Rue Saint-Lazare

The Rue Saint-Lazare is a street in the 8th and 9th arrondissements of Paris. It starts at 9 Rue Bourdaloue and 1 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, and ends at Place Gabriel-Péri and Rue de Rome.

This street already existed in 1700 under the name of rue des Porcherons or rue d'Argenteuil, and connected the villages of Roule and Ville-L’Évêque to the village of Porcherons. In 1734 it was still only lined with few buildings. The present name dates from 1770 and comes from the Maison Saint-Lazare toward which it led (via the rues Lamartine, Bleue, and Paradis) and which had been used as a leprosarium since the Middle Ages; it was converted into the Prison Saint-Lazare in 1793. It stood at the current location of no 117 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, in the 10th arrondissement.

A ministerial decision of 12 Fructidor V (29 August 1797) fixed the minimum width of the street at 10 meters. This width was increased to 11 meters by a royal decree of 3 August 1838. An order of 3 September 1843 declared the public utility of expansion to 20 meters to the right of the properties at numbers 115-121 to create the Cour du Havre.