Avenue Suffren, bounding this arrondissement on its even-number side, dates from 1770. Rue Desaix was once le Chemin de l’Orme de Grenelle. Rue de la Fédération memorizes the Fête de la Fédération held on the Champ de Mars in 1790. The oldest street of the district is Rue Dupleix, a road in the fifteenth century and known in the sixteenth century as Sentier de la Justice or Chemin du Gibet, a name which explains itself. Then it became Rue Neuve. The Château de Grenelle stood in old days on the site of the barracks on Place Dupleix, used in the Revolution as a powder factory; there in 1794 a terrific explosion took place, killing twelve hundred persons. Where the Grande Roue turns, on the ground now bright with flower-beds and grassy lawns, duels were fought erewhile. This is the quarter of new streets, brand-new avenues. Crossing the Seine at this point we find ourselves in arrondissement XVI, for to its area south of the Étoile and surrounding avenues, were added in 1860 the suburban villages of Passy and Auteuil. CHAPTER XLIII IN NEWER PARIS ARRONDISSEMENT XVI. (PASSY) We have left far behind us now Old Paris, the Paris of the Kings of France, of the upheaval of Revolution days. The 16th arrondissement, save in the remotest corners of Passy and Auteuil, suburban villages still in some respects, is the arrondissement of the “Nineteenth Century and After.” Round about the Étoile the Napoléonic stamp is very evident. It is the district of the French Empire, First and Second. The Arc de Triomphe was Napoléon’s conception. The broad thoroughfare stretching as Avenue des Champs-Elysées to Place de la Concorde, as Avenue de la Grande Armée to the boundary of Neuilly, was planned by Napoléon I, as were also the other eleven surrounding avenues. The erections of his day and following years were well designed, well built, solid, systematical, mathematically correct, excellent work as constructions--spacious, airy, hygienic, but devoid of architectural poetry. The buildings of the Second Empire were a little less well designed, less well built and yet more symmetrical, with a very marked utilitarian stamp and a marked lack of artistic inspiration. Those of a later date, with the exception of some few edifices on ancient models, are, alas! for the most part, utilitarian only--supremely utilitarian. Paris dwelling-houses of to-day are, save for a fine _hôtel_ here and there, “_maisons de rapport_,” where _rapport_ is plainly their all-prevailing _raison d’être_. The new houses are one like the other, so like as to render new streets devoid of landmarks: “_Où sont les jours d’Antan_,” when each street, each house had its distinctive feature? Only in the Paris of generations past.