THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: Another Paris landmark is no more. Brentano’s, an American bookshop whose customers have ranged from Ernest Hemingway to Johnny Hallyday, has been forced to close by exploding rental demands.
After 114 years, the bookshop’s prime site on the Avenue de L’Opéra, close to the Louvre, is expected to become, like much of the rest of the avenue, a designer label shop catering for the Japanese tourist trade.
Although regarded by the English-speaking community as a Paris institution, Brentano’s has been undermined by the recession, by the internet and, above all, by soaring commercial rents in the heart of Paris. Its landlord, the bank BNP Paribas, increased the rent several years ago from Euros 75,000 a year to Euros 200,000.
Brentano’s, founded in 1895 and originally part of an US-based chain of the same name, was once a centre of American cultural life in the French capital. "The avenue de L’Opera used to be American. It has become Japanese," said Chantal Bodez, last owner of the shop with her husband. >>> By John Lichfield in Paris | Sunday, July 12, 2009
