Le Select Café

Café Select, an iconic venue founded in 1923, is located on Boulevard du Montparnasse and was one of the principal cafés of the Montparnasse district. Active throughout the interwar and postwar periods, it functioned as a gathering place for artists, writers, and intellectuals associated with the École de Paris and later expatriate communities. Its proximity to studios and academies in Montparnasse positioned it within the daily social and professional routines of artists working in the area.

Regulars included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Herbert Gentry, and Beauford Delaney. In 1957, Chester Himes drafted his novel The Crazy Kill at the Select, underscoring the café’s role as a site of literary as well as artistic production.