The 12 labors of Haussmann
Hard to visit Paris and to miss the name of Haussmann whose fame has been associated to the one of Attila the Hun during a period of time. Anyway, it’s not senseless to claim Haussmann is for Paris what Hercules is for the Mediterranean world: an untiring worker! Let’s list below 12 significant labours he’s the one-man band.
Paris enlargement; avenues and boulevards; sewage system; parks and woods; legendary squares; a new Louvre; San Martin canal subsiding; administrative snail zoning, buses cpies merging; Carnavalet museum; street furniture; civil engineering in brief! 12 fantastic tales!
1 – Paris enlargement – 2 – Avenues and boulevards – 3 – Sewage system – 4 – Parks and woods
5 – Legendary squares – 6 – A new Louvre – 7 – San Martin canal subsiding – 8 – Administrative snail zoning – 9 – Buses cpies merging – 10 – Carnavalet Museum – 11 – Street furniture – 12 – The big loan
1 – Paris enlargement
In turn around of 1860, Paris area corresponds to the 12 present district inside a border following a curved line identified by what parisian drivers are used to name “Les Boulevards Extérieurs”. It’s the same as the General Farmers Fence or “La Barrière des Fermiers Généraux”. Passy, Auteuil, Belleville, Montmartre were independent from Paris City as Montrouge or Ivry crossed by a defensive wall identified as the “Adolphe Thiers Enceinte”, corresponding today with some disused railway surrounding the city nearby Marshals Boulevards ringbell. The Villette and The Chartres Rotondes on the side of the Ourcq Canal and the park Monceau; Some toll pavilion in Nation and Denfert-Rochereau squares are what remains to us that Paris time identified as Paris Balzac.
“Tout donne une impression d’entassement fantastique à l’intérieur d’une surface qui se limite à peu près aux 12 premiers arrondissements actuels”.
2 – Avenues and boulevards
As Paris has been afraid in nov. 2005 by inner suburbs uprising lightened in Clichy-sous-Bois, Saint-Antoine faubourg enkindled the 1848 revolution against the french monarchy of july. Barricades sprouted in 1830 too. Paris Balzac is a maze very unsecure but it’s excessive to justify surgical Haussmann grooves just by Napoleon III despotic views. Paris downtown is very stuffy, fouled and twisted. Train stations aren’t linked up. Paris need breath. Haussmann is a beeline follower. Downtown he linked east and west right-bank through the Rivoli street and west-east left-bank by Saint-Germain boulevard extensions. North and south are connected between the eastern train station and Paris Observatory by Strasbourg, Sébastopol and Saint-Michael Boulevards, flanked between older main streets as Saint-Denis, Saint-Martin and Saint-Jacques main streets. Turbigo, Rennes and Monge streets as Opera avenue extremities complete the rouhg-sketch with some intermediate cardinal directions. Haussmann inspiration drive on farther along with Grand Boulevards junction following the trail of Charles V and IX with Louis XIII right-bank fortifications . Saint-Marcel and Port-Royal boulevards compiled later by Raspail and Montparnasse ones repeat a symetric curve in the left-bank. As the Mediapart journalist Michaël Hajdenberg underlined it, Haussmann’s design is overlaid onto Paris timeworn. « It’s possible to cross Paris just remaining Haussmann boulevards, but as soon as we took a side street, it is an another world. (On peut traverser tout Paris en restant sur des boulevards haussmanniens mais dès lors qu’on prend une rue latérale, c’est un autre monde: l’ancien Paris). Eric Lapierre’s remark took from the same source is worth to be quoted too: That’s Paris richness since just thinking about a whole city conceptualized by Haussmann views as it is the case for the Monceau planicie is so boring. (Cette hétérogénéité fondamentale fait la richesse de la Ville. Car si vous prenez La Plaine Monceau, seul quartier 100% haussmannien en surface, on s’ennuie vite, alors qu’on s’ennuie jamais dans tout le reste de Paris.) The Champs-Elysée avenue suits a bit this boredom manner even if many gossips could inspire many others notes.
3 – Sewage system
As reported by Jean Valjean in the Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables (Book II, ch.1) “…Paris has another Paris under herself; a Paris of sewers; which has its streets, its crossings, its squares, its blind alleys, its arteries, and its circulation, which is slime, minus the human form”. Haussmann is part of hygienist civil promoter. “Haussmann like Hygiene”. He has a bath everyday when some was tanned because dust. Little by little, every street will be lined with subterranean galleries summing today 2500 Km long (i.e Paris/Istanbul).
