An avalanche of donations, ranging from 5 euros to 10 million dollars: Americans have proven the love they have for Notre-Dame de Paris by mobilizing financially for the rebirth of a monument that is so dear to them.
“The Americans are the biggest donors, by far, after the French”summarizes Michel Picaud, president of Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris, to AFP, two weeks before reopening.
Founded in 2017, this association saw donations surge after the fire of April 15, 2019. It raised $57 million, from 45,000 donors, mainly American.
Friends of Notre-Dame notably received $10 million from the Starr Foundation, one of the main foundations in the United States. Another, the Marie-Josee and Henry Kravis Foundation, contributed the same amount.
Including other patrons, such as the French Heritage Society of New York, recipient of a check for $2 million from the Estée Lauder family, Mr. Picaud estimates that Americans contributed $62 million to the restoration of Notre Dame.
Built more than 600 years before the Eiffel Tower, the cathedral located on the Île de la Cité is “one of the great treasures of the world”according to Barack Obama, who visited it in June 2009 with his wife and their two daughters. After many other American presidents.
Middle Ages fans
As a young nation, the United States has museums filled with masterpieces of medieval Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has even grouped cloisters from French abbeys on a hill in Manhattan, a site called The Cloisters.
“For Americans, Notre-Dame de Paris is a physical symbol of pre-modern European history that does not exist on American soil. It is a powerful place of memory, it evokes an imaginary nostalgia for a rich and complex culture of pass”explains to AFP Professor Meredith Cohen, specialist in medieval art and architecture at the University of California at Los Angeles.
“Americans also adore Victor Hugo, who made Notre-Dame famous through his writings, and through his striking descriptions of Paris rising in Les Miserablescrowned with immense success on Broadway and in the cinema”she continues.
American culture is indeed full of references to the cathedral, from the first black and white films to recent animated ones.
Quasimodo superstar
A work like The Hunchback of Notre Dame was adapted for the big screen in 1923, a gem of silent cinema. Other versions followed, notably with Anthony Quinn playing Quasimodo in 1956, or the Disney cartoon in 1996.
The cathedral has appeared in multiple Hollywood feature films, including An American in Paris by Vincente Minnelli, with Gene Kelly, Charade by Stanley Donen, with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen, with Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni and Marion Cotillard, or even Ratatouille from Pixar studios.
For Professor Michael Davis, a specialist in French Gothic art, “the facade (of Notre-Dame) offers above all an immediately recognizable image, that of the cathedral itself, but also an evocation of the city of Paris, the French nation, the Middle Ages and the Catholic faith”.
Five years ago, the fire caused a wave of global emotion, particularly in the United States. The major television channels had changed their programs and sent their top reporters to Paris.
A rekindled fire
While the flames devoured the structure, President Donald Trump suggested to the French authorities, in a widely commented tweet, to send water bomber planes.
“If there is a single Gothic cathedral that millions of (American) visitors have seen in Paris and France, it is probably Notre-Dame, and the fire of April 15, 2019 undoubtedly revived this memory and strengthened their link to the cathedral”comments Michael Davis.
Former Director General of the World Bank, Bertrand Badré also attended, within “Friends of Notre-Dame”, the “generous and immediate response” American donors. “Their hearts spoke and we received many often touching testimonies”he confided to AFP.
Meredith Cohen agrees: “Americans have, in general, a great affinity for Paris and French culture, which is perhaps linked to their positive rediscovery of Paris before and after the Second World War, to the Liberation, to their admiration in the 1950s for philosophers, artists and haute couture houses, as well as for the culinary and wine culture, popularized in America by Julia Child…. all of this is attached to Notre-Dame.”
