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FAMOUS TOWN TLANNETtS

I. - Haussmann*

I

This is one of those symbol names with which we generaliseeventsand ideas and so modifytheir content, to suit our own purposes,that we

really make of them commonnouns, so little remains of the man and somuch of our idea. In city plan reports the words Baron Haussmannstand for the

" transformationof Paris " and usually for all the beautyand convenience of modern Paris. And since Haussmann has been

given an ample Olympianniche, his name sanctifies any operation forwhich it can be cited as precedent. It is, therefore,much used.

Yet a veryrealman he was,that borethe name. Persigny,NapoleonIll's minister,who madeHaussmannprefectof the Seine,found him real

enoughat their firstmeeting." He was big, fat, strong,forcefuland yet

subtle. As he spreadhimselfbefore me with brutal cynicism I saw thathe was just the man to set against the savage financiers and lawyers.Where the most able and magnanimousnobleman would surely meetdisasterthis thick-neckedathlete, meeting craft with craft, would come

safely through. I enjoyed in advance the vision of that huge beast of

preylet looseamongthe wolves andfoxes that werebarkingagainsteverynoble effort of the Empire." Thereis a portrait of him in his memoirsthat tells more about him than all three volumes of text. A head like

that neededto raze and rebuild cities.Haussmannwas born in the FaubourgSt. Honore, in that fruitful

year 1809, and was baptised Georges-Eugene,in the Oratory near the

Louvre, for the family was Alsatian Huguenot. His father and grand-father had held important positions in Napoleon's commissary; hismother'sfather servedunderLafayette in America. He went to CollegeHenri VI, studied law, entered the civil service, became prefect of

Bordeaux,and in 1853 was called to the prefectureof the Seine to carryout NapoleonIll's colossalprogrammeof street-cutting.

The field Haussmanncame to plough was markedby many an old

furrow, for every ruler of France has in some way affected the planof Paris. The new Paris, MarcelPoete

says,dates fromthe Revolution.

But the city on which the Revolution broke was a city studded with

gems of civic art. Therewerethe grandboulevards(fromthe Madeleineto the Bastille), Henry IV's brick and stone Place des Vosges and Place

Dauphine, Place Vendomewith its big statue of Louis XIV, the little

* This articleforms No. 1 of a Series which we hope to publish, dealing with the lives and worksoffamous town planners.- Editors.

For plan of Paris, 1854-1889, see frontispiece.

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FAMOUS TOWN PLANNERS

roundPlace des Victoires,the broadPlace de la Concorde(then Place de

Louis XV), the gardensof the Tuileries,Luxembourg,and Palais Royal,the Invalideswith its broadesplanadeto the river,the EcoleMilitaireandthe ChampdeMars,the Cours-la-Reine,the ChampsElysees,the triumphalgates of St. Martinand St. Denis, the twin columns out at the Barrierede la Trone, and innumerablecourtyards and formal gardens built as

parts of the enormouswealth of finebuildings-

royal, private, scholastic,and ecclesiastic- that crowd with unbelievable richness the old mapsof Paris.

After the Revolution an advisory Comitedes Artistes was formed.It probablydid not draw up a generalplan of any sort. By holding a

competitionandby itself formulatingsuggestions,it madeup a budgetof

schemescoveringthe subdivision of the confiscatedchurchlands and anumber of changes in the old city. Many of these recommendations

merely recordedproposalslong current. Napoleon I said that the ideaof cutting a straight street from the Bastille to the east front of theLouvrewas" as oldas Paris." Napoleoncarriedout someof the Comity'srecommendations: the Rue de Rivoli (as far as the Place du Carrousel),the Avenuede l'Observatoire,the Place St. Sulpice,and extensionsof theshort streets on the axis of the Place Vendome. He also did much

engineeringwork,built bridgesand quays, the Madeleine,the columninthe PlaceVendome,the ArcduCarrousel,andbeganthe Arc de Triomphe.After1814 workwent moreslowly. Napoleon's projectswerecompleted,the Boulevard Malsherbeswas

begun.In the '30\s the obelisk and

fountains were set up in the Place de la Concorde.

