Rue de l'Échiquier was opened in 1772, cut through convent lands. Stretching behind No. 43, till far into the nineteenth century, was the graveyard of the parish Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle. No. 48 was the well-known dancing-hall, Pavillon de l'Échiquier, before and under the Directoire. Rue du Paradis, in the seventeenth century Rue St-Lazare, is noted for its pottery shops. At No. 58 Corot, the great landscape painter who lived hard by, had his studio. The capitulation of Paris in 1814 was signed at No. 51, the abode of the duc de Raguse. Leading out of Rue de Chabrol at No. 7 we find the old-world Passage de la Ferme-St-Lazare and a courtyard, relics of the Lazarists farm. Rue d'Hauteville, so called from the title of a Prévôt des Marchands, comte d'Hauteville, was known in earlier times as Rue la Michodière, his family name. In the court at No. 58 we come upon a _hôtel_ which was the abode of Bourrienne, Napoléon's secretary; its rooms are an interesting example of the style of the period. The pillared pavilion at No. 6 _bis_, Passage Violet, dates only from 1840.
Rue de Strasbourg, where the courtyard of the Gare de l'Est now stretches, was the site in olden days of one of the great Paris fairs, the Foire St-Laurent, held annually, lasting two months, a privilege of the Lazarist monks. It was at this fair that the first café-concerts were opened. The Comédie-Italienne, too, first played there. Rue de la Fidélité, on the eastern side of the Faubourg St-Denis, records the name given to the church St-Laurent in Revolution days; it lies across the site of the couvent des Filles-de-la-Charité founded by St-Vincent-de-Paul and Louise de Marillac, of which we find some traces at No. 9.
The northern end of Rue du Faubourg St-Martin was long known as Rue du Faubourg St-Laurent; zealously stamping out all names recording saints, the Revolutionists called this long thoroughfare Faubourg du Nord. We find ancient houses, vestiges of past ages, at every step, and the modern structures seen at intervals are on sites of historic interest. The baker's shop at No. 44, "A l'Industrie," claims to have existed from the year 1679. No. 59 is the site of the first Old Catholic church, founded in 1831 by abbé Chatel. The Mairie at No. 76 covers the site of an ancient barracks, and of a bridge which once spanned the brook Ménilmontant. An ancient arch was found beneath the soil in 1896. Rue des Marais, which opens at No. 86, dates from the seventeenth century. Here till 1860 stood the dwelling of the famous public headsman Sanson and of his descendants, _painted red_! At No. 119 we see the _chevet_ of the church St-Laurent, the only ancient part of the church as we know it. In the little Rue Sibour, opening at No. 121, recording the name of the archbishop of Paris who died in 1857, we find an ancient house, now a bathing establishment. No. 160 covers land once the graveyard of les Récollets. The short Rue Chaudron records the name of a fountain once there. The bulky fountains higher up are modern (1849), built by public subscription.