Newly completed reconstruction of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.

It’s a bit late to be hailing the rebuilt Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. How beautiful it looks, inside and out. For a deeper analysis of both efforts I will await word from those more knowledgeable than I. Still, it was thrilling to see the leaders of the world, including President-elect Trump, gathering for the occasion five years after it was almost destroyed by fire. And perhaps it will not be seen as too far-fetched to wonder how the news of Notre-Dame’s revitalization might affect Weybosset Street, here in downtown Providence.

Weybosset Street expands into a plaza of sorts (similar to the Parvis, as the plaza outside of Notre-Dame has long been known), as Weybosset stretches west from Dorrance. PPAC, the Providence Performing Arts Center, forms what could be deemed the Notre-Dame of this neighborhood. It is just a couple of blocks from Providence City Hall, not far from the Providence River, just as the Hôtel de Ville (French for City Hall) sits in similar proximity to Notre-Dame on the River Seine as it flows past the Isle de la Cité.

Readers with long memories may count how many times this writer has urged city planners here to promote a Parisian ambience outside the doors of PPAC, where people exiting shows would have a veritable European choice of cafés and restaurants (both words are of French origin) to sit down and discuss the show they just saw while waiting for the traffic to dissipate.

Such a tasty plaza does not exist in front of Notre-Dame today. It is at present, I think, a site where the facilities set up several years ago to help reconstruct the cathedral are being demolished now that its reconstruction is complete. If the French planners are savvy (not a good bet, to be frank – its mayor is a Socialist), they will turn the Parvis into a paradise de cuisine. My very recent extraordinarily desultory visit to the web site of the musée Carnavalet revealed no evidence that such a usage had ever been carried out on the Parvis, although it is likely that many places to eat and drink existed, prior to the Parvis’s most recent renovation in 1972, on the ground floors of the hospital, the police headquarters and their predecessors if not the cathedral itself.

It could happen at what I’d like to call Weybosset Square. There are already enough restaurants in PPAC’s immediate vicinity, on either side of Weybosset, to bring such a vision to reality. My family and I have eaten at some of them before attending wonderfully exciting shows at PPAC. All it really needs is some good P.R., such as:

Eat, Drink and Relax until traffic clears and God (George Burns) says it’s okay to go get your car from the garage.

Alternatively, or in addition to that idea, suggestions to build a new structure to house the Providence city archives (several of which have been lately proposed and found wanting for stylistic reasons) could be reproposed. A new building inspired by the architecture of the musée Carnavalet could be built for the archives on the site of the library of Johnson & Wales College, whose campus quadrangle sits just to the east of PPAC. The “East German Embassy.” as the library is known due to its forbidding Stasi-esque appearance, it is sure to be torn down whenver civic leaders decide to develop a spine. The new building could house both the archives and Providence-themed exhibits patterned after those in the museum near the Parvis in Paris. If a new building of such design (see below) is too far beyond the aspirations of the city of Providence, the land could remain vacant until the moxie to build it has been grasped by city fathers, or it could be added to J&W’s excellent quadrangle by the city’s fleet of landscape architects. With a bit of creative thinking, they could be brought into existence again.

Musée de Carnavalet exhibits the buildings that once surrounded the Paris, as the plaza in front of Notre Dame was known for centuries. (carnavalet.paris)