Edith Wharton
Lived here · 1910
Wharton took the apartment at 53 rue de Varenne in January 1910. It became her principal Paris home and, during the First World War, the coordinating address for her refugee-relief organisations.
53 rue de Varenne
Still standing
Outside only
A building
The apartment Edith Wharton took in January 1910 and made her principal Paris address — and which became, during the First World War, the headquarters of one of the largest private relief operations in France.
- 53 rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris
- Wharton's principal Paris home from January 1910
Illustration
The place, briefly
Edith Wharton took this apartment in January 1910, and it is the address that matters most in her Paris life. She was in her late forties, her marriage was ending, and she had decided that France rather than America was where she wanted to live. She would stay in France for the rest of her life.
The rue de Varenne runs through the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the old aristocratic quarter of Paris — a world of courtyards behind carriage doors, exactly the sort of closed and codified society Wharton had spent her career anatomising in New York. Living inside it was both a social achievement and useful research.
Then the war came, and this apartment became something else entirely. Wharton did not leave. She organised relief on a scale that is genuinely hard to credit for a private individual: workrooms for unemployed seamstresses, hostels for refugees arriving from Belgium and northern France, tuberculosis sanatoria, schools for refugee children. The rue de Varenne was the coordinating address and the return address on the correspondence.
In 1916 the French government made her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour for the work. She also edited The Book of the Homeless, a fundraising anthology to which she persuaded an extraordinary list of writers and artists to contribute.
Key facts
- January 1910
- Faubourg Saint-Germain, 7th arrondissement
- The coordinating address for her refugee-relief organisations
- Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, 1916
- The lease was taken over by her friend Walter Berry
- Private — exterior only
In images
Timeline
Wharton takes the apartment at 53 rue de Varenne in January.
War begins; the apartment becomes the base of her relief work.
She edits The Book of the Homeless to raise funds for the refugee charities.
France makes her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
On the map
Questions before you go
Where did Edith Wharton live in Paris?
Her principal Paris home was 53 rue de Varenne in the 7th arrondissement, which she took in January 1910. She had rented 58 rue de Varenne, across the street, in 1907–08.
What did Wharton do during the First World War?
She stayed in France and ran large-scale relief operations — workrooms, refugee hostels, sanatoria and schools — coordinated from this apartment. France awarded her the Legion of Honour for it in 1916.
Can you visit?
No. It is a private building in a district of closed courtyards.
Writers who knew this place
Within walking distance
58 rue de Varenne
The apartment Edith Wharton rented from George Vanderbilt for the winters of 1907 and 1908 — her first real Paris home, a few doors from the address that would become her permanent one.
Visit the place
Théâtre de Babylone
A small theatre at 38 boulevard Raspail, founded by Jean-Marie Serreau in 1952 and gone within a few years. On 5 January 1953 it staged the first performance of Samuel Beckett's En attendant Godot, directed by Roger Blin — the night modern theatre changed.
Visit the place
Musée Rodin
An eighteenth-century Paris mansion where Auguste Rodin rented four rooms in 1908, later took the whole building, and which he gave away in advance — donating his entire output to the French State on condition it buy the house and turn it into his museum. It opened in 1919, two years after his death.
Visit the place
The Little Review Paris office, 80 rue de l'Université
The Paris office of The Little Review, the magazine that serialised Ulysses and published Djuna Barnes — a publication link rather than a place she is known to have worked in.
Visit the placeReferences
References
The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document 53 rue de Varenne, the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.
1Edith Wharton: A Chronology
WebsiteThe Edith Wharton SocietyUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the 53 rue de Varenne page.
2The Book of the Homeless: Preface
EssaysEdith Wharton (via Wikisource)Used forPublished analysis and historical context used in preparing the 53 rue de Varenne page.
3Edith Wharton
BiographyAlfred A. Knopf, 2007Used forBiographical evidence used to verify chronology, relationships, and historical context connected to 53 rue de Varenne.
4The Book of the Homeless (Le livre des sans-foyer)
NonfictionCharles Scribner's Sons, 1916Used forPublished analysis and historical context used in preparing the 53 rue de Varenne page.
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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 resourcesNewsletter
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.