Les Epinettes

Les Epinettes takes its name from the wild thorn bushes that once carpeted this slope above the Seine. Long before the nineteenth century urban expansion, this was a rural outpost where vine growers kept small stone sheds among the brambles. By the eighteen sixties, the village vanished under a dense grid of workers' housing and sprawling industrial complexes. The neighborhood grew around the workshops, becoming a tight-knit enclave for the laborers who built much of modern Paris while living in these cramped, soot-stained blocks.