Lodging · 1926–1927
Hotel on rue Frochot
Address · 12, rue Frochot, 75009 Paris
Metro · Pigalle (2, 12)
Today · Fate unknown
The story
Rue Frochot runs down to place Pigalle, where it meets avenue Frochot and rues Jean-Baptiste-Pigalle and Duperré. Both bear the name of Nicolas Frochot (1761-1828), first prefect of the Seine. The neighbouring avenue, opened in 1826, belonged to a residential development that attracted artists and art lovers; a neo-Gothic house of 1837-1839, listed as a historic monument in 2021, can still be seen there. Since the late 19th century the neighbourhood has been that of cabarets, from the Chat Noir to the Moulin Rouge, and between the wars that of bars, gambling and jazz, with an underworld reputation.
Crowley moved on 26 August 1926 into the Hôtel Atlantic, 12 rue Frochot, leaving the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs. That same day began a series of sex-magick operations recorded in his diary, which continued throughout the autumn with several partners, each operation being dedicated to a specific aim: obtaining money, youth, energy or health.
On 12 September the actress Jane Wolfe, a disciple who had come from the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, took a room in the same hotel. On 8 October Dorothy Olsen paid him a last visit; she left him on the 12th, his 51st birthday, went back to America and never saw him again. On 18 November he celebrated the anniversary of his entry into the Golden Dawn in 1898. The timeline also places in November 1926 an operation with the photographer Berenice Abbott.
The address remained his at least until early July 1927: on 2 July he wrote to the publisher Edward Titus from the “Hotel Frochot, 12 rue Frochot”. In the meantime, Jane Wolfe had undergone surgery at the end of April at the American Hospital in Neuilly, where she remained for eleven weeks; she sailed for New York on 1 October 1927. By mid-July, Crowley had moved to rue de la Mission-Marchand.
The sources document neither the history of the Hôtel Atlantic nor the current use of No. 12. From the street, which opens onto place Pigalle, one can see the façade of No. 12 and, close by, the entrance to avenue Frochot and its former artists' development.