Allée Duguay-Trouin
A former river quay that lost its water in the 1930s.
You're standing on what was once the northern edge of a real island. Until the 1930s, the Loire split around this strip of land, and the water of the bras de la Bourse came right up to these stones. The quay you're on got its concession in 1721, and the wall began to rise in the summer of 1723, work that took nine years. It was laid out as part of the île Feydeau, a brand-new quarter for the city's shipowners and merchants, and the tall houses behind you were their showpieces, every one of them paid for by Atlantic trade.
Jules Verne was born on this island too, at 4 rue Olivier-de-Clisson, where a plaque marks the house. Then the city filled the river arm in, between 1926 and 1938, and when the sand settled the island was land. The quay became an allée, a road with no water to meet. Much of it still carries cars; only the stretch between cours Olivier-de-Clisson and rue Léon-Maître was given over to pedestrians and bikes, its paved quay remade beside a green ditch.
Look at the line of the pavement and the low strip of grass beside it. That is the ghost of the river.
