CAPITAL OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

"With the study of the arcades, a closely related reorientation in space is opened up. The street itself is thereby manifest as well-worn interior: as living space of the collective, for true collectives as such inhabit the street. The collective is an eternally awake, eternally agitated being that—in the space between the building fronts—lives, experiences, understands, invents as much as individuals do within the privacy of their own four walls. For it, for this collective, enameled shop signs are a wall decoration as good as, if not better than, the inexpensive olegraph above the hearth. Walls with their “Post no Bills” are its writing desks, newspaper stands its libraries, display windows its glazed inaccessible armoires, mailboxes its bronzes, benches its bedroom furniture, and the café terrace is the balcony from which it looks down on its household…”