Behind the Door

[Photo Credit: Victoria Kastner]

When Julia Morgan arrived in Paris in 1896, she lived behind this door at 4 rue de Chevreuse. It marks the entrance to the American Girls’ Club, founded in 1893 by Elizabeth Mills Reid, the wife of American ambassador Whitelaw Reid. She purchased an 18^th-century porcelain factory in the sixth arrondissement and converted it into a dormitory that provided safe accommodations for many of the young women who were flocking to Paris to study art. (Today is it known as Reid Hall, where students from Columbia University take classes while studying abroad.)