Paris, City of Dreams

by Mary McAuliffe

  Those with a yen for the past—including most notably Victor Hugo—mourn the loss of all those ancient buildings. But the question remains whether it was possible to do anything but clear out the accumulation of filth and desolation that they had become, especially given the timetable and overwhelmed budget that Haussmann had to work with. Describing a similar area just to the east, which for the moment remained intact, Alexandre Dumas père described a “sticky, sinister staircase” emerging at the foot of a wall: “You are afraid to put a foot on the slippery steps, or a hand on the rusted rail,” he told the intrepid visitor and then directed this prospective explorer to scramble up, where in the darkness he would feel a window with iron bars similar to those of prison windows. Across the blackness, on the right, was a boardinghouse offering overnight lodgings with coffee and water. But some could not afford even this simple fare and huddled from the icy cold in the shelter of these dark walls. It was here, Dumas told his readers, that the poet Gérard de Nerval hanged himself in the cold and dark.13

  Of course, Haussmann was not concerned with the death of Nerval or the desperate poverty of those who lived in these sinister quarters. The question of renovation never occurred to the prefect, who took “great satisfaction” in clearing out the area between the Louvre and the Palais des Tuileries and leveling the area between the Louvre and Rue Saint-Honoré to the ground.

  In the wake of the wrecking ball, the Place du Palais Royal gradually emerged, while between the Louvre and the Church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, a new esplanade fully revealed the east-facing colonnade of the Louvre for the first time since the Sun King had it built. The Place du Carrousel also revived, laid out as gardens that would be officially inaugurated in 1857.

  But Haussmann had an emperor on his heels, and he could not take time out to enjoy what he had already accomplished. In the process of continuing the extension of the Rue de Rivoli, he soon encountered the knotty problem of the difference in ground levels. This he neatly solved by razing most of the surrounding neighborhoods, which also solved the problem of the land levels around the tower of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie.14 It was Haussmann who placed the statue of Blaise Pascal in the tower, to commemorate the experiments in air pressure and vacuum that Pascal had carried out there.

  Unfortunately, the surplus land left over from Haussmann’s expropriations along the Rue de Rivoli was not proving a hot sale item, as few were interested in buying. Who could yet be sure whether these areas, razed but not yet rebuilt, would be worth the investment? It was at this point that the Pereire brothers stepped in as head of a banking syndicate willing to pay the city some seven million francs for the unsold land. The only condition, Haussmann told them, was that all the building they planned to do on this land had to be completed by May 1, 1855—the scheduled opening of Paris’s first World’s Fair.

  In the meantime, the first stone of Napoleon III’s major addition to the northern wing of the Louvre—alongside the Rue de Rivoli—had been laid. Its Rue de Rivoli façade would be completed by that all-important 1855 date.

  Everyone, it seemed, was in a hurry.

  Just to the north of Haussmann’s major works on the Rue de Rivoli lay the huge food markets of Paris, Les Halles. Since the twelfth century, when Philip Augustus built two market halls on this site, it had served as a major source of food for Parisians. Unfortunately, by the time Louis-Napoleon seized the imperial crown, it had become cramped and derelict, much like its slum-ridden surroundings.

  Others before Louis-Napoleon had studied and debated the problem, but it was the emperor who lit the proverbial fires beneath a host of slow-moving bureaucrats to get a move on. Haussmann, who needed no prodding, entered office just after the first demolitions (some 147 houses) had begun and pressed successfully for even further demolition and roadwork. But the main problem was architectural: the emperor hated what his architect, Victor Baltard, had come up with as a replacement for the old market halls. Baltard, a prestigious architect and Prix de Rome winner, had designed eight pavilions, the first of which was completed just before Haussmann took office. Heavy, grandiose, and made of stone, it looked every inch the “Halles fortress” that derisive Parisians called it. The emperor agreed: what he had in mind was the sort of glass-covered metal frame that had become popular ever since the British had presented the Crystal Palace to the world in 1851, at their World’s Fair. “What I must have are huge umbrellas,” the emperor told Haussmann and sketched out what he envisioned.

