The City of Paris library at Place des Fêtes, opened in July 2024 and named for James Baldwin — the most substantial tribute Paris has made to him.
The city built the collections around exile and migration, LGBT culture, feminisms and ecology — the subjects of Baldwin's own life and work. He left Harlem for Paris in 1948 at twenty-four and wrote about exile, race and desire for the rest of his life. In presenting the name, the city cited his civil-rights engagement and his defense of LGBT rights alongside his decades in France.
The building is shared with the Maison des Réfugiés, a thousand square meters of support center run by Emmaüs Solidarité and Singa with close to fifty partner associations, offering French classes and help toward work and settlement. In June 2025 it was renamed Maison Pape François, for Pope Francis, who died that April and had made migration a central question of his pontificate. Putting a library about exile and a refugee support center in the same building was a deliberate choice by the city.
The site is the former lycée hôtelier Jean-Quarré, a hotel-trade school that had closed and stood empty. Its recent history explains why the building now holds both a library and a refugee center. In June 2015 around a hundred migrants moved into the empty school; the occupation grew through the summer in sanitary conditions the city itself described as dire. On 23 October 2015, in a joint operation by the city and the state, 1,308 people were evacuated and rehoused. The city then handed the site to Emmaüs Solidarité, which installed washrooms, laundries and food service and reopened the building as an emergency reception center in February 2016.
The conversion that followed turned the school into the médiathèque and gave the refugee house a permanent address. The architect is Philippe Madec, whom the city presents as a pioneer of eco-responsible building: the old lycée was reworked rather than demolished, clad in timber, and set among roughly 5,000 square meters of gardens and a central square shared between the two institutions. A roof terrace is held for future programming, and a vegetable garden was planned for the spring of 2025.
The collection goes well past books. Alongside the 80,000 documents there are vinyl records, kamishibaï picture-theatres for children, around 300 board games, video games with consoles that can be borrowed, and musical instruments that can be borrowed with ID, like books. The manga shelves were selected by students from the nearby Collège Guillaume-Budé. For readers who come to work there are 90 study places and 22 free-access computers.
On a démarré sur les chapeaux de roues : le public est au rendez-vous !
The library opened on 19 July 2024 and held its inaugural festival weekend that September. Attendance was strong from the first weeks. Place des Fêtes sits on the heights of northeastern Paris, a Métro ride from the Saint-Germain-des-Prés cafés where James Baldwin spent his first Paris years — the city chose to put his name on a neighborhood library rather than on a monument.
Last verified: August 2026.
The disused lycée Jean-Quarré is occupied by migrants from June; on 23 October, 1,308 people are evacuated and rehoused.
Emmaüs Solidarité opens an emergency reception center on the site in February.
The médiathèque opens to the public on 19 July, in Philippe Madec's conversion of the school; an inaugural festival weekend follows in September. The Maison des Réfugiés shares the building.
The Maison des Réfugiés is renamed Maison Pape François in June.
Commemorates · 2024
The City of Paris médiathèque at Place des Fêtes, opened 19 July 2024 in the former lycée Jean-Quarré, is named for Baldwin, with collections themed around exile and migration, LGBT culture, feminisms and ecology. It commemorates the writer thirty-seven years after his death; he never visited the site.
The Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
