Paris, City of Dreams

by Mary McAuliffe

  In particular, Haussmann homed in on the crossing of Boulevard Saint-Germain with the north-south artery, which occurred at Boulevard Saint-Michel. This, following the Right Bank crossing of the north-south roadway with the Rue de Rivoli at Tour Saint-Jacques, would create a second major crossing, completing what Haussmann majestically called “la Grande Croisée de Paris.” To celebrate this in an appropriate manner required a major architectural statement, and Haussmann now ordered the creation of Place Saint-Michel, to the south of Pont Saint-Michel, where the north-south artery entered the Left Bank. Work here, to enlarge what had been a simple meeting place of several ancient streets, would begin the following year.

  At the same time, Haussmann was paying great attention to two major sites on the Right Bank: the Place de la Concorde and the Place de l’Etoile, the latter being the western gateway in the Farmers-General wall where Napoleon Bonaparte placed his Arc de Triomphe. Between the two ran the Champs-Elysées, which in recent years had changed from a country road to a more urbanized one but still amounted to only a modest roadway, even though one planted with trees.

  Louis-Napoleon had given the job of redesigning the Place de la Concorde to Jacques-Ignace Hittorff, who had been at work on the project ever since the reign of Louis-Philippe. It was he who placed statues representing major cities of France at each of the octagonal Place’s eight angles, and it was he who saw the possibilities in the obelisk that Egypt offered France and had it erected (a difficult and dangerous project) at the Place’s center, in line with the Champs-Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe. Hittorff was also responsible for the two fountains framing the obelisk, as well as for the streetlamps and commemorative columns throughout the enormous square. It could and should have marked a triumph for the architect, except for the fact that, most unfortunately, Georges Haussmann could not stand him.

  On various projects around town, Haussmann took special glee in thwarting Hittorff, but it was at the Place de la Concorde where Haussmann’s differences with Hittorff became virulent. The emperor, who was fond of festivals and parades, had already realized that, as then constituted, the Place de la Concorde was a potential death trap for crowds—much as it had been in pre-Revolutionary times, when the grand celebration commemorating the marriage of Marie-Antoinette and then-dauphin Louis had ended in more than one hundred fatalities. Other crowd-related tragedies had marked the spot over the years, and Louis-Napoleon wanted the problem of traffic and crowd flow resolved, especially with a World’s Fair coming up.

  Now that the obelisk and fountains were in, thanks to Hittorff, the available open space had shrunk even further. Worse, the Place contained flower borders located somewhat below ground level. These had the merit of being part of Ange-Jacques Gabriel’s original design, but they doubtless threatened to upend unwary pedestrians. The question was, which would go—the obelisk or the flower beds? Haussmann voted for the obelisk, but Hittorff stood firm. The two brought their squabble to the emperor, who decided against the flower beds.

  Haussmann said little at the time, but he was not happy. Taking his revenge where he could, he lowered the lamps from the tall stands that Hittorff had provided in the Place de la Concorde, claiming that they were too high. And he soon found other spots where he could make life difficult for Hittorff, especially in the developing areas to the west of the Place de la Concorde, including the Place de l’Etoile, the Champs-Elysées, and the Bois de Boulogne.

  From the outset, Haussmann had placed special emphasis on plans for developing the Place de l’Etoile (now Place Charles-de-Gaulle). At that time, the Arc de Triomphe—completed under Louis-Philippe’s monarchy—rose just outside the city limits, behind the Etoile tollhouses of the Farmers-General wall. It was a solitary spot, and Louis-Napoleon’s concept for it, originally developed when he still resided in London, was to open up several new avenues there. He foresaw the Avenue de l’Impératrice (Avenue of the Empress, now Avenue Foch), Avenue Kléber, and Avenue Friedland, the latter two resonating with memories of the first Bonaparte’s military victories.

