ABSTRACT
When the wooden gallery was destroyed by fire in 1828, and the gambling hall closed in 1836, the district slowly began to decline, a situation that was further exacerbated by the increasing success of the Parisian boulevards. The growing popularity of this type of establishment led to the term ‘restaurant’ entering the Dictionnaire de lacademie francaise in 1835. Newspapers announced the foreclosure of the famous establishment in 1905, perhaps due to the fact that the restaurant was constantly changing hands. All that remained, by this point, was a disreputable American bar on the ground floor. Customers enter the restaurant through the Peristyle de Joinville. In earlier times, they would have arrived via the carriage gate on the Rue de Beaujolais. A load-bearing wall divides the dining room into two different sized rooms. The smaller room, which has an impressive dark, oak staircase at one end, exudes an air of intimacy.
