The Storming of Madison Avenue

Byline: JC Agid

A record-breaking 60,000 New Yorkers descended on Madison Avenue on Sunday, July 12, 2026, as L’Alliance New York celebrated Bastille Day, two days ahead of the official anniversary, with a day dedicated to liberty, freedom, democracy, and an enduring 250-year-old friendship between France and the United States.

The date shaped contemporary France’s values twice over. On July 14, 1789, Parisians stormed the Bastille prison, and exactly a year later, they celebrated La Fête de la Fédération, a symbol of unity.

France was also the first country to officially recognize the young United States of America, in 1778, after Lafayette and other French officers joined Washington’s army, and King Louis XVI secretly funneled money and supplies to the insurgents.

As L’Alliance New York’s president Tatyana Franck reminded the crowd as she launched the festivities: “In 1789, inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, Lafayette drafted the French Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen weeks after the Storming of the Bastille, which we are celebrating today. Two nations. Two founding declarations. Shared values and one friendship that have lasted nearly 250 years.”

L’Alliance New York Bastille: the Annual French New York Feast

L’Alliance New York, home to Francophone culture and French language learning in Manhattan and Montclair, New Jersey, has organized New York’s Bastille Day celebration annually, inviting all New Yorkers to renew, through art, food, and music, their attachment to the values that shaped a shared modern history.

“And more and more New Yorkers attend every year,” Tatyana Franck said once the crowd had left Madison Avenue in the late afternoon, “proof, if any were needed, of people’s desire to express their attachment to their cultures.”

A Street Art Installation as Interactive Legacy: from Versailles to Liberty Island

“This 250-year friendship has also inspired artists ever since,” Franck added. There is Houdon, the French sculptor whom the U.S. Congress commissioned to create portraits of the Founding Fathers, and there is, of course, Bartholdi, who created the Statue of Liberty, France’s gift to America for the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. Fun fact: the 1876 gift arrived a decade late.

For the double anniversary of America’s 250th year of independence and the Statue of Liberty’s 140th, L’Alliance New York invited artists Gwendoline Finaz de Villaine and Pauline Lévêque to premiere and unveil their giant street art installation, Monumental Jeu de l’Oie, on Madison Avenue.

“We wanted to offer New Yorkers and Parisians a game to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s independence,” explains Finaz de Villaine. Based on the Game of the Goose, a popular pastime during the Revolution that let players journey from the Storming of the Bastille to the ideals of the Republic, Monumental Jeu de l’Oie invites players on a 63-square-route that starts at the Château de Versailles, where the Franco-American friendship began, and ends at the Statue of Liberty, in all her glory.

“Look at all the children and families playing,” Franck observed. “Art always sparks interaction, emotion, and hopefully dialogue.”

Dogs, Pétanque, and the World Cup

Next to the immense street fresco, other New Yorkers arrived with their pets costumed as Lady Liberty, Marie-Antoinette, or Mbappé, for L’Alliance New York’s first-ever Dog Costume Contest organized by New York Dog’s Parade.

With France through to the semifinal, the World Cup was on everyone’s mind. One New Yorker even wandered the fair in an Argentine jersey, not to provoke but because, as an Argentine himself, he too wanted to celebrate Bastille Day with L’Alliance New York. That didn’t stop him from improvising a game of baby-foot with an American in a French team jersey at the FIFA corner.

Just across, Tara Khattar and Maison Tara recreated a French-style food market, wicker baskets brimming with fresh peaches, tomatoes, and multicolored flowers, the perfect backdrop for a round of pétanque, that quintessential summer street game from the South of France.

 

Citroëns, Champagne, and Joie de Vivre

Vintage Citroëns rallied in pomp and circumstance, while further up Madison Avenue, Gérard Neveu, the former head of Le Mans and now at the helm of Rétromobile, displayed a magnificent navy-blue Ferrari 275. Far from a French party crasher, the car winked at everyone with a seductive smile.

And then there were people dancing on Madison, others painting masks, jazz playing as glasses of champagne were raised alongside chocolate crêpes, French pastries, the unbeatable jambon-beurre with cornichons, and sugar powdered covered waffles.

Throughout the afternoon, the car-free avenue of the Upper East Side hummed with conversations in French and English, two flags in blue, white, and red, and one shared ideal: freedom and joie de vivre.

Happy Bastille Day, everyone.

The team of L’Alliance New York