Transformations of Paris under the Second Empire

The transformations of Paris under the Second Empire or work haussmanniens constitute an overall modernization of the French capital concluded of 1852 with 1870 by Napoleon III and the prefect Haussmann.

The project covered all the fields of the Urbanisme, as well in the middle of Paris as in its external districts: streets and boulevards, regulation of the frontages, green areas, urban furniture, sewers and networks of abduction of water, equipment and monuments public.

Violently criticized by some of its contemporaries, forgotten during part of the 20th century then rehabilitated by the discredit of the town planning of post-war period, this work always conditions the daily use of the city by its inhabitants. It posed the base of the popular representation of the French capital throughout the world while superimposing on the Paris old man and his picturesque lanes made modern Paris of grand boulevards and released places.

1852: a modernistic emperor vis-a-vis a medieval capital

In the middle of the 19th century, the center of Paris kept the same structure as with the Moyen-âge. A tiny interlacing of streets blocks circulation, the buildings pile up in an insalubrity which the first hygienists denounce. The successive capacities pushed back the gradually pregnant until the site of the current peripheral, but they could not touch in the middle of the capital. Paris of the Misérables is with few things close that of Notre-Dame de Paris .

First attempts at modernization

The report is not new. Under the French revolution, in 1794, a “Commission of the artists” carries out a plan which proposes new openings in Paris. A street must connect in straight line the Place of the Nation with large the Colonnade of the Louvre, in the prolongation of current the Avenue Victoria: she precedes the future East-West main roads and shows a concern of better emphasizing the public Monument S.

Napoleon I {{er}} arranges a monumental street along the Jardin of Tileries. It is the Rue of Rivoli, which the Second Empire will prolong until Châtelet and with the street Saint-Anthony: this axis will be more effective in the field of circulation than that of the plan of the Artists. It also installs a legal tool: the constraint of alignment by which the owners can renovate or rebuild the buildings only by moving back their frontage behind a line fixed by the administration. This provision will fail however to involve a widening and a regularization of the public highways within a reasonable delay.

At the end of the Years 1830, the prefect Rambuteau notes the traffic holdups and the difficulties of hygiene which arise in over-populated the old workings: it is necessary “to make circulate the air and the men”. It traces a first large opening in the center of Paris, but the capacity of the administration is limited by the standards of Expropriation. The law of the May 3rd 1841 endeavors to facilitate them.

It is on the basis of these experiment that the Second Empire will choose a massive policy of expropriation and openings, much more expensive than the system of the constraint of alignment but of a frightening effectiveness.

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte

President of the Republic since 1848, the nephew of Napoleon i becomes emperor the December 2nd 1852 after the coup d'etat of the previous year.

Napoleon III with the will to modernize Paris. He saw with London a country transformed by the Industrial revolution and a large capital equipped with large parks and networks of cleansings. He takes up the ideas of Rambuteau. Sensitive to the social questions, he wants to improve the conditions of Logement of the poor classes: the population density in certain districts approaches the 100 000 people with the square kilometer, under very precarious conditions of hygiene. It is finally a question for the public authority of better controlling a capital whose popular risings reversed several modes since 1789. Owners themselves, in certain districts, claim broad and right ways in order to facilitate the movements of troops.

To implement these ambitions, the new emperor has a capacity strong, able to pass in addition to all resistances, which its predecessors missed.