  Haussmann was careful to preserve the sketch. He then elaborated, adding a broad road connecting traffic between the Church of Saint-Eustache, at the north of Les Halles, and the Place du Châtelet to the south, with the eight pavilions distributed around it. He then handed the whole thing over to Baltard, who was a friend (and fellow Protestant). “Quickly get me a draft following these basic ideas,” he told him. Just remember, he added, “iron, iron, nothing but iron!”15

  The sole surviving Baltard pavilion from Les Halles, constructed under Napoleon III. Now located in Nogent-sur-Marne. © J. McAuliffe

  The use of iron rather than stone was of course heresy to a classical architect such as Baltard (an attitude that Gustave Eiffel would encounter almost thirty years later when he proposed his all-iron tower for the 1889 World’s Fair). Baltard protested, but at last he came up with the design that Haussmann—and the emperor—asked for. It would remain a graceful presence for more than a century.16

  One of the persistent questions surrounding the Paris that was now emerging concerns the uniformity of its architecture—of what has become known as the “Haussmann building.” Although the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have embraced this architecture as quintessentially Parisian, in its best sense, contemporaries were less enthused. As one journalist and writer, Alfred Delvau, bluntly put it, these new houses of the Second Empire were “cold, colorless, as regular as barracks and as sad as prisons in the middle of streets aligned like infantrymen, . . . lamentable in their regularity.” Another contemporary, J.-E. Horn, described these structures as “half palace, half-barracks.”17

  Although such regimentation may well have appealed to someone as devoted to order as was Haussmann, architectural historian Pierre Pinon argues that it did not result from specific regulation. Instead, he speculates that this type of housing simply caught on during the Second Empire—illustrated in architecture reviews and reproduced by countless anonymous architects who, in turn, were designing for masses of equally anonymous residents. Many Haussmann-style buildings were rental properties, a new form of investment that burgeoned during these years. Given the circumstances, standardized design was valued; individuality was not. Haussmann-style structures, which went up in blocks, were easy enough to build, were easy enough to copy, and stood to make money. Naturally, they became popular.

  Yet constraints did exist and had existed since the eighteenth century, establishing a very-French proportion between the height of a building and the width of its street. In 1853, as the demolition and building frenzy was under way, the rule was simply put: use the width of a street as a measure to establish the height of the buildings constructed along it, applying the principle that one building not be any larger than any other.

  By 1859, the rule would be more clearly defined, keeping the principle of a proportion between the width of the street and the height of the building but defining maximum heights, depending on the street’s width. For streets and boulevards of more than twenty meters wide or greater, the height could be greater than twenty meters but without in any case exceeding a total of five floors above the rez-de-chausée (ground floor), including the mezzanine. The roof ridge, or tallest part of the roof, could not exceed a height equal to half the depth of the building, including projections and cornices. As for the facçade facing the public street, its projecting eaves could not exceed a forty-five-degree angle.

  In addition, the terms of sale of the land parcels, personally signed by Haussmann, typically required that the houses in each hou
sing block have the same floor heights and façades and that these façades be made of cut stone with identical balconies, cornices, and moldings. The goal was that the houses would form an “architectural ensemble.”

  For above all, uniformity was prized—not only as aesthetically desirable but also as an economical approach to rebuilding the huge swaths of the city that were now being razed. The long straight lines of the newly pierced streets and boulevards left deep strips of expropriated property that developers like the Pereires were now grabbing up. Haussmann-style buildings, all in a row, suited these developers exactly.