II

Louis Napoleonmust have dreamed of the transformationof Paris,while, a prisonerat Ham, he worked on his history of artillery. Made

president,he startedin 1849,with an agreementbetweencity andstate, toextend the Rue de Rivoli and to cut a number of new streets. WhenHaussmanncame to Paris, Napoleon had completed the Boulevard de

Strasbourg,had built the Rue des Ecoles, and had made progresswiththe new section of the Rue de Rivoli.

Napoleon explained his plans to Haussmann and the new prefectwent to work. The first thing he wanted was an absolutely correct

map : high scaffoldingtowers were built and the whole city was tri-

angulated. Engineers and architects drew plans. Money came fromthe octroi, from city bonds, from the nation. Land and houses werecondemned. Huge contractswere let for razingold houses and buildingnew streets completewith houses,pavements, lighting, water and sewer.

Municipaland national buildings sprang up, a dozen casernes,a dozen182




churches. Year after year the work went on. When the end came in

1870, for servant as for master, many projects wereunfinished,but withpeace new hands took hold and when France invited the world to the

exposition of 1878 it was to a new Paris.And what a worldlysuccess that transformedParis has had ! The

style of planning marked by cannon-shotboulevards and open traffic-

plazas ruled unquestionedthroughoutEurope until, late in the century,the counter infection of Sitte and his friends wilted the Haussmanntraditionin the Teutonicmarches. Francehas forthe most partremained

loyal. American cities, still tied to their gridirons, though anoccasional suburb has sought surcease in romantic landscape curves,

yearn for the relief of slashing diagonals. Chicago has her

Haussmannizingplannedand the next generationis being preparedfor it.From Wacker'sManual of the Plan of Chicagothe schoolboylearnsthat"

Haussmann, who lives in history as the greatest city builder of alltime .... opened up all the old city of Paris to light and air. Hecut new streets here, widenedold ones there, tore down hundredsof oldstructuresthat beautifulbuildingscould be broughtto view. He creatednew diagonalthoroughfaresto shortendistancesin the city. The peoplesupportedthe men advancing the.improvementsbecause they believedthat an improvedcity meant greaterwealth for its people. This theoryhas been provedcorrect,as peoplefromall parts of the world visit Parisin great numbers each year, and there spend large sums among themerchants and

tradespeople."Subtle minds

maydetect a certain

flavourof ad hocin this argument,and with reason,for it ignoresvarious

unpleasant facts and a sheaf of discordant opinions.The gestation of Haussmann'sParis began in 1848 and simplicity

is not in anything born of that year. The republican governmentpromisedwork for everyone in the national workshops. But the shopscould not be kept going. The east section of Pans felt hunger anddonned the red cap as it had done so often before. There were riots,barricades, regiments besieged in their own casernes. President

Bonaparte, sure of the peasants of France, saw his only enemy in the"

peuple" of Paris. They must be given work. That tangle of streets,

the Bastilleof the people,mustbe brokendown. What couldbe simpler?

Hirethe fellowsto cut artilleryshooting-galleriesthroughtheir " dedale,"to build new casernes and churches new streets in the faubourgs. Thenation would pay part of the cost of thus protecting its capital, theoctroiwoulddo the rest, thriftily taking out of Pierre'spocket the where-withal to pay his wages. Tie razing and rebuildingwould scatter the

peopleand start rows of honest vegetablesamongthe red-floweredweeds.The savage fighting of December, 1852, confirmedthe need and baptisedin blood the transformationof Paris.

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III

Motives are always mixed. Napoleon wanted to reign in aconvenient, healthful and beautiful capital

- but first of all he wantedto reign. His basic motive in cutting new streets was military. The

plan he drew with his own hand, long before Haussmann was calledto Paris, had two main provisions,both of obvious tactical value. Onewas the eastward extension of the Rue de Rivoli, which separatedthe"

belly of Paris"

from the Louvre and the Hotel de Ville, and completeda direct route from the Tuileries to Vincennes. The other was thePlace de la Republiqueandthreestreetsspreadingfromit. Onthe Placeitself was built a large caserne. One of the three streets, Boulevard

Magenta,gives accessto the Garesdu Nord and de l'Est ; the Boulevard

Voltaireconnectsby the place de la Nation with the largemilitary depotat Vincennes; the Rue de Turbigo slashes through the reddest patchin Paris. When Napoleon first conceived the Avenue de l'Opera heintended extending it by a straight street from the Boulevard des

Capucinesto the GareSt. Lazare. There would thus be a direct routefromthe Tuileriesto the station, a route which, with the railwaytracks,would form a dead line separatingthe "

impressionable"

parts of Parisfrom the impressed part, and from the Tuileries.

