Abstract
In 1848, Charles-Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (1808–73) returned to Paris from exile in London. He arrived inconspicuously at the two-year-old Gare du Nord (north station).1 The short, modest-looking man in bourgeois dress hardly knew the city. He would quickly get to know it very well and place its reconfiguration high on his agenda.2 Four years later he would assume the imperial throne as Napoleon III. By the time Georges-Eugene Haussmann (1809–91) was appointed Préfet de la Seine in 1853, the emperor had drawn a color-coded map of the city. Blue, red, yellow, and green lines reflected the priority the monarch assigned the streets to be opened through the urban fabric.3 On 29 June 1853, Haussmann’s second day on the job, Louis-Napoleon handed the new prefect the map and gave instructions to carry out the projects.4 The emperor had already expressed his convictions about the importance of the railways as the new highways of the future. On 9 October 1852, before his assumption of the title of emperor in December, Napoleon had included the railways in his program for the country: “We have immense uncultivated lands to clear, roads to open, harbors to excavate, rivers to make navigable, canals to finish, our railway network to complete:”5
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Notes
Michel Carmona, Haussmann (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 9.
The emperor’s plans for Paris continued work begun during the July Monarchy. For a list, see Pierre Casselle, “Les Travaux de la Commission des
Embellissements de Paris en 1853: Pouvait-on transformer la capitale sans Haussmann?” Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Chartes 55 (1997): 649, n. 11. Also, Casselle, Commission des Embellissements de Paris: Rapport a l’empereur Napoleon III redige par le comte Henri Simeon (Paris: Commission du Vieux Paris, Rotonde de la Villette, 2000).
Merruau reports, “in blue, red, yellow and green, according to their degree of importance.” Charles Merruau, Souvenir de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris, 1848–1852 (Paris: Plon, 1875), 364–65; also quoted in Jean Des Cars and Pierre Pinon, Paris-Haussmann “Le pari d’Haussmann” (Paris: Edition du Pavillon de l’Arsenal, 1991), 54.
The 24 May 1871 fire during the Commune in the Paris Hotel de Ville destroyed the map along with most other municipal records. A copy had been given to the king of Prussia, Wilhelm I, during the 1867 exposition. It was found by A. Morizet in 1930 at the Schloss-Bibliothek in Berlin. David Van Zanten, “Mais quand Haussmann est-il devenu moderne?” in La Modernite avant Haussmann: Formes de l’espace urbain a Paris, 1801–1853, ed. Karen Bowie (Paris: Editions Recherches, 2001), 154–55. For an examination of the various versions of Napoleon III’s maps and the elusiveness of a definitive state, see Pierre Pinon, Atlas du Paris haussmannien (Paris: Parigramme, 2002), 33–39.
Louis Girard, La Politique des travaux publics sous le Second Empire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1952), 111; quoted in David Harvey, “Paris, 1850–1870,” in Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization, ed. David Harvey (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 70. The railways grew from 1,931 kilometers in 1850 to 17,400 kilometers in 1870 (Harvey, “Paris,” 70).
Merruau, Souvenir, 364.
The program was included with a letter dated 2 August 1853, from the minister of the interior to Simeon, confirming the appointment of the commission (Casselle, “Travaux de la Commission des Embellissements,” 650).
The study of the streets connecting with the railway stations was entrusted to Louis Pécourt (1791–1864), but Simeon was responsible for the report given to the emperor on 27 December 1853 (Casselle, “Travaux de la Commission des Embellissements,” 652–53). See also Nicholas Papayanis, PlanningParis before Haussmann (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 226–46.
Casselle, “Travaux de la Commission des Embellissements,” 647 refers to Francoise Choay, ed., Baron Haussmann: Memoires (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 470–71; orig. ed., 2:55, 57–58.
“Discours de l’empereur a l’ouverture de la session legislative de 1858,” Journal des Chemins de Fer, 23 January 1858, 58.