  A Haussmann-style building, Boulevard de Courcelles. The buildings along this street, bordering Parc Monceau, are considered some of the most beautiful of Paris’s Haussmann-style buildings. © J. McAuliffe

  Haussmann generally took the position of making happen whatever the emperor wanted, but in one instance, he balked. This was the emperor’s much-desired plan to open up the Rue des Ecoles as a major Left Bank thoroughfare. The street was located along the slopes of Mount Sainte-Geneviève, where Haussmann feared it could not be broadened sufficiently to safely carry the large volumes of traffic that the emperor had in mind. In its place, Haussmann recommended another route, on level ground closer to the Seine. This would become the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

  As for the Bois de Boulogne, by the time of Haussmann’s arrival at the prefecture, it was clear that the project was a mess. Louis-Napoleon had dreamed of providing Parisians with a green space starring a sinuous water-course. But unfortunately the previous prefect, Berger, had seriously underestimated the river’s gradient, which left the upper portion dry while the lower level had become a swamp. Taking the situation in hand, Haussmann decided to divide the river into two lakes separated by a waterfall—not what the emperor had in mind but nonetheless a happy solution that has worked well to this day. By the following year, the emperor and empress would inaugurate the first stage of the Bois de Boulogne’s waterworks, which brought water from the Seine along an artificial canal to supply not only the upper and lower lakes that had prompted this change of plan but also other streams and lakes throughout the park.

  Haussmann had saved the day, but as with the disasters-in-waiting involving the Tour Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, he realized that he could not go on without reliable technical assistance. He now reached into his memory of men he had worked with in previous prefectures and recalled the civil engineer Adolphe Alphand, with whom he had worked most successfully in Bordeaux. Within a few months, Alphand joined the Seine prefecture as head of a newly created Walks and Horticulture Department. Haussmann now had two exceptional men, Deschamps and Alphand, by his side.

  Still, Haussmann—although not a modest man—never forgot the role of Louis-Napoleon in creating the new Paris that already was emerging. “Alone,” he later wrote in his memoirs, “I would never have been able to pursue, nor especially to bring to its successful conclusion, the mission that [the emperor] demanded of me.” And he added, “I merely carried it out.”18

  Charles Merruau, who at the time was general secretary of the Seine prefecture, added his voice to Haussmann’s: “The broad guidelines and the system [of the transformation of Paris],” he wrote in his memoirs, “were fixed in the prince’s mind since the days of his presidency, and, for many essential points, well before that.”19

  There were other major works going on throughout Paris, most especially at the eastern end of the Ile de la Cité, at the great cathedral of Notre-Dame. This had been covered in scaffolding and under restoration for almost a decade by the time Napoleon III and Eugenie were married there in early 1853.

  Dedicated in 1163 under the dynamic guidance of Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris, Notre-Dame by the early 1800s had survived the Revolution but was in terrible shape—aging, dark, and neglected. Revolutionary mobs had made off with or destroyed anything within reach, but there had also been destructive acts of a more calculated sort, most notably the mutilation of the cathedral’s grand central portal, which had been hacked apart to make way for processionals. Moreover, as one authority has pointed out, “the masonry was in a lamentable state throughout the building.”20

  It was Victor Hugo who took note and did something about it. His 1831 novel, Notre-Dame de Paris (the original title of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), made a cause célèbre of the dying cathedral, and responding to popular demand, the government of King Louis-Philippe agreed to underwrite a huge restoration program. In 1843, the young architectural team of Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc won the competition to lead this all-important project. Both men, much like Victor Hugo, were enthusiasts of Gothic rather than neoclassical Greek and Roman architecture, and both were dedicated to remaining true to the original concept behind Notre-Dame. Of the two, though, it was Viollet-le-Duc whose imprint on the cathedral would be the greatest.21

  Although still only thirty years old and with no degree in architecture when he set to work on Notre-Dame, Viollet-le-Duc had already established himself in the field of architectural restoration. Grandson of an architect and son of the governor of royal residences, Viollet-le-Duc had enjoyed a life filled with art and literature as well as the privilege to follow his own (strong) inclinations. A renegade from his youth, he had flat-out refused to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, on the grounds that it was tied too rigidly to neoclassicism and churned out unimaginative architects. Instead, he got the practical experience he wanted at an architectural firm and then traveled, drew extensively (buildings and their ornamentation), and began to be known for his restoration work, starting with the abbey church of Vézelay and moving on to Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (where he worked with Lassus), as well as the chapel at the Château d’Amboise that held Leonardo da Vinci’s tomb.

