Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1887 — The Paris Stock-Exchange. [ARTICLE]

The Paris Stock-Exchange.

Edward King describes, in the Cosmopolitan, one of the most interesting institutions of Paris, as follows: If the peaceable daughters of Heaven, who once wandered through the pretty arcades of the Convent of the Daughters of St. Thomas d’Aquinas, could have foreseen that the site pf their nunnery was to be occupied by one of the great temples of commerce, and was to become a rendezvous for the most excitable commercial class in Christendom, they would have felt some slight perturbation in their innocent breasts. The Paris bourse, or exchange, the building of which was decided b/ an imperial decree dated March 16, iBOB, was erected almost in the exact center of the French capital, on a part of the grounds that, up to 1790, had been occupied by the above-mentioned convent. Napoleon, with his magnificent eye to business, saw that this was the exact spot for the daily meetings of all classes of commercial people, and sb he fulminated one of liis decrees. The State gave the site, tile city of Paris’paid' down the money for the expenses of building, and the old architect Brougiart furnished the plans for the edifice on the model of a pagan temple. He had spent a little more than 8,000,000 francs when, in 1813, death carried him off, and his successor, M. Labarre, continued the work until 1827." The edificewas dedicated on the 3d of November, 1836. Surrounded by its majestic Corinthian columns, fourteen upon each of the fronts and twenty upon either side, the bourse of Paris is, perhaps, one of the most important edifices of the capital. Decorated with costly statues of Justice, Prudence, it is a veritable “monument” in the European sense. Its interior is exceedingly simple. The central hall, reserved for the operations on ’change, can hold about 2,000 persons on the ground floor. A spacious gallery, extending entirely round this hall, enables the populace of Paris and the strangers to observe the mad antics of the speculators—antics that are as ridiculous and remarkable as those-yon the New York stock-exchange. All the French volubility and capacity for gesture are here intensified a thousand-fold.