IV.2.1. TRANSFORMING THE CITY

DREAD OF ANOTHER JUNE BRINGS THE AUTOCRATIC SECOND EMPIRE, WHICH FORBIDS UNIONS AND TO CRUSH THE NEXT INSURRECTION, TRANSFORMS THE CITY*   

* Coup d'état, December 1851; changes get seriously underway in June 1853, when the Emperor replaces a timid administrator with the Baron Haussmann and forces financing.

Historians emphasize the inevitable modernization and downplay or omit the military emphasis.

* Two studies that do alude to it: Paris, Bivouac of Révolutions by Robert Tombs (1999) and The Invention of Paris by Éric Hazan (2001). But Tombs alludes to it only in passing (p.56) and Hazan does not call it overriding. 

The City Museum grants the Baron Haussmann a room to himself and relegates June 1848 to a table at the back of the floor.

The next pages examine that mutation.

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Next,
IV.2.a.
The metamorphosis seen up close

IV.2. FEAR, UNLIKELY PROMOTER OF URBAN GRANDEUR

MENU: 4.2. Fear: promoter of urban grandeur

AN OFFICIAL'S WIFE "TREMBLED EXTREMELY, FOR SHE HAD JUST HEARD, ON AN ORGAN, A POLKA THAT WAS AN INSURGENT'S SIGNAL"

-- Sentimental Education by Gustave Stendhal, 1869

June's unprecedented upheaval terrorizes the privileged and explains the rapidity, extent and design of a unique transformation.

(From 1853 to 1869 Parisians put up with noise, dust and rubble.)

• Giant arteries and and homogeneous, imposing buildings replace tumultuous neighborhoods' narrow streets and small houses.

Background, Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, 1831; The Boulevard Montmartre in Spring by Camille Pissaro, 1897

• Huge places dot the center and east of the city, to assemble troops and isolate them from the public.

• Speculation and corruption bring new magnates: "Aristide Rougon swept down on Paris, on the day after December 2 [the day of Napoleon III's coup d'état] with the flair of birds of prey that smell battlefields from afar."

The Kill, 1871 (A "curée" is the portion of game fed to hunting dogs)

The much higher rents force many of the poor to move to outskirts, which lets the government control the center.

# # #

Metamorphosis began as soon as the Emperor could replace a timid official with a ruthless appointee.*

* Coup d'état, December 2, 1851; the changes begin, May 1853. 

The City Museum relegates the insurrection to a table at the back of the floor and grants that official, the Baron Haussmann, a room to himself:

# # #

Historians emphasize the inevitable modernization, and downplay or omit the military priority.*

*Two studies that do alude to it: Paris, Bivouac of Revolutions by Robert Tombs (1999) and The Invention of Paris by Éric Hazan (2001). But Tombs alludes to it only in passing (p.56) and Hazan does not call it overriding. 

Observing the mutation reveals it. 

In brief

• The metamorphosis seen up close

• Gifts of the repression

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Next,

The metamorphosis seen up close 

IV.2.1.a. THE METAMORPHOSIS SEEN UP CLOSE

MENU: 4.2.1.a. Metamorphosis seen up close

IMAGINE THE ELITES' IMMEDIATE CONCERN: PARIS'S  

MEDIEVAL INFRASTRUCTURE OR REVOLUTION BY WORKING-CLASS "BARBARIANS"?

Observing the changes shows that modernization was grafted onto military measures, but that those came first.  

Claude Abron

Why the colossal 19th-century esplanade? 

In brief

• "An ounce of prevention:" churches and a park 

• Priority: open the town to the army and keep rebels in check

• A military network at the city's heart

• A fountain where the Emperor crushes Socialism

• The new arteries' military purpose

• A "masterly line" cuts through the working-class east

• A once-blue-collar neighborhood's unexpected open space

• Huge "places" and power symbols

• The exception across the river  

• At Notre-Dame Cathedral, repression replaces eternity 

• Planing Latin Quarter bombardment has happy results

• The hospital garden 

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"An ounce of prevention:" churches and a park

"AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION:" CHURCHES AND A PARK

"ONE CAN DO ANYTHING WITH BAYONETS EXCEPT SIT DOWN ON THEM," SAYS NAPOLEON III 

So he promotes a faith that teaches the poor "useful resignation to the conditions of society" by...

-- Citation:  Adolphe Thiers in Valence, Thiers

•  Building churches:

Notre-Dame de la Gare in the poverty-stricken 13th (1847-59)

 

 Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle in the industrializing northeast (1858-61)

• Making public schools teach the catechism:

"New law on teaching: it's the teachers who get the cane."

The "Falloux law" (passed a year before Napoleon took power), was named after the arch-conservative Count de Falloux, who had led the opposition to the National Workshops.

• Promoting charity that condescends to recipients and honors sponsors:

Painting in an antique dealer's window

Society women have "their own" poor and give few alms after mass, so as not to compete for "clients."

-- Jean Renoir, My Father

"To be a good benefactress

Ladies, knit everything in the color of goose-droppings

so that at mass on Sundays

You can recognize your poor."

