MOVING ON

WHEN LOUIS-PHILIPPE'S MORALIZING GOVERNMENT CLOSES THE GAMBLING DENS, THE "PASSAGES" AND "THE BOULEVARDS" REPLACE PALAIS-ROYAL

(FROM 1836)

The Passages linked the elegant districts, and launched the architecture of glass and steel.

(From 1821)

 

Adapted from a Google map

 The string of passages (passages red, streets blue)

 A modern poster 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 (described below).

Coin de la rue Vivienne and de la rue des Petits-Champs by Honoré Daumier

# # #

The Boulevards, built on the site of ramparts that Louis XIV tore down...

         Adapted from Mappy

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.

Le café Anglais au boulevard des Italiens en 1877 / zoom (with French text)

The first sidewalks...

Le café Riche au XIX siècle byTheodor Josef Hubert Hoffbauer (evocation based on archives) / zoom

The first café terraces...

          Le café Helder au boulevard des Italiens en 1859, à dix-sept heures du soir, French School / zoom

And the place where the elegant met.

 

Zoom

   The drawing shows men, because respectable women came only if accompanied. 

# # #

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:

Zoom (please scroll down)

 

"On the sidewalk of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette* were two lines of women. It was the descent of the famished... 

 *North of the Boulevards where many prostitutes settled. 

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, my translation, slightly shortened

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 merchants of the Passages bribe the police to let client-attracting "swallows" freely come and go.

Adèle Legrand / source unknown

A swallow's window 

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 at 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.

End of this section

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Next section,

2.1.6.

Detour: willfully erasing the past