  The restoration of Notre-Dame, which was Viollet-le-Duc’s largest and most important project to date, drew upon his talents for meticulous research as well as for informed inspiration. He made careful drawings and took photographs of the damaged sculptures, whether on the façade or the interior, most of which had to be removed and re-created from scratch by a large team of sculptors. All those years of careful observation and drawing allowed him to fill in the blanks where only blanks remained, whether gargoyles on the drain spouts and chimeras on the cathedral roof or statues of saints throughout the structure. He rebuilt entire sections of the cathedral, repaired and replaced windows, and positioned a taller and more ornate spire over the transept, which had been removed for safety reasons a half-century before. That spire in particular may have taken “many liberties with the thirteenth-century design,” but in the end, it has evoked admiration for being nothing short of “spectacular, in terms of its detailing and harmonization with the building.”22

  The work would go on for more than a decade, and some would complain that not all of Viollet-le-Duc’s work was accurate and that his imagination sometimes got the better of him. As Erlande-Brandenburg points out, Viollet-le-Duc’s invention became bolder as the project progressed, “due both to increasing familiarity with the building and to [his own] growing national stature.” Yet such was the genius of Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc that “the [architectural] interventions they made are not always apparent, even to the practiced eye.”23

  Others may disagree. But whether or not the restored Notre-Dame is the Notre-Dame of the thirteenth century, Lassus and especially Viollet-le-Duc saved the cathedral—as had Victor Hugo.

  A bad wheat harvest, which drove up the price of bread, prompted the emperor to tell Haussmann to do something about lowering bread prices (Haussmann, wary of the dangers of price caps, instead established a Bakery Trade Fund financed by the bonds it issued). But despite the price of bread, the population of Paris was generally content that year, distracted from their loss of liberties by rising profits and employment. As the English writer Bayle St. John caustically put it, in his contemporary observations of Napoleon III’s Paris: “Fine masonry is certainly an excellent substitute for liberty.”24 And Zola would in ti
me dramatize this boomtown atmosphere in his novel La Curée (The Kill, or The Spoils), where his major protagonist, the ruthless Aristide Rougon (who has taken the name “Saccard”), arrives in Paris in 1853 prepared to get rich quick—rich and powerful.

  Saccard does not receive his longed-for rewards immediately, but the fortuitous death of his first wife and his marriage to a wealthy (and pregnant) young woman in need of a husband starts to bring in “the kill”—which Zola likens to the reward given to the dogs after a successful hunt. There were a lot of spoils to be handed out in Napoleon III’s Paris, and Saccard, strategically placed (by his scheming brother) in the city’s planning permission office as assistant commissioner of roads, realizes that he can make good use of his insider information on the houses and buildings due for demolition—buildings whose owners will be well recompensed. He only needs some capital to buy up these properties before their status becomes known, and he will be a rich man. Thus equipped with the second wife’s dowry as capital, Saccard’s career in speculation begins.

  There is no question of where Zola’s sympathies lie (or do not lie) in this vivisection of the Second Empire’s new Babylon. His very description of the house that Saccard builds, overlooking Parc Monceau, is a peon to vulgarity. Among its sculptured swags of flowers and branches can be seen “balconies shaped like baskets full of blossoms, and supported by great naked women with straining hips, with breasts jutting out before them.” Around the roof runs a balustrade punctuated by “urns blazing with flames of stone.” And the structure’s interior is, if possible, even more laden with gilt and display. The money practically clanks as one walks through this nouveau riche paradise—and that was the idea.