  But Haussmann did not believe the emperor was thinking in sufficiently grand terms and instead proposed the twelve-armed star and huge circular space that the Place de l’Etoile indeed became. In particular, Haussmann wanted the whole layout to be symmetrical, with identical or similar houses around the circumference, while a circular road would enclose the Arc de Triomphe and link the radiating avenues.

  No detail was too small for Haussmann. Of course the tollhouses and the toll barrier would go, following which he wanted the strip of land bordering the Place and its sides to be enclosed in railings that were to be identical in height and decoration. He insisted that there be no buildings within fifty-two feet of the Place itself and that all the houses facing it be similar, with façades and all ornamentation made of freestone (as would be the bases of the iron railings). The houses’ roofs were to be made of zinc, with two slopes linked by a cast iron channel that opened discreetly into the attics. Other rules regulated the houses’ levels and alignments, while the prefect saw fit to issue instructions for keeping the railings and façades clean as well as for planting the flower beds that he required between the buildings and the railings (prior approval necessary). No trade signs whatever would be allowed, and in a similar manner, no trade could be practiced in this space without Haussmann’s specific approval.

  Haussmann and Hittorff battled on the height of the homes built around the periphery, with the emperor once again backing Hittorff. But on the whole, Haussmann’s plan won out, and he was delighted with it: “This beautiful design,” he later wrote in his memoirs, “which I am very proud to have thought up,” was what he considered to be “one of the greatest successes of my administration.”4

  While Haussmann considered the Place de l’Etoile his masterpiece, the emperor viewed the Bois de Boulogne as the jewel in his crown and pushed for results accordingly.

  By 1854, the unfortunate mess left by the river venture had vanished, replaced by two lakes separated by a waterfall, as Haussmann had recommended. That spring, the emperor and empress inaugurated the first stage of the Bois’s waterworks, to great pomp and ceremony. Soon after, Haussmann brought in Gabriel Davioud (replacing Hittorff) to design the chalets and other structures throughout the park. In the years that followed, Davioud would create a distinctly Parisian look in the city’s parks and public spaces, with his street benches, pavilions, fences, and lampposts, as well as his fountains—in particular the grandly gushing Saint-Michel fountain in the newly emerging Place Saint-Michel.

  But the Bois de Boulogne still lacked a major access route from the Place de l’Etoile. Hittorff had proposed a wide avenue, the widest so far in Paris, but Haussmann was contemptuous, arguing that it was banal and not nearly wide enough. By this time, some were beginning to take notice of what gossips already were calling Haussmann’s “megalomania,” and the Legislature uncharacteristically stepped in. Eventually, Haussmann had to scale back some of his requirements for this avenue, although the resulting roadway was still uncommonly ample. With more than a little political acumen, Haussmann proposed that it be called the Avenue de l’Impératrice (Avenue of the Empress).

  Still, Haussmann had ideas for the Bois de Boulogne that were far more grandiose than what even the emperor had in mind. Haussmann wanted to extend the Bois to include the plain of Longchamp and other land right down to the Seine and encountered resistance from the top—at least until the emperor’s half-brother, the Duke de Morny, suggested a clever way to get what Haussmann had in mind. The Jockey Club (of which Morny was a prominent member) regularly held races on the Champ-de-Mars, which annoyed the military authorities. After all, this was traditionally military territory, fronting the Ecole Militaire; the young cadet Napoleon Bonaparte had marched on this spot, and in due course he had inspected his troops here. Morny’s idea was to build a racetrack on the plain of Longchamp, where facilities would be better for everyone. The emperor thought the idea made sense, but he feared tha
t it would take time to acquire the land in question, since it would extend the Bois de Boulogne all the way to one of the Seine’s wide-swinging loops. But he underestimated Haussmann, who moved quickly. Development began in little more than a year.

  By April 1857, the new racetrack at Longchamp was inaugurated, to great success, drawing large numbers of Parisians to the Bois de Boulogne. Best of all, thanks to Haussmann’s quick resale of the land that the city did not keep, it ended up in costing the city virtually nothing.

