WHEN THE GOVERNMENT CLOSED THE GAMBLING DENS,
"THE COVERED PASSAGES" AND "THE BOULEVARDS" BECAME THE PLACES TO GO FOR FASHION
(FROM 1836)
The Passages linked the elegant districts, and launched the architecture of glass and steel.
(From 1821)
Adapted from a Google map
A modern poste of galerie Véro-Dodat.
Luxuries made them famous: Zola begins his novel Nana in one of the passages, where the protagonist, a budding courtesan, contemplates the splendid wares that she hopes admirers will offer.
Galerie Vero-Dodat
Galerie Vivienne
They avoided mud and traffic in a town whose only sidewalks were on pont Neuf and soon, the Boulevards (below).
Corner of rue Vivienne and rue des Petits-Champs by Honoré Daumier
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The Boulevards, built on the site of ramparts that Louis XIV tore down...
Adapted from a Google map
Brought theaters...
Zoom
This part of the Boulevards is called the "Boulevard of Crime" because of the melodramas played in the theaters aligned along it (in eastern Paris near Republique, torn down through the transformation of the 1850's).
Legendary restaurants*...
*The heroine of the movie Babette's feast (1987) is a former chef at the Café Anglais.
The Café Anglais on Boulevard des Italiens in 1877 / zoom (with French text)
The first sidewalks...
The Café Riche in the 19th Century byTheodor Josef Hubert Hoffbauer (evocation based on archives) / zoom
The first café terraces...
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| The Café Helder on the Boulevard des Italiens in 1859, at five o'oclock in the evening, French School / zoom |
And the place to meet the elegant.
The drawing shows men, because respectable women came only if men accompanied them. The latter often invited courtesans, however, who were often extremely well dressed.
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The Passages and Boulevards replaced Palais-Royal for prostitution, but the Passages' sex workers fared better:
- On the Boulevards unaccompanied women were considered prostitutes, and unless they were officially registered risked arrest:
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Zoom (please scroll down)
On the sidewalk of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette* were two lines of women.
It was the descent of the famished...
[...] at a hundred meters from the Café Riche, they approached the battlefield [...] showing off, laughing loudly, with backward glances at the men who turned to look at them, they were on home ground.
[...] twelve or fifteen police would raid the boulevard, surrounding a sidewalk, catching as many as thirty women in an evening [...]
As soon as she [Nana's girlfriend] saw the tip of an agent's nose she would fly away, fleeing through the crowd in the midst of a terrified band. It was the terror of the law, so great that some stayed paralyzed at the doors of the cafés[...]
Nana escapes prison because an admirer springs up and offers her his arm.
A RAID IN CHEAP HOTELS
"Show your hands... Your fingers have no needle-marks, you don't work. Go on, get dressed."
-- Nana
- But in the passages with its shops, merchants bribe the police to let client-attracting "swallows" freely come and go.
Adèle Legrand / source unknown
Sidewalks made the Passages less useful and when the urban transformation of the 1850's led to transforming a large part of the center, all but seven were torn down.
The Boulevards remained the heart of Western luxury until the turn of the 19th century, when the area west of the Opéra replaced them.
Today banal shops and fast-foods reign.
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