Leon Say, “Les Chemins de fer,” in Paris guide par les principaux ecrivains et artistes de la France, pt. 2, La Vie (Paris: Librairie Internationale, 1867), 2:1657–71.
Not until the Gare d’Orsay opened in 1899 (Casselle, “Travaux de la Commission des Embellissements,” 654). The Law of 11 June 1842 determined that railway termini should remain at the edges of the city. For reference to projects attempting to drive rail lines into Paris, see Karen Bowie et al., “Polarisation du territoire et développement urbain: Les Gares du Nord et de l’Est et la transformation de Paris au XIXe siecle” (Paris: Plan Urbain, PREDIT, SNCF, and RATP, 1999), 20, n. 2; Papayanis, Planning Paris, 201–25.
Jeanne Gaillard, Paris: La Ville, 1852–1870 (Paris: Editions Honoré Champion, 1997), 35–36, 75; Bernard Rouleau, Le Trace des rues de Paris: Formation, typologie, fonctions (Paris: CNRS, 1975), 104.
This line was approved on 10 December 1851 and constructed in segments between 1851 and 1867. It would stimulate suburban growth before being replaced by the grande ceinture for freight in 1875 and the Metro for passenger traffic at the turn of the century. Harvey, “Paris,” 75; Jean Bastié, La Croissance de la banlieue parisienne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), 122.
Karen Bowie, “The Rothschilds, the Railways, and the Urban Form of 19th Century Paris,” in Die Rothschilds: Eine europaische Familie [The Rothschilds: Essays on the History of a European Family], ed. Georg Heuberger (Frankfurt: Thorbecke/Boydell & Brewer and Judisches Museum, 1994), 2:90.
Pierre Lavedan, “L; Influence de Haussmann: L’Haussmanisation dans l’urbanisme et habitation,” La Vie Urbaine, n.s. (July-December 1953): 302–17; Harvey, “Paris,” 75; David Van Zanten, Building Paris: Architectural Institutions and the Transformation of the French Capital, 1830–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 198–99; Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Paris as Revolution: Writing the 19th Century City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 119; Karen Bowie, ed., La Modernite avant Haussmann: Formes de l’espace urbain a Paris, 1801–1853 (Paris: Editions Recherches, 2001); Pinon, Atlas, 24–25; Papayanis, Planning Paris, 2004.
Pinon, Atlas, 6–9 also points out that the detailed nature of Haussmann’s Memoirs influenced scholarship for decades.
Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), 648–49.
The commission’s report would place the railways as the first item, following the order of the emperor’s agenda (Casselle, “Travaux de la Commission des Embellissements,” 655). This order was maintained in a statement by Merruau on the transformation of Paris, which reflected the emperor’s and the commission’s order of priority. The change of emphasis would be Haussmann’s (Des Cars and Pinon, Paris-Haussmann, 74).
Casselle, “Travaux de la Commission des Embellissements,” 648, 661, 673–74.
Haussmann did develop some autonomy (Carmona, Haussmann, 408); Casselle, “Travaux de la Commission des Embellissements,” 674.
Brian Chapman, “Baron Haussmann and the Planning of Paris,” Town PlanningReview 24, no. 3 (1953): 185.
Anthony Sutcliffe, Paris: An Architectural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 84; Haussmann, Memoirs, introduction by Francoise Choay, 36 refers to Viollet-le-Duc, Entretiens sur l’architecture (Paris: Morel, 1863–72), 2:111–12 (12th entretien); Harvey, “Paris,” 74.
Des Cars and Pinon, Paris-Haussmann, 56; Casselle, “Travaux de la Commission des Einbellissements,” 664–66.
On political issues at stake, see Francois Caron, Histoire des chemins de fer en France, vol. 1, 1740–1883 (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 113, 122–23, 148–49.
Theodore Zeldin, France, 1848–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973–77), 2:1050–51. As of 1 January 1938, the SNCF operated with 51 percent state capital and 49 percent from the former private companies.
