As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, there is a tendency to conflate the declaration of independence in 1776 and the subsequent acts that ultimately secured US independence at the end of the revolutionary war. The latter occurred only in 1783 as a result of the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended hostilities with Britain. The signing of the treaty has been memorialized in an unfinished painting by Benjamin West.
The treaty itself was signed at 56 Rue Jacob in Paris, at what was previously the Hôtel d’York, a stone’s throw from what was then the British Embassy. The building stands and has served several purposes, which are recounted here. Curiously, the significance of the building was not known to the US government as late as the 1950s, when a plaque was affixed to its façade (it appears that the original plaque has been replaced with a new one).
Given the importance of the Treaty of Paris in American History (and to the History of International Relations), I found it surprising, when walking the Rue Jacob on an unseasonably hot evening in late May, that the building in which the treaty was signed has suffered from neglect. The plaque, in French, drawing attention to the building’s significance, but otherwise the graffiti defacing the entry way is what catches the eye. Its parlous state is all the more striking given its location in one of the more fashionable districts of Paris.
56 Rue Jacob is sometimes included in lists of sites in Paris of interest to students of US History. Yet the relative neglect of the building and the lack of widespread knowledge of the building’s significance in a year in which hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent commemorating and celebrating American independence is dissonant. The building’s present state is inescapably symbolic as well as dismaying to those scholars, myself included, who emphasize the international and imperial dimensions of the American Revolution. One can only hope for a refurbishment before 2033, when the 250th anniversary of the US’s entry into the community of nations is celebrated.
