Post by Michael Magri

In 1960, Galerie Vivienne looked like this: dim, half empty, and forgotten. The glass canopy that now floods the passage with light had partially caved in, and several of its boutiques had already closed for good. The gallery was built in 1823 by Louis-Auguste Marchoux, president of the Chambre des notaires (Chamber of Notaries), and it originally carried his name, Galerie Marchoux. It only became Galerie Vivienne when it officially opened to the public in 1826, named after the street running alongside it. The architect, François-Jean Delannoy, designed it in the neoclassical Pompeian style that still defines the space today, right down to the mosaic floors laid by the Italian craftsman Giandomenico Facchina. At 577 feet (176 meters) long, it was one of the grandest covered passages built to give Parisian shoppers shelter from mud and rain, decades before the city had proper sidewalks. Its most colorful resident was Eugène-François Vidocq. The former convict turned police chief, considered the father of modern criminal investigation, moved into an apartment above the gallery at No. 13 after his career collapsed in disgrace. Galerie Vivienne thrived through much of the 19th century, drawing wealthy shoppers from the nearby Bourse (stock exchange) and the Palais-Royal. Then Haussmann's new boulevards and the rise of department stores pulled business away, and by the 1960s it had fallen into the state you see on the left. The turnaround began in the 1980s, when fashion designers moved in and brought new crowds through its doors. Today the gallery is jointly owned by the Académie des beaux-arts and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and it has been a protected historic monument since 1974. It is one of the few 19th century Parisian passages that came this close to disappearing and survived to be restored instead.