The Paris AtlasCharting the artists, works, and places worth returning to.

Office · Champs-Élysées (8th) · 8e arrondissement

American War Relief Clearing House, 5 rue François-Ier

The buildingStill standing
Getting inOutside only
What's there nowA building

A wartime organisation; it has not existed for over a century and nothing marks the address.

The Paris address to which Edith Wharton told readers of The Book of the Homeless to send donations in kind — the clearing house through which American war relief reached the French charities.

Address
5 rue François-Ier, 75008 Paris
Years
The First World War
IllustrationColour photorealistic view near 5 rue Francois-Ier beneath a bright blue sky

A bright present-day view of the approximate address, not a surviving relief-office interior.

Editorial illustration

The place, briefly

The American War Relief Clearing House existed to solve a logistical problem: a great deal of American money and material wanted to reach French war charities, and there was no orderly way to get it there. The Clearing House received, sorted and distributed.

Edith Wharton used it directly. In her preface to The Book of the Homeless, the fundraising anthology she edited in 1915, she instructed readers who wished to give goods rather than money to send them to the Clearing House at this address. The instruction is the reason the address is documented at all.

The anthology itself was an act of formidable persuasion — Wharton got contributions from a long list of the best-known writers, artists and composers of the period, and the proceeds went to her hostels and workrooms.

The organisation is long gone. The building is in ordinary commercial use and nothing marks it.

Key facts

What it was
A clearing house channelling American relief to French war charities
Wharton's use
The address she gave in The Book of the Homeless for gifts in kind
The anthology
Published 1915, with contributions from many leading writers and artists
Access
Nothing survives of the organisation

In images

The approximate present-day site of the American War Relief Clearing House; nothing marks the organisation.Editorial illustration
A bright present-day view of the approximate address, not a surviving relief-office interior.Editorial illustration

Timeline

  1. 1915

    Wharton edits The Book of the Homeless and names the Clearing House as the address for donations in kind.

On the map

Questions before you go

What was the American War Relief Clearing House?

A wartime organisation in Paris that received American donations and distributed them to French relief charities. Wharton directed readers of The Book of the Homeless to send goods there.

Writers who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton

American · American novelist of The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth, who left New York for Paris in 1907, kept an apartment on the rue de Varenne in the Faubourg Saint-Germain — the aristocratic quarter on the Left Bank — for thirteen years, ran refugee charities through the First World War that earned her the Légion d'honneur, France's highest national honour, in 1916, and became, in 1921, the first woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize, America's foremost literary award, for a novel.

Worked here

In her preface to The Book of the Homeless, Wharton instructed readers to send gifts in kind to the American War Relief Clearing House at 5 rue Francois-Ier.

— The Book of the Homeless: Preface

Within walking distance

Bright colour photorealistic street view of rue Pierre-Charron beneath a blue sky

Street · Champs-Élysées (8th)

Rue Pierre-Charron

The street where Edith Wharton's refugee organisations ran a grocery depot during the First World War. No building number survives in the record, so this is a street-level entry rather than an address.

Visit the place
The theater's pale stone-and-concrete front in daylight, gilded reliefs above the marquee and trees along the avenue

Theatre · Champs-Élysées

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

The concrete temple of the avant-garde — where The Rite of Spring caused a riot in 1913, and the Ballet Mécanique caused another in 1926, with Ezra Pound shouting over the pianolas.

Visit the place
Chez Francis today — black awning, glassed-in terrace and hedge planters below the stone facade on the Place de l'Alma

Restaurant · Place de l'Alma

Chez Francis

The brasserie on the Place de l'Alma that Cendrars scholarship names as one of the writer's regular stops — a Right Bank address in a café life mapped mostly through Montparnasse.

Visit the place
Bright colour photorealistic street view of avenue Marceau beneath a blue sky

Apartment · Chaillot (16th)

61 avenue Joséphine (now avenue Marceau)

The address where the Jones family lived around 1868 to 1870, when the future Edith Wharton was a child of six or seven — the years that gave her fluent French and a lifelong sense that Europe was home.

Visit the place
References

References

The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document American War Relief Clearing House, 5 rue François-Ier, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.

  1. 1The Book of the Homeless: Preface

    Essays
    Edith Wharton (via Wikisource)
    Used for

    Published analysis and historical context used in preparing the American War Relief Clearing House, 5 rue François-Ier page.

    View source

  2. 2Edith Wharton: A Chronology

    Website
    The Edith Wharton Society
    Used for

    Web source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the American War Relief Clearing House, 5 rue François-Ier page.

    View source

  1. 3The Book of the Homeless (Le livre des sans-foyer)

    Nonfiction
    Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916
    Used for

    Published analysis and historical context used in preparing the American War Relief Clearing House, 5 rue François-Ier page.

    View source

  2. 4Edith Wharton

    Biography
    Alfred A. Knopf, 2007
    Used for

    Biographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to American War Relief Clearing House, 5 rue François-Ier.

i
Why these sources are here

These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.

Explore more resources

Newsletter

Paris, one address at a time.

The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.

Unsubscribe anytime.