Bateau-Lavoir

You are standing at the site of the Bateau-Lavoir, a place that earned its name from its ramshackle condition. The building was dark, drafty, and prone to swaying in the wind, which reminded tenants of the laundry boats that bobbed on the Seine River. French poet Max Jacob coined the nickname as a joke about the building's constant motion and the fact that its twenty resident artists shared just a single water tap. Continue