It remains in Napoleon III to find a man able to direct operations of great width. It is the role which Georges Eugene Haussmann will fill, rigorous and organized man of action, that it names 1853 Préfet of the Seine in . The two men will form an effective tandem. The emperor will support the prefect against his adversaries until in 1870. Haussmann, as for him, will be faithful in any circumstance, while knowing to advance its own ideas, like the project of the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Such a considerable work asks for the intervention of many actors. Victor de Persigny, Minister of Interior Department, which presented Haussmann to Napoleon, deals with the financial montages with the assistance of the Frères Pereire. Jean-Charles Alphand deals of the parks and the plantations with the gardener Jean-Pierre Barrel-Deschamps. Haussmann underlines the fundamental role of the service of the Plan of Paris, directed by the Architecte Deschamps, which traces the new ways and control the compliance with the rules of construction: in this field, “the geometry and the graphic drawing play a part more important than architecture itself”, notes Haussmann. Other architects take part in work: Victor Baltard with the Markets, Theodore Ballu for the church of the Trinity, Gabriel Davioud for the theaters of the place of Châtelet, the veteran Hittorff for the station of North.

Co-operation between public standardization and private initiative

Influenced by the Saint-Simonism, Napoleon III and of the engineers like Michel Knight or the contractors as the Pereire brothers believe in the economic voluntarism, which can transform the company and reabsorb poverty. It is with a strong capacity, even authoritative, to encourage the capitalist to launch great work which will profit with the unit from the company and in particular with poorest. The pivot of the economic system is the bank, which develops considerably. These principles find a field of application ideal in the renovation projects of Paris. Work of Haussmann thus will be decided and framed by the State, implemented by the contractors private and financed by the loan.

The system haussmannien

Initially, the State exproprie owners of the grounds concerned with the plans of restoration. Then it destroys the buildings and builds new axes with all their equipment (water, gas, sewers). Haussmann, contrary to Rambuteau, has recourse to massive loans to find the money necessary to these operations, that is to say from 50 to 80 franc million per annum. Starting from 1858, the Case of work of Paris is the privileged tool of the financing. The State recovers the money borrowed by reselling the new ground in the form of batches separated from promoters who must build new buildings while conforming to a precise schedule of conditions. This system makes it possible to devote each year to work a sum twice higher than the municipal budget.

However the system fissures little by little. The massive loans of the Case dig a debt which amounts to 1,5 billion francs in 1870 and contributes to discredit great work. Jules Ferry will denounce the financial hole in a Pamphlet appeared in 1867: fantastic accounts of Haussmann .

Public regulation

Haussmann profits from a legislative framework and lawful arranged to facilitate work and to ensure the homogeneity of the new arteries.

The decree of the March 26th 1852 relating to the streets of Paris, adoptee one year before the nomination of Haussmann, installs the principal legal tools:

expropriation “due to public utility”. The public authorities can monopolize buildings located along ways to build, whereas they could exproprier before only the buildings located directly on the surface of the way itself. This tool will make it possible to shave a good part of the Île of the City. After 1860, the progressive liberalization of the mode will make more difficult expropriations.
obligation for the owners to clean their frontages and to refresh them every ten years.
regulation of the levelling of the ways of Paris, the alignment of the buildings, connection to the sewer.

The public authorities intervene at the same time on the Gabarit of the buildings by the lawful way, and on the esthetic aspect even of the frontages by the means of the Servitude S:

the payment of 1859 makes it possible to make assemble the frontages up to 20 meters height in the streets of 20 meters width that Haussmann is boring, whereas the maximum height was of 17,55 meters before. The roofs must be always registered under a diagonal with 45 degrees.

the construction of buildings along the new ways is subjected to particular conditions on the aspect of the frontages. The joint houses must have “the same heights of stage and the same principal lines of frontage”. The use of the stone of size is obligatory on the new boulevards.

The key role played by the architects voyers, responsible for the management of the Roadway system, mark importance taken by the engineers within the large body of the State.

Course of operation

See also: urban Achievements of the Second Empire in Paris

The course of operation reflects the evolution of the Empire: authoritative until in 1859, more flexible as from 1860. 20 is destroyed; 000 houses to build of them more 40 000 between 1852 and 1870. Some of these operations of town planning will continue under the Third Republic, after the departure of Haussmann and Napoleon III. Paris absorbs into 1860 its Faubourg S until the “fortifications” which, built by Thiers in 1844, were demolished as from 1919. The twelve old districts leave the place to twenty new districts.