Karen Bowie, Les Grandes gares parisiennes: Historique, les grandes gares parisiennes au XIXe siecle (Paris: Délégation l’Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris,
1987), 11; in fact, the private companies participated more and more actively in the design and construction of their stations; Bowie, Modernite, 261.
The Ponts et Chaussées (Public Works) engineers were the elite corps responsible for road design and construction in France since Louis XV. Dependence on state services as opposed to private enterprise to build railways continued to be a concern after the Law of 11 June 1842. In 1859, Auguste Perdonnet (1801–67), France’s first railway theoretician, contrasted the work of the companies (adaptable, incentive- and interest-driven) to that of the state (encumbered by administrative bureaucracy, political favoritism, and unproductive personnel habits). Perdonnet, Notions generales sur les chemins de fer (Paris: Lacroix et Baudry, 1859), 127. See also Caron, Histoire des chemins, 79–80ff.
The Legrand star was named after its designer, Alexis Victor Legrand, general director of the Ponts et Chaussées between 1832 and 1847. Alfred Picard, Les Chemins de fer français: Etude historique sur la constitution et le regime du reseau (Paris: J. Rothschild, 1884–85), 1:96, citing “Discussion genérale sur les chemins de fer a la Chambre des députés, 1838, exposé par M. Legrand, directeur general des Ponts et Chaussees et des Mines,” Moniteur Universel, 16 February 1838. By 1852, the companies were consolidated into six: Nord, Orleans, Paris-Lyon-Mediterrannée (PLM), Est, Ouest, and Midi.
The Grands Boulevards replaced the fortifications under Louis XIV, who did not anticipate needing them again. The toll wall of the Fermiers generaux (begun in 1784 with interruption of enforcement between the Revolution and 1799) remained in operation until 31 December 1859, when the toll barrier was transferred to the nineteenth-century fortifications built between 1841 and 1844. Anthony Sutcliffe, The Autumn of Central Paris: The Defeat of Town Planning, 1850–1970 (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), 147.
Compelled to maintain their stations at the fringe of the city, and serviced by railway omnibuses, the railways contributed little to metropolitan transport (Sutcliffe, Autumn, 28).
Established thoroughfares such as the Rue Saint-Martin (the ancient Roman road), which were no wider than 10 meters, were proving insufficient to handle the vehicular and pedestrian traffic.
Sutcliffe, Autumn, 21–22.
Pierre Lavedan, Histoire de l’urbanisme a Paris (Paris: Hachette, 1993), 414.
The Rue de Rivoli project had been initiated under Napoleon I. The reference to a Gallo-Roman set of axes crossing at the center of the city is apocryphal. The cardo (north-south axis) of the Rues Saint-Jacques and Saint-Martin was parallel to the Second Empire north-south axis, but traces of the Roman settlement, mostly south of the Seine, and its decumanus (east-west axis) had been eradicated. On the croisee (crossing), see Des Cars and Pinon, Paris-Haussmann, 62–69.
Haussmann, Memoirs, 666. Harvey, “Paris,” 74–75 indicates 135 kilometers.
Haussmann, Memoirs, 112–14, 122–23, 305, 457, 556, 623, 716, and 1030; orig. ed., 1:67–71, 84–85, 391; 2:34, 201, 313, 469; and 3:406. Haussmann also mentions interest in tunnel construction projects and providing state oversight for PLM accounts during his tenure in the Yonne department (308; orig. ed., 1:395–96).
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: Trains and Travel in the 19th Century (New York: Urizen Books, 1979), 182.
The Paris cemeteries were Montmartre, Pere Lachaise, and Montparnasse. This plan was actually well thought-out but presented late in Haussmann’s tenure at the Hotel de Ville. Connected in public opinion to the Montmartre cemetery displacement of sepulchers, the plan was never examined on its own merits (Georges Valance, Haussmann, le grand [Paris: Flammarion, 2000], 270–73). See also Karen Bowie and Simon Texier, eds., Paris et ses chemins de fer (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2003), 103–11.
