A Week-End Wonderweb 04-12 (Saint-Quentin)

European hub halfway between Paris and Brussels, London and Bonn, a strategic station stop on pre-TGV* international railway lines (Paris-St-Quentin-Brussels/ Aachen/ Köln/ Amsterdam/ København/ Москва), home to artists, free thinkers, formerly known as the French Manchester thanks to its strong textile manufacturing and trade legacy spanning centuries, the most Flemish of French towns is also a beacon of Art Deco style and more, with two jewels in the architectural stakes, namely its magnificent gothic basilica (as a tribute to Quentin, a martyr) and 500-year-old town hall; a no-mercy outpost, taken over by the Prussians in 1870, flattened out by the Germans in WWI, and again damaged in WWII, at the heart of war cemetery graveland, only a few miles away from the notorious Somme Valley, here is a town of contrasts, a land of invasions, a pool of invention, disillusion, vision and reinvention, welcome to my hometown of St-Quentin, Picardie.

Sources (top page down):

• Brooklyn Museum Libraries & Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection, Church of St-Quentin, France, 1907
• The U.S. NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), Archival Research Catalog, View of ruins in front of the Cathedral of St. Quentin, France (October 14, 1918), ARC Identifier 530770 / Local Identifier 111-SC-28224
• Nathalie Hachet @ La Baguette Magique, St-Quentin basilica, Quentin's ossuary
• Pascal Stritt, Le Parcours Art Déco, detail of an Art Deco façade (rue de Baudreuil)
• id., stained glass detail on St-Quentin train station's listed Art Deco façade
• Inventaire du Patrimoine Culturel de Picardie, La Cotonnière de St-Quentin (cotton mill), 1950s branded stationery. Let us note that by the end of the 1950s, La Cotonnière employed over 2500 workers spread across 7 manufacturing sites in St-Quentin. Find out more from La Baguette Magique.

Additional Resources:

• Aerial views of St-Quentin from here.

* TGV = Trains à Grande Vitesse, the French fast trains