
4Langston Hughes: D.C.'s Original Busboy Poet
WebsiteBoundary Stones, WETA, 2024Used forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Gare du Nord page.
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Why these sources are here
These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.
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