A network of large openings

When Rambuteau had bored an important new way in full center of the city, the Parisian ones had been astonished by its width: 13 meters. Haussmann will relegate the Rue Rambuteau to the minor row of road with a network of new openings of 20 and even 30 meters. The network of the arteries haussmanniennes and post-haussmanniennes constitutes, today still, the framework of Parisian urban fabric.

Large perforated North-South and East-West one

From 1854 to 1858, Haussmann makes profitable the most authoritative period of the reign of Napoleon III to carry out what only this decade, perhaps, could do in all the history of Paris: to transform its center by boring a gigantic crossing there.

The construction of the North-South axis, of the Boulevard of Sébastopol to the Boulevard Saint-Michel, makes disappear from the chart from many lanes and dead ends. It forms a great crossing on the level of the Châtelet with the Rue of Rivoli: the Second Empire prolongs until the Rue Saint-Anthony this street that Napoleon i had traced along the Tuileries.

During this time, Baltard arranges the Halles, project launched by Rambuteau, while the Île of the City mainly shaven and is refitted. Its bridges are rebuilt or are the subject of important work.

Haussmann supplements this great crossing by axes which connect the first crown of boulevards to the center, such as the Rue of Rennes on left bank and the Avenue of the Opera on Right Bank. The street of Rennes, which was to join the the Seine, will never be completed.

The completion of the crowns of boulevards

Haussmann continues the work of Louis XIV. It widens the grand boulevards and built or plans new axes with large gauge like the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

Some of these axes connect the grand boulevards of Louis XIV to those which skirt the Mur of the Farmers general. The Boulevard Haussmann and the straight line of the Street Fayette, carried out partially before 1870, ensure a better service road of the district of the Opéra starting from the external districts. The Boulevard Voltaire facilitates the skirting of the center starting from the Place of the Nation.

On left bank, like the “boulevards of midday”, which pass by the Place of Italy, the Place Denfert-Rochereau and Montparnasse are too far away from the center, the idea of another East-West crossing imposes itself. Haussmann doubles the Rue of the Schools, drawn by Napoleon III, of his personal project: the Boulevard Saint-Germain, which prolongs on left bank the grand boulevards of Right Bank.

The third network: external districts

In the last years of its mandate, Haussmann starts to arrange the districts created on the site of the communes annexed in 1860. It thus creates a very long sinuous way which serves 19th, 20th and 12th districts: Street Simon-Bolivar, Street of the Pyrenees, Which occurred Michel-Bizot. The western districts profit from an operation of prestige: twelve avenues, for the majority built under the Second Empire, meet with the Place of the Star.

Other axes such as the which occurred Daumesnil or the Boulevard Malesherbes make it possible to cross these Arrondissement S in direction of the center.

Place-crossroads

The interconnection between the grand boulevards imposes the creation of places on their measurement. Châtelet, arranged by Davioud, is the crossroads between the two main roads crossing Paris of north in the south and the east in the west. Work of Haussmann arranges other great places through any Paris: Place of the Star, Place Leon-Blum, Place of the Republic, Place of Alma.

Stations

Haussmann makes build the Gare de Lyon in 1855 and the station of North in 1865 (Hittorff).

He dreams to inter-connect the Parisian stations by railways but will have to be satisfied to facilitate their access by connecting them by important axes. From the station of Lyon, the Street of Lyon, the Richard-Lenoir boulevard and the Boulevard of Magenta thus make it possible to gain the station of the East. Two parallel axes (street Fayette and Haussmann boulevard on the one hand, street of Châteaudun and street of Maubeuge on the other hand) unite the district of the station of the East and the station of North to that of the Gare Saint-Lazare. On left bank, the Rue of Rennes serves the Gare Montparnasse, then located at the current site of the Tour Montparnasse.

Monuments

Napoleon III and Haussmann punctuate the town of achievements of prestige. Charles Garnier builds the Opéra in an eclectic style and Gabriel Davioud designs two symmetrical theaters on the Place of Châtelet. The Hospital, the barracks of the City (future police headquarter) and the bankruptcy court replace the medieval districts of the Island of the City. Each of the twenty new districts receives its town hall.

They take care to register these monuments in the city by sparing vast prospects. Thus the Avenue of the Opera is thought to offer an imposing framework to the building of Garnier, (but this last found this avenue too narrow, and had to raise its frontage to fight against the heights become excessive of the buildings which surrounded it), while the houses which prevented from contemplating, according to them, Notre-Dame leave the place to a large square.

In the religious field, the second empire sees the advent of the Church Saint-Eugene (today Église Saint-Eugene-Holy-Cecile), of the Église of the Holy Trinity, the Église Saint-Ambroise and the Église Saint-Augustin. The latter is remarkable by its very high vault without buttresses, made possible by the use of a metal frame and its emblematic situation with the crossing of several grand boulevards.

Modern public equipment

The restoration of Paris wants to be total. The cleansing of the residences implies a better air circulation but also a better water provision and a better evacuation of waste.

In 1852, the drinking water comes mainly from the Ourcq. Steam engines extract also water from the Seine, whose hygiene is deplorable. Haussmann entrusts to the engineer Belgrand the realization of a new system of water supply of the capital, which will end in the construction of 600 kilometers Aqueduc between 1865 and 1900. The first, that of the Dhuis, brings back a water collected close to Castle-Thierry. These aqueducts pour their water in tanks located inside the capital. Inside the capital and beside the Park Montsouris, Belgrand sets up the largest water tank of the world to receive the water of the Vanne.

A second network, devoted to non-drinking water, continuous to draw the water of Ourcq and the Seine, used for the cleaning of the roadway system and the watering of the green areas.

The evacuation of waste water and waste goes hand in hand with the drinking water adduction. Here still, it is the Second Empire which gives the decisive impulse to the modernization of the network of the sewers of Paris. The law of 1852 imposes the connection of the buildings on the sewer when the street comprises one of them. The streets which do not have any will profit from the installation of a sewerage system entirely worth visiting: more than 340 kilometers of sewers are built under the direction of Belgrand between 1854 and 1870. The network is unit: the rainwater runs gallery consequently that the waste water. The sewers do not flow any more in the Seine in full Paris but far downstream, with Asnières. For that purpose, a siphon installed under the Pont of Alma makes it possible the drains of left bank to make pass their water on Right Bank.

These two networks, wide and sophisticated during the following times, are always places from there today.

Napoleon III reorganizes also the distribution of gas in Paris. In 1855, he entrusts a concession to a single company while preserving the control of the prices.

In same time, Haussmann nowadays entrusts to Davioud the development of an urban furniture still largely present on the pavements and in the gardens of the capital.

Green areas

The green areas are rare in Paris, city which always developed inside Enceinte S which, in spite of the successive extensions, finished by the corseter.

Allured by the vast London parks, Napoleon III entrusts to the engineer Jean-Charles Alphand, future successor of Haussmann, the creation of several parks and wood. The Bois de Boulogne and the Bois of Vincennes border the city in the west and the east. Inside the Pregnant of Thiers, the Park of Hillock-Chaumont, the Park Heap and the Parc Montsouris offer walks to the inhabitants of the districts too far away from large wood outsides. Each district receives also small Square S, while lines of trees border the avenues.

Criticisms of the urban policy of Napoleon III and the departure of Haussmann

Artists and architects (Charles Garnier) denounce the choking monotony of this monumental architecture. Policies and writers blame the extent of the speculations and of corruption ( the Quarry of Zola) and some show Haussmann of personal enrichment wrongly. Many criticisms relate however to basic reasons and will end up making fall the prefect.

Does the widening of the streets as arm with an authoritarian regime?

Contemporaries of Napoleon III showed it to have hidden under social concerns and hygienists a primarily police project: the construction of broad ways would have had as a main aim to facilitate the troop movements and the establishment of right streets would have made it possible to shoot with the gun at a crowd in riot and its barricades.

The extent even of work shows that the aimings of Napoleon could not be limited to the sedentary aspect: beyond the boring of the boulevards which forms the most spectacular part of it, the transformation relates to the establishment of modern networks in basement, the installation of an effective urban furniture on the surface and the harmonization of the Architecture along the new streets. It is however true that Napoleon is anxious to establish a strict order. Haussmann does not hesitate to explain why its borings will facilitate the maintenance of law and order to promote its projects near the Conseil of Paris or of the local owners. Strategic dimension is thus present, but it constitutes only one element among others. It is perhaps more important when it is a question of connecting the principal barracks between them.

It should be noted that Haussmann is not in charge of the police force. Its mandate corresponds on the contrary to a weakening of the Prefect of police to the profit of the prefect of Paris, which recovers attributions such as the problems involved in insalubrity, the lighting and the cleaning of the streets.

Rupture of a social balance

In spite of the social ideals which are partly at the origin of the transformations of Paris in the spirit of Napoleon III, of many contemporary observers denounce the demographic and social effects operations of town planning carried out by Haussmann.

Louis Lazare, author under the Rambuteau prefect of important a dictionary of the Parisian ways, estimates in 1861 in the municipal Revue that work haussmanniens contributes to make grow inordinately the population assisted by attracting in Paris a poor population. In fact, Haussmann itself slowed down to a certain extent work in order to avoid a too massive surge of workmen in Paris.

In addition the critics denounce, as of the Années 1850, the effects of the restorations on the social composition of Paris. In a a little diagrammatic way, one traces a portrait of the pre-haussmannien Parisian building like synthesis of the Parisian social hierarchy: middle-class man on the second floor, civils servant and employees with the third and fourth, small employees with the fifth, people in service, students and the poor under the roofs. All the social classes were côtoyaient thus in the same building. This cohabitation, which must of course be moderate according to the districts, disappeared mainly after work from Haussmann. Those had two effects in the field of the distribution of the habitat in Paris:

the restorations of the downtown area involved a rise of the rents which has constrained the poor families to leave towards the peripheral districts. One notes it on the data of population:

certain choices of town planning contributed to unbalance the social composition of Paris between the west, rich person, and is, underprivileged. Thus no district of the Parisian east profited from achievements comparable with the broad avenues surrounding the Place of the Star in XVIe and XVIIe districts. The poor concentrate then in the left districts on side by the restorations.

In answer, Haussmann proposes creation, very complex, of the Bois of Vincennes, intended to provide to the populations workmen a walk comparable with the Bois de Boulogne. In addition, it should be noted that the unhealthy districts “cleaned” by Haussmann hardly sheltered of middle-class man.

Thus installation itself a form of zoning which always dominates the distribution of the habitat and the activities in Paris and its outskirts of the city: in the center and the west offices and residential districts, in the east and the periphery the poorest habitats and industrial activities.

The crisis of the system of financing

At the end of the years 1860, the system of financing does not function well any more. The annexation of the surrounding communes in 1860 was expensive: work to be realized in these suburban districts is more important than in the downtown area, already equipped with certain equipment. The budgets envisaged at the beginning are largely insufficient. In addition, the easing of the mode makes more difficult expropriations, the jurisprudence of the Council of State and the Court of appeal intervening in favor of the owners.

In addition the Parisian ones badly support work which paralyzes the city since nearly twenty years. The networks of boulevards which encumber the districts external of work do not have a utility as obvious as the boring of the boulevard of Sébastopol or a Saint-Germain boulevard.

Jules Ferry is made a name through a series of press articles gathered under the title the fantastic Accounts of Haussmann . He denounces the exaggerated ambition of the last projects and their dubious financing. These projects are indeed financed, not by the loan, but by goods of delegation emitted by the Case of work of Paris, out of the control of the Parliament.

Haussmann is finally returned at the beginning of 1870, a few months before the end of the Second Empire which it accompanied for all its length of time. The contracted debts will be finally reabsorbed rather quickly under the Third Republic.

Impact of the restoration of Paris

Esthetics haussmannienne: the “street-wall”

The haussmannism is not satisfied to trace streets and to create equipment. It also intervenes on the esthetic aspect of the private buildings.

The face on street of the small island is conceived like a homogeneous architectural unit. The building is not autonomous and must build a urban landscape unified with the other buildings on the new opening. Nevertheless, the small island haussmannien is always heterogeneous: only the pieces located on the influence of the new opening are affected by modernization, and, the other pieces of the former small island not being destroyed, of constructions of the previous centuries there cohabit with the new buildings, and, randomly of the inconstructibles pieces, reveal sometimes the back of their constructions on court within new alignments.

The regulation and the constraints imposed by the public authorities support the installation of a typology which concludes its traditional evolution of the Parisian building towards the Façade characteristic of Paris haussmannien:

ground floor and mezzanine with wall with deep steps;
second “noble” stage with one or two balconies; third and fourth stage in the same style but with less rich framings of window;
fifth stage with slipping by balcony, without decorations;
roofs with 45 degrees.

The frontage is organized around strong horizontal lines which often continue from one building to another: Balcony S, Cornice S, perfect alignment of the important frontages without withdrawals nor covered. The model of the street of Rivoli extends to the unit from the new Parisian ways, with the risk of a standardization of certain districts. On the frontage, progress of the techniques of sawing and transport makes it possible to use the stone of size in “large apparatus”, i.e. in the form of large blocks and not in simple plating. The streets produce a monumental effect which exempts the buildings to resort to decoration: the Sculpture S or mouldings will multiply only towards the end of the century.

Posterity of the haussmannism

The transformations haussmanniennes improved quality of life in the capital. Large epidemic S, in particular those of cholera, disappear, (but not tuberculosis), circulation is improved, the new buildings are built better and more functional than the old ones. But having intervened only punctually on the old districts, of the zones of insalubrity remain, which explains the resurgence of the ideas hygienists at the next century, then the radicality of some of the town planners of the twentieth century.

The Second Empire marked the urban history of Paris so much that all the architectural and urban currents posterior will be forced to refer to it, either to adapt to it, or to reject it, or still to try to take again certain elements of them.

One can date the end from the “pure” haussmannism to the payments of 1882 and 1884, which break with the uniformity of the traditional street by allowing the projections and the first imaginations the level of the roof, which will develop considerably after the payment of 1902. However it is yet only about one “post-haussmannism”, which does not reject that the austerity of the Napoleonean model without calling into question the general fitting of the streets and the small islands.

After the Second world war, on the other hand, the new needs for residences and the advent, one century after Napoleon III, of a new voluntarist capacity with the Fifth Republic gaullist open a new era of Parisian town planning. That one rejects almost completely the heritage haussmannien with the profit of the ideas of Le Corbusier by giving up alignment on street, the limitation of the gauge and the street itself, abandoned with the car with the profit of spaces pedestrians on flagstones. This new model is quickly called into question in the Années 1970, which mark the beginning of a redécouverte of the heritage haussmannien: the return to the multipurpose street is accompanied by one return to the limitation of the gauge and, in certain districts, of an attempt to find the architectural homogeneity of the small islands of the Second Empire.

The Parisian general public has today a positive vision of the heritage haussmannien, so much so that certain suburban towns, the following the example of of Issy-les-Moulineaux or Puteaux, districts build which assert until in their name (“Haussmannien District”) the heritage haussmannien. These districts are actually pastiches of architecture post-haussmannienne beginning of the 20th century with its Bow-window S and its Loggia S.

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