4 – Parks and woods
Badinguet, the nickname of Napoleon III after he escaped his jail in Picardie (XX/XX/2010), is an “anglomane”. In London, he worked as a landscape architect as he run across Hyde Park. Jean-Jacques Berger suceeding to the count Rambuteau, was the first to be in charge to reproduce in Boulogne forest the Hyde Park river, Badinguet liked so much to run across when he was a political refugee over there. Because the slope was too sharp, the river transformed into a swamp. Adolphe Alphand had to take up the work again and resolving lastly by the creation of a 2 lakes as after Haussmann layoff, he finished Haussmann labours.
His basic concept for parks and woods is to supply every district with a garden square. Saint Jacques square is the elder. Vincennes woods, Montsouris and Monceau parks, Buttes-Chaumont were designed at that same time. The Luxembourg garden ever existed but was reduced by the Saint Michaël Bd trail.
5 – Legendary squares
Place de l’Etoile, Place Saint-Michel, Place du Châtelet, Place de la République are 4 legendary Paris squares rearranged under Napoleon III, according with Haussmann directives and brilliant master-builders like Jacques Hirtoff and Gabriel Davioud. The Republic square was in fact first called “La Place du Château d’eau”, i.e “Water-tower square” because in the middle was a watercress surrounded by a tribe of lions located today in the twelfth district, Place Felix-Eboué, Métro Daumesnil. The very late lamented Paris biggest covered market square, “les pavillons Baltard” don’t exist anymore but were an another main Paris intersection created under the 2nd empire.
6 – Le Nouveau Louvre
Before Napoleon III, part of the Louvre north side between “Le Louvre des Antiquaires” and “L’Hôtel du Louvre” didn’t exist yet as the “Louvre Guichets” or what is the car passageway between the Carroussel and the Opéra Avenue early stages. Louis Visconti and Hector-Martin Lefuel are the master-builders. Haussmann has other fishes to fry but the “New Louvre” is part of Paris changes under Haussmann time.
7 – San Martin canal subsiding
San Martin Canal digging was decided under Napoleon I Empire and the work topped off in 1825 (Charles X) but the portion between Bastille square and the Fbg. Du Temple street was brought 5 m. down in order to enable better flow for stagecoaches traffic in the future Prince-Eugène boulevard inaugurated in 1857 and renamed later Voltaire (1870). Canal locks were first displaced before to be covered by what are today the Jules-Ferry and Richard-Lenoir Boulevards because ports stops didn’t have further reason to exist. Without such a work, it should have be necessary to set a moveable bridge across the water channel. E. Belgrand supervised the office.
8 – Administrative snail zoning
Before 1860, Paris is in short, the area of what represents today the 12 first Paris districts. The custom is then to make fun of extra-wedding live-in partners as 13th district married lovers. The first administrative zoning map Haussmann proposed planed on to allocate the blasted number to Auteuil and Passy communities. Obviously, such a result was completely ruled-out in such a snobbish neighbourhood and Louis Possoz, the Passy’s mayor complained quickly to Haussmann who passed him the buck, asking fo him to propose an alternative solution. That’s how the Paris snail administrative zoning has been invented. The spiral center is Le Louvre and districts allocation follows the clockwise. The 2nd district center is the old Paris stock exchange. The Marais quarter is astride the third and the fourth ones. The fifth is the latin quarter, etc. Sometimes it also said the twenty-first district is Deauville city downtown in the normand coast owing to the large number of parisians walking around there in spring and summer time.
9 – Buses cpies merging
In 1855, 17 omnibus cie were obliged to merge and several crossways and connections better regulated by a new establishment.
10 – Carnavalet Museum
Many detractors accused Haussmann to have completely wrecked the former Paris soul but he didn’t damage anything in the Marais. Besides, he also made bought by the city council the Carnavalet Hôtel to host the Paris History Museum.
11 – Street furnitures
Even if the count of Rambuteau, préfet of the Seine Dpt. Between 1833 and 1848 was between the first to bring into general use public sanitary engineering with its famous “Vespasienne”, some male cast iron street urinal, replaced after 1980 by “Sanisettes”© for men and women, street furnitures as “Morris columns” and “Wallace Fountains” planned by Haussman stood the time test.
From 1868, Morris Columns purpose was to contend with rampant advertising and graffiti. Gabriel Morris was a printer. There are 716 today.
From 1870 and numerous damages caused by Prussian army siege and air-balloon bombings over Paris water inlet, stirred up health issues solved partially by Sir Richard Wallace philanthropy. There are 82 today.
© Jean-Claude Decaux
12 – The big loan
Haussmann like Hoffmann tales, the fantastic Offenbach opera is a comparison used by Jules Ferry to hasten the end of that Paris Hercule. The wordplay is clear enough to increase very quickly suspicion rumors about the way Haussmann managed departments finances. It’s worth to underline nevertheless, historians still remember Haussmann and Persigny, his right-hand man, did an excellent job to raise investment funds and convince the very conservative french upper class to trust in the big loan they proposed to fund such labors.