Haussmann wrote his memoirs about 1890. In many passages hetries to establish other than strategic motives for the street-cuttings,defendinghis emperoragainstthe Parisians"

qui se sontmontrestoujourssi

peureconnaissantsdesasolicitudeet deses bienfaits." On anotherpagehe lapses into realities and tells how he suggestedto Napoleon that theCanal St. Martin be depressed and covered over. The Emperor wasenthusiastic at the thought of establishing

" a clear shot from one endto the other of the controllingline whenceone might, at need, take in therearthe whole FaubourgSt. Antoine. Better yet, the boulevardwouldsubstitute for the means of defensewhich the canal offered to rioters, anew way of access to the accustomed centre of their manifestations."And,

" detail curieux," the workingmenliked the idea !Haussmann was conversant with financial strategy, too. A few

sentences from Olivier's "L'Empire Liberal" will indicate the general

texture of his methods." A halt seemed necessary: not for a moment did he think of it. Out of an

authorizedloan of a hundred and fifty millionfrancs he got one hundredand seventy ;out of the treasuryof public works he took a hundredand fifty million instead of thehundred millionauthorized. Finally he hit on a pleasingformulafor raisingthe moneyto meet the needsof the land-condemningjury. He agreedwith certainrichcontractorsto cede them definite areasof partly built-up land. They were to take the land in thecity's name,cut streets, sell the scrapmaterial,buildhouses on the abuttingland or sellit, and turn the streets over to the city, which agreedto make payment in six or eightannuities. But the city had to pay for the expropriatedland. The contractorswere

184




therefore required to deposit the needed sum. Incidentally, this gave the city cash with

which to meet current obligations [And regarding certain

"

veiled loans

"

:]In order to incline the contractors to take up the loans Haussmann baited them with the

right to issue'

bons de delegation.' These bonds, drawn on the city, accepted andendorsed by the city, were cashed by the contractors as they needed money. The Credit-Foncier discounted most of them. This was contrary to the law which required legislative

approval of such loans. But time pressed .... and the Emperor approved."

Such was some of the popular support to which the Chicago manualrefers. One can imagine that the contractors and bankers wereenthusiastic.

It is impossibleto deny, obviously, that the broadstreets Napoleonand Haussmannbuilt are a great boon to the trafficof Paris. Taxicab

strategy, after all, is not without similaritiesto artillerystrategy. But,as physical and social sanitation, their work was not in advance of thecrude standards of the time. The water service was mainly by yardhydrants. The land was crowded with high tenements, and in spiteof the broad streets the proportionof area built on was increased. Asto the light and air they let in, there was not enough of it, at least, to

preventthe writingof a red page in the history of Paris, duringa certain

year when Baron Haussmann found it wise to be travelling abroad.

IV

Haussmann himself is fairly explicit in disclaiming general credit

for all the work supposedto have been carriedout by him, though hetakes pride in being the author of certain details. The generalschemeof all the streets outside the Etoile section was pretty certainly devised

by Napoleon,whothought of himself as a gifted strategist. Theprefect'sduty, ashe states it, wasto penetratethe Emperor'sintentionas embodiedin his general plan, to determinethe changes made necessary by moreaccurate surveys, to point out the important gaps, and to foresee allthe intricacies of accommodating the new streets to the old. TheBoulevard St. Germainis an instance of an important change in the

Emperor'splan. He had intendedplacingthe circuit street on that sideof the river a little furthersouth, using the Rue des Ecoles. But when

the matter was studied under Haussmann's direction, it was seen thatthe Rue des Ecoles was too high on the slope of Ste. Genevieve. and a

lower, shorter and wider route was worked out.

Heading the large office needed to carry out the Emperor's hugecommissionwas the architectand engineerDