Paris Olympics: the rebirth of 14Trévise, the cradle of basketball

Paris, December 1894, behind the carriage entrance at 14, rue de Trévise, a dozen young people listen to their American sports teacher suggest a new game, invented two years earlier in Springfield, Massachusetts, by his friend, the Canadian James Naimsmith. One rainy day, he picked up a basket to collect peaches, hung it up high, handed a soccer ball to his students and proposed 13 rules. Later he will write them on a sheet which, in 2010, will sell… 4.3 million dollars. In the meantime the Springfield kids of the time had fun, they started again, soon they were looking for a name for their game. They wanted to call it “Naimsmith Ball”, the teacher laughed because he was modest, he suggested “basketball”. Too bad for his descendants, who would have since had something to celebrate.

At the end of the 19th century, in the frozen French capital, the same story: winter, boredom, fruit baskets, a pole – the ball having reached its goal, it must be pushed outside to continue the game. . The “basket ball”, its ephemeral local name, was born thus, born here. Precisely in this room, where nothing has changed since. A cheerful faded mausoleum. To avoid sawdust and dust on the ground, a solid parquet floor is laid “herringbone” on a mixture of sand and bitumen, with dimensions – 28 meters by 15 – which will become those, regulatory, of basketball. Moreover, even the height of the net – replacing the inconvenient basket in 1912 – is that of the mezzanine of the room, namely 3.05 meters. Funny that a sport that has become global, practiced by nearly half a billion people, has modestly taken shape in this basement of a building of faded splendor. And even funnier, while basketball was being invented in the basement, upstairs a hell of a game was being played at the same time, the bet of a handful of rich Protestants wishing to educate the youth of the suburbs, to teach them how to showering, washing hands, changing clothes for sports, reading, thinking, talking, praying…

This adventure, Christelle Bertho, historian and architect, having, in 2016, devoted her master’s thesis to this little-known place, recounts it with animation. It has never left 14, rue de Trévise, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, listing, in its 3,500 square meters, there a painting offered by the Pereire brothers, here the first glass blocks designed by Saint-Gobain; going through the registers showing the religions of the tenants (Hindus, Muslims, freethinkers, and an overwhelming majority of Protestants and Catholics); stopping in front of the war memorial, a plaque placed in the vestibule on the first floor and marveling at the monumental wooden fireplace, on the trumeau of which appears a sentence of Saint John, browsing the 4,000 works of the library, including this edifying conversation manual.

Courbertin and Evian

Today, the building is deserted, exit the theater, basketball, the 48 students and young workers who lived there, the hall of krav-maga, boxing, bridge, tango, swing, gym, everything the world packed up last January. Tired by its 130 years of exercise, tested by the nearby explosion which, in 2019, killed four people, the building has aged, it urgently needs to be restored, a site over which the expert Christelle Bertho is therefore watching. Cost amounted to 10 million euros, half financed by the owner of the place, the French branch of the YMCA (Young Men Christian Association), the rest paid by the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs and the Française des jeux, via the Heritage Foundation. Two million are still missing, for which the architect, supported by the philanthropy consultant Danuta Pieter, president of a consulting company, former general delegate of the Fondation des Hôpitaux de Paris, is looking for donors.

They have something to seduce their audience with their rare story where Pierre de Coubertin and Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, the son of the jeweler Tiffany and Alfred André, patron of the waters of Evian, founder of the Alsatian School meet. and the uncle of the famous Edouard whose collection of paintings will bring the Jacquemart-André museum to life. And then, the first showers, the first indoor swimming pool, the hunt for germs, the popular canteen, its 500 daily meals where wine is served, to the great displeasure of passing Americans, the talks in the halls and in its basement. ground therefore, the world adventure of basketball.

The youth movement YMCA-UCJG (Christian Union of Young People, in French), born in England to save poor young workers from misery, is flourishing in the United States. Until the First World War, more than 1,000 buildings were built on its soil, one building in almost every major city, a tight network intended to promote “the Christianization of sport”. The idea enchants these Protestant bourgeois, a little frightened by the influx of dirty and rustic labour. In the same place, these adults will be housed, fed, educated, converted, their “soul, body and spirit”, founding triptych, brought up. From the second half of the 19th century, here is the patron James Stroke crossing the Atlantic: “It is a question of erecting in Paris a house fairly well fitted out for the use of young people to be able to compete with places of pleasure, to offer them every facility for learning and developing body and intelligence, healthy food and some cheap hygienic lodgings, and provide a meeting center for the various Protestant works.” He goes in search of land, calculates a budget, all of this is expensive. His idea, to copy what the New York press magnate, Joseph Pulitzer, had just orchestrated to finance the base of the Statue of Liberty, the first operation of crowdfunding, an appeal for donations from the public, all the more pressing as the name of each donor is published in his newspaper.

First French “third place”

In Paris, Alfred André, a gigantic fortune, is responsible for convincing his friends. A plot of 750 square meters was purchased on rue de Trévise, but it was disappointing because it was in a narrow street, close to the main boulevards of course, but out of the way. Hardly a choice, the construction site begins. An architecture designed to serve the educational mission. Cast iron pillars, framework of metal beams, large glass roof, steam heating, freight elevator: the place looks good, holding its rank compared to the audacious stores of La Samaritaine and Printemps, which came out of the ground shortly before and have electricity even before the city of Paris. Entirely glazed facades, blown glass brick floors, an invention that has just been patented. Thirty years earlier, Pasteur discovered the ravages of bacteria, this nascent hygienism seduced donors, the house was therefore equipped with fountains that filtered the water. The kitchen is installed on the top floor, its smells will escape to the sky, and then the rats will not take the stairs.

One of the first visitors was Pierre de Coubertin, the future renovator of the Olympic Games. Barely returned from his sports survey tour in North America, the Catholic is holding a conference there. “Muscular Christianity”, “athletic catechism”, his words express his joy at finally seeing Parisians understand that sport maintains the body, a divine work. Because 14, rue de Trévise is not content with accommodating destitute young people, feeding them, educating them, it strongly encourages them to take part in sports and intellectual pursuits. For the first time, a building houses a gymnasium, a weapons room, shower baths, a bowling alley, a “natatorium” (swimming pool), a conversation room, a reading room, a library, five classrooms, a music room, a tea room: this is undoubtedly the first “third place” in our history. The monumental staircase is even equipped with a double bar so that the hungry, climbing towards the refectory, can read with their arms resting on the banister. The adventure was interrupted at the end of March, the workers are busy, 14, rue de Trévise must open for the Olympic Games. He has so much to tell them.