David Van Zanten, “Mais quand Haussmann est-il devenu moderne?” in Bowie, Modernite, 162–63; Nicholas Papayanis, “Urbanisme du Paris souterrain: Premiers projets de chemin de fer urbain et naissance de l’urbanisme des cites modernes,” Histoire, Economie, Societes 17, no. 4 (1998): 745–70; Allan Mitchell, “La Gare centrale: Un reve avorte,” in Bowie and Texier, Paris et ses chemins de fer, 95–101. Flachat and Armand were responsible for the Péreiresponsored Gare Saint-Lazare design.
This is illustrated by the organization charts of Haussmann’s services. Haussmann, Memoirs, 1137–47.
Schivelbusch, Railway Journey, 182.
In the preface to her edition of Haussmann’s Memoirs, Françoise Choay cornments on Haussman’s belief in the superiority of training at the Ponts et Chaussées over the Beaux-Arts (Haussmann, Memoirs, 25); Haussman’s statement, 68, orig. ed., l:x–xi. After progressive reconfigurations, Haussmann’s staff, which he termed “instruments of his plans,” was headed by two engineers from the Ponts et Chaussées, Adolphe Alphand (1817–91) and Eugene Belgrand (1810–78), and two Beaux-Arts-trained architects, Victor Baltard (1805–74) and Eugene Deschamps (in charge of mapping services) (Casselle, “Travaux de la Commission des Embellissements,” 668–69).
These include Hittorff at the Gare du Nord, Armand at the Gare Saint-Lazare, and Duquesney at the Gare de l’Est, as well as Labrouste (Carmona, Haussmann, 543).
Haussmann, Memoirs, 17.
Giedion, Space, Time, 660.
Francois Prosper Jacqmin, De l’Exploitation des chemins de fer: Leçons faites en 1867 a l’Ecole Imperiale des Ponts et Chaussees (Paris: Gamier Freres, 1868), 1:74.
This was limited to large cities (Van Zanten, Building Paris, 179–81).
The first Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est were entrusted to Ponts et Chaussées engineers (Bowie, Grandes gares, 11; Sutcliffe, Paris, 95, 96, 103).
Papayanis, Planning Paris, 10.
Lavedan, Histoire de l’urbanisme, 420.
Jean Castex, Formes urbaines: De l’Ilot a la barre (Paris: Bordas, 1977), 26; Erwin Gutkind, International History of City Development, vol. 5, France and Belgium (New York: Free Press, 1970), 261.
Haussmann, Memoirs, 2:185; quoted in Lavedan, Histoire de l’urbanisme, 420.
Haussmann, Memoirs, 728, 828–29, 1101; orig. ed., 2:488; 3:60–61, 530–31.
Gutkind, International History, 5:261.
Maurice Agulhon, Françoise Choay, and Maurice Crubellier, La Ville de l’age industriel: Le Cycle haussmannien, in Histoire de la France urbaine, ed. G. Duby (Paris: Seuil, 1998), 4:106–14. For a list of alignment and expropriation legislation, see Rouleau, Trace, 112–13.
Archives de la Ville de Paris, D6S9/4 and Calepins du Cadastre, Archives de la Ville de Paris, D1P4-Carton 1056.
Maxime du Camp, Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions, sa vie dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siecle, 2nd ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1875), 6:255; Maurice Halbwachs, Les Expropriations et le prix des terrains a Paris (1860–1900) (Paris: Comely, 1909), 29–35; Harvey, “Paris,” 87–88.
Haussmann, Memoirs, 617, 666–67; orig. ed., 2:303–4, 385–88.
The first network covered 9,467 meters and was inaugurated on 5 April 1858.
Declared of public utility between 1854 and 1859 (Pinon, Atlas, 60), the second network included 21 new streets or 26 kilometers (26,294 meters) to be laid within ten years outside of the city center. David H. Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958), 183; Lavedan, Histoire de l’urbanisme, 424; Johannes Willms, Paris, Capital of Europe: From the Revolution to the Belle Epoque (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997), 264.