-- Song by Jacques Brel, Youtube
Written in 1960 to mock a mentality that had not changed
(Brel emphasizes the last words when he sings himself).

Results:

• Paris becomes a capital of neo-Gothic architecture.

• Visceral anti-clericalism, as shown by the cancan step "cathedral:"

Performance by Nadège Maruta, cancan historian and choreographer / photo Félix Sinpraseuth

The bloomers were pierced.

Other reasons for hostility

 

• Nuns' low prices for sewing reduce those of seamstresses.
• Registering babies born out of wedlock costs two days' pay (a fourth of working-class couples live in common-law unions). 

# # #

"The Socialist emperor"* does do something for the poor: He gives the poor a superb park in the working-class east.

(The Buttes-Chaumont, in 1867)

* Napoleon III had written The Extinction of Poverty and genuinely wished to help workers... without hampering employers.  

 Internet, source not said

Victor Locuratolo

Those palliatives do not change

working conditions and salaries:

Still trembling from June,

elites foresee another insurrection.

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The priority: 

Open the town to the army and keep the rebels in check

THE PRIORITY: OPEN THE TOWN TO THE ARMY

"...THESE GRAND STRATEGIC ARTERIES WILL PUSH BACK THE WORKERS AND ALSO HELP CONTAIN THEM..."

-- The Baron Haussmann,

 cited in The Atlas of Haussmannien Paris by Pierre Pinon, 2002, p. 93 (slightly abbreviated, in French)

The Empereur appoints Haussmann (upper part of a painting at the City Museum)

The metamorphosis continues until at least 1925... 

Piercing the boulevard Haussmann in 1925 / zoom

...but most is done during the years that follow the insurrection of June 1848.

# # #

The artery that cuts through the city lets troops rushed from the frontiers...

The Eastern Station. The Northern Station is a few steps away.  

...march without obstacles to the center... 

Adapted from a Google map

...by eliminating streets like this:

          Rue du Chat qui pêche, 5th (between Notre-Dame and Saint-Michel)

Destruction covered the entire territory east of rue Saint-Denis, where the barricades of June had been...

 Adapted from a document at the National Library / zoom

That explains why Parisian railway stations are on the outskirts, in contrast to London and New York.* 

*Exceptions: the Northern and Eastern stations, which predate the June insurrection, and the former Gare d'Orsay, built in built in 1898 when strikes had replaced revolts.

By replacing craftspeople and a growing proletariat by a docile middle class, the government controlled the center: 

"In that way the workers were pushed back toward the outskirts; and as one easily understands, that change influenced in a positive way order and public safety." 

-- Général Moltke visiting Paris, in Atlas du Paris haussmannien, p. 93

# # #

Those demolitions explain...

• The rarity of medieval remains. 

• The dreariness of much of the center.  

     Crossroads at Etienne Marcel, at the right bank's heart and insurrections' epicenter. 

• And the harmony due to demolishing and rebuilding in a homogeneous style... 

 1 Boulevard Poissonnière, 9th, Internet, photographer not named

...that took off from the streets of the barricades.  

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A military network crisscrosses town

A MILITARY NETWORK CRISSCROSSES TOWN

 

THREE GIANT SPACES DOMINATE THE HEART OF TOWN

(AMONG THE FIRST TRANSFORMATIONS, IN 1852-1853)

On reaching the river at the city's center, troops would cross a new bridge... 

      Originally pont [bridge] Napoleon III; after the Emperor's downfall, pont National

...to enter hugely enlarged place Saint-Michel:

"Walls of Medieval Paris Discovered during Demolitions for Place Saint-Michel, engraving 1860 / zoom

Adapted from an Internet photo, no photographer named

There they might take either...

• The prolonged artery toward the working-class south...

Boulevard Saint-Michel

• ...or ordinary but widened streets toward the parvis of Notre-Dame Cathedral:

View from a tower of Notre-Dame

 Notice the insignificance of the street for normal traffic.

At the end of the parvis the soldiers might take an ordinary but enlarged street and a reinforced bridge...

"Taking City Hall" (cut) by Amédée Bourgeois, 1831 / zoom

The earlier bridge

 ...to City Hall's greatly enlarged esplanade:

Model at the City Museum

In 1830

Drawn by T. J.H. Hoffbayer toward 1880 after archival records / zoom

In 1855 

# # #

The City Hall esplanade becomes heart of a right-bank network...

• To the left is the relatively straight trade route that had been enlarged for tournaments and was the route that Louis XIV had taken for his cortège made building an artery toward the working-class east unnecessary:

The trade route (rue Saint-Antoine), wide and straight enough for marching troops. 

  

• To the right, as at Notre-Dame, an insignificant street lies alongside the expanse. It leads to...

...another wide, straight street (avenue Victoria) from which the army could reach Châtelet, the center of the right bank, five minutes away:

# # # 

 Behind City Hall were the Lobau barracks. More later.

# # #

 Of course such changes allowed 

infinitely more fluid circulation and let in light and air.

But the three huge voids, two of which are dead ends,

have no tie with those objectives.

They were for assembling soldiers, horses and cannons. 

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Next,
 A fountain where the Emperor crushes Socialism