In 1951, a new English-language bookstore was opened on Paris's Left Bank by American ex-serviceman George Whitman under the name of "Le Mistral." Its premises, the site of a 16th-century monastery, are at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, near Place Saint-Michel, just steps from the Seine, Notre Dame and the Île de la Cité. Much like Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company, Whitman's store quickly became the focal point of literary culture in bohemian Paris. Early habitués included writers of the Beat Generation – Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and William S. Burroughs, who is said to have researched sections of "Naked Lunch" in the medical section of the bookstore's library. Other visitors were James Baldwin, Anaïs Nin, Julio Cortázar, Richard Wright, Lawrence Durrell, Max Ernst, Bertolt Brecht, William Saroyan, Terry Southern, and editors of "The Paris Review", such as George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, and Robert Silvers.