Van Zanten, Building Paris, 213 implies that the connections to the annexed areas were more significant than the links to and between the stations.
The third network reached 28,000 meters. It was declared of public utility between 1859 and 1866. Pinkney, Rebuilding, 169–73.
Willms, Paris, 265; Pinon, Atlas, 69–70ff.
The publication of Jules Ferry’s “Les Comptes d’Haussmann” in 1867–68 in Le Temps gave the prefect’s operations much adverse publicity. A Rothschild protégé, Leon Say, had first drawn public attention to the city’s finances in the January and February issues of the Journal des Débats (Harvey, “Paris,” 107; Pinkney, Rebuilding, 196). Pinkney, Rebuilding, 174–209 contains a clear account of Haussmann’s financial practices. See also Genevieve Massa-Gille, Histoire des emprunts de la Ville de Paris, 1814–1875 (Paris: Commission des Travaux Historiques de la Ville de Paris, 1973), 279–306.
Persigny’s lack of success in encouraging Berger, Haussmann’s predecessor, to adopt this concept had led to the cautious prefect’s replacement by Haussmann, who agreed with such financing.
The largest road transport company operated with a capital of 6 million; the railway companies averaged 50 to 80 million. Jocelyne George, Paris province de la revolution a la mondialisation (Paris: Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1998), 77.
For a narrative on the Rothschild-Péreire rivalry, see Jean Bouvier, Les Rothschild (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1983), 151–96; Bowie, “Rothschilds,” 97.
The Rothschild French assets were derived from the loans they made to the state after Waterloo (Zeldin, France, 1:78). Rondo E. Cameron, France and the Economic Development of Europe, 1800–1914: Conquests of Peace and Seeds of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 107; Harvey, “Paris,” 76–77.
Cameron, Economic Development, 114–17.
Emile (1800–1875) and Isaac (1806–80) Péreire.
The Societe Generale du Credit Mobilier was founded with the support of the Fould Bank and Napoleon III. Others included the Credit Foncier, the Credit Lyonnais (1863), the Credit Agricole, and in 1864 the Societe Generale (Zeldin, France, 1:82, 84); Harvey, “Paris,” 76–77, 100.
The Rothschilds had strong influence on the emperor (Harvey, “Paris,” 207); Bowie, “Polarisation,” 7, n. 9; Bowie, “Rothschilds,” 92.
Lavedan, Histoire de l’urbanisme, 369. Rothschild had predicted this failure in a letter to the emperor and may have been instrumental in it. Zeldin, France, 1:83; Harvey, “Paris,” 107, 116.
Harvey, “Paris,” 78–80; Bouvier, Rothschild, 145–50. To the state-backed Credit Mobilier, founded by the Péreires in 1852, it responded by establishing the Reunion Financiere in 1855 with a Rothschild controlling interest and foreign banking connections, which gave the consortium international scope (Bowie, “Rothschilds,” 92).
Pinon, Atlas, 41; Harvey, “Paris,” 79. The Péreires were also associated with Haussmann’s works, especially in the Parc Monceau area.
Harvey, “Paris,” 87.
Zeldin, France, 1:554.
H. J. Dyos, “Railways and Housing in Victorian London: I, Attila in London,” Journal of Transport History 2 (1955): 16.
Lynda Nead, Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 29; Illustrated London News, 30 July 1864, 114.
John R. Kellett, The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 287.
A. S. Wohl, “The Housing of the Working Classes in London, 1815–1914;’ in The History of Working Class Housing, A Symposium, ed. Stanley D. Chapman (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1971), 18; Patricia E. Malcolmson, “Getting a Living in the Slums of Victorian Kensington,” London Journal 1 (May 1975): 31.
Arthur Cawston, A Comprehensive Scheme for Street Improvements in London (London: Edward Stanford, 1893), 1, 49, 62.
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© 2008 Micheline Nilsen
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Nilsen, M. (2008). Paris: Haussmann, the Railways, and the New Gates to the City. In: Railways and the Western European Capitals. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230615779_5
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