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Friday, December 31, 2010

La Residence Sociale and Marie-Jeanne Bassot

Almost one hundred years since Esther Lovejoy first began her work with Marie-Jeanne Bassot at the Residence Sociale in the Levallois-Perret district northwest of Paris their work lives on and has shaped the community. Lovejoy, U.S. donors (including members of the Portland Woman's Club) and the American Women's Hospitals (which Lovejoy directed) provided funds for post-war expansion and renovation of the center.
Today La Residence Sociale hosts a day care center for children and other children's social services.
In her House of the Good Neighbor (New York: MacMillan, 1919) facing p. 19 Esther Lovejoy published an image of the playground behind La Residence (Marie-Jeanne Bassot is to the right of the tree):
Today, with upgrades, La Residence continues to provide play space:
To honor her work, Paris named the nearby square Place Marie-Jeanne Bassot and today it is a bustling center of shops, restaurants and offices.

On the map below Place Marie-Jean Bassot is at the bottom, just above Rue Baudin. L'Avenue de l-Europe leads to Place Georges Pompidou and to the Quai Michelet on the Seine River.