  Money—the quest for it and the making of it—was at the heart of the huge midcentury upheaval taking place in Napoleon III’s Paris. Re-creating the city was an expensive undertaking that required heavy borrowing—especially since Napoleon and those closest to him realized that raising taxes was politically out of the question. Bolstered by Persigny and Haussmann’s belief in productive expenditure, the emperor came to embrace the idea of credit in order to pay for the enormous public works that now were under way.

  Credit provided the main financial underpinning, but sale of excess land along proposed routes afforded another major source of funding. Such lands became the commodity on which the men at the center of this hub—like the Pereires and Zola’s Saccard—built and speculated. Paris under Napoleon III was being turned into a vast money machine, where every shovelful of dirt promised gold to someone along the line.

  By 1854, the Pereires had created the Compagnie Immobilière de Paris, which permitted not only the construction and utilization of housing on the parcels of land they acquired but the rental and resale of these lands.5 The brothers’ Compagnie Immobilière snapped up land along the Rue de Rivoli and adjoining streets, as well as in what would become the Opéra quarter and westward toward the plain of Monceau and the Champs-Elysées. Capping it all, in 1854, the Pereires decided to get into the business of hotel building and began to erect a luxury hotel, the Grand Hôtel du Louvre. This they did with their typical energy, pushing construction to finish in time for the great 1855 World’s Fair.

  Wherever they looked, the Pereires saw opportunity. They proposed to link the Gare Saint-Lazare to Auteuil in southwest Paris by a frequent passenger omnibus, which they linked with the operation of the Petite Ceinture. This omnibus line opened in March 1854, connecting various parts along the Petite Ceinture, even as the Petite Ceinture itself rapidly expanded. Only the brothers’ efforts to create a Compagnie Générale Maritime, a shipping company entrusted with the transport of mail to North America, failed to make money, having proved far more complex than they had anticipated. Its day would come but not until the next century.

  In addition to relying on handy sources of funds like the Pereires, the French government under Napoleon III began to issue large-scale loans directly to the public. The first of these, floated in March 1854, was highly successful, reaching almost 100,000 subscribers who in turn provided 468 million francs. Subsequent loans brought in even more francs from an ever-larger pool of subscribers. This dramatically increased the funding for the city and state but also dramatically increased the specter of bankruptcy for those inclined to worry about these new financial schemes.

  Nevertheless, bankruptcy did not disturb the sleep of many during these early bonanza years of the Second Empire. Napoleon III’s government inspired confidence in business circles, especially as it did its best to facilitate business’s activities, whether by turning a blind eye to inconvenient regulations or by encouraging consolidation and monopolies, especially throughout the ever-expanding network of railroads. Much as the Pereires and other big businessmen had hoped, the State under Napoleon III had become the bulwark of large-scale capitalism.

  This rising economic tide was supposed to lift all boats, and Louis-Napoleon, in his 1844 pamphlet, The Extinction of Pauperism, had already gone on record for wanting to improve the lot of workers and the poor. After coming to power, he did not forget his earlier sympathies, taking an interest in workers’ housing, which was becoming an ever-greater problem as tenements in central Paris were being eradicated. This destruction was in a good cause, of course, to make way for new roads and better housing, but better housing on cleaner streets was unfortunately well out of financial reach for these neighborhoods’ former residents.

  While still prince-president, Louis-Napoleon committed to supporting a scheme for decent workers’ housing, donating his own funds as well as those confiscated from the family of the deposed Orléans monarch, Louis-Philippe. The first fruits of this endeavor, opened in late 1851, was a large complex

  Present-day interior view of the top floor of one of the buildings of the Cité Napoléon (1851), originally constructed as workers’ housing. Its interior design, including its glass roof, remains unchanged. © J. McAuliffe

  called the Cité Napoléon, still located at 58 Rue de Rochechouart at the foot of Montmartre. Made up of several buildings grouped around a garden courtyard, it contained more than two hundred small subsidized apartments that were priced within the range of what workers could pay.

  Although the buildings themselves were unattractive (likened to a barracks), their interiors were unusually light and airy, with open double staircases leading to floors arranged along wide corridors and a glass roof overhead. Each unit contained a kitchen and was heated and ventilated. Each floor had water pumps and toilets (this was well before the era of private bathrooms), and the buildings contained communal laundries and children’s nurseries.

  Unfortunately, the idea behind this well-meaning but ultimately unsuccessful endeavor was that, through careful management of the tenants’ lives and surroundings, they could be improved out of poverty. There were many restrictions, most especially a ten o’clock curfew, as well as police surveillance. Louis-Napoleon wanted to place at least one of these housing blocs in each of Paris’s arrondissements, and in 1856 he subsidized the construction of a similar housing bloc on Boulevard Diderot, near the Gare de Lyon. The following decade he made yet another attempt, on Avenue Daumesnil.6 But the poor of Paris did not want to be regimented, and in any case, the supply of workers’ housing was woefully inadequate.

  Haussmann was especially hostile to the idea of workers’ housing. In an 1857 letter to Persigny, he was dismissive of “these houses built and resold at a loss by the Emperor,” these habitations “rented on the emperor’s dime.”7 But then again, Haussmann was not especially sympathetic to workers in general and was deeply opposed to giving workers the vote. Universal suffrage, as far as he was concerned, was simply another of the emperor’s nonsensical ideas.

  As for the displaced workers of central Paris, they simply moved to cheaper quarters on the city’s outskirts, where they would inhabit tenements and slums that were as bad as the ones being destroyed.

  It was around this time that the Goncourts reported that their cousin Pierre-Charles Laurens, Comte de Villedeuil, had been overheard to pray nightly, hands clasped: “O Lord, . . . let the Emperor stay in power so that my dividends may increase, and let the rise in Anzin Coal shares be maintained.”8

  It was Villedeuil who had started the ill-fated literary journal L’Eclair with the Goncourts—and who had memorably accepted two hundred bottles of champagne as part of a loan from his moneylender. This champagne had so quickly gone bad that the editors decided to hold an impromptu office party, inviting everyone they could think of, including passersby and a young man by the name of Nadar, who had just begun a series of caricatures for the review.

  Nadar, whose real name was Félix Tournachon, was born in Paris in 1820—innocent times, as he later put it, when “the customs were gentle, the hearts simple”; that is, “a murder would last us for two years: the conversations around it were satisfying.”9 An illegitimate son of an unsuccessful bookseller from Lyon, Nadar by his late teens had grown into a skinny and irrepressible beanpole, immediately recognizable by his bright blue eyes and carrot-colored hair. Living the Bohemian life in a series of insalubrious rooms in the Latin Quarter, he became a good friend of Henry Murger and part of the gang that prov
ided inspiration for Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème.

  Later in life, Nadar described himself as “a real daredevil, always looking for tides to swim against, bracing public opinion, unreconciled to any sense of order.”10 This born rebel was a likable rogue, with a wide circle of friends who valued his honesty, loyalty, and unfailing good spirits. It was one of these friends who had invented Nadar’s nickname, changing Tournachon to Tournadard, then Tournadard to Narard, and at length flipping Narard to Nadar.

  By the 1840s, Nadar had won a reputation as a brilliant self-publicist, and when the Goncourts met him, his artistic talents had taken him in the direction of caricature, where he first made his name. But by 1854, after his marriage, Nadar found himself pulled into the fledgling art of photography through his younger brother, Adrien, a lost soul whom Nadar hoped to establish in this promising new field. Nadar paid for his brother’s training and helped him set up a photographic studio at 11 Boulevard des Capucines, with the understanding that the brothers would collaborate (although Adrien had other ideas).

  By this time, Nadar had become sufficiently interested in photography that he asked a friend for instruction and then bought his own equipment. After Adrien kicked him out of what was intended to be their joint studio, Nadar set up a rudimentary darkroom and began to solicit business through newspaper ads. The career of one of the greatest photographers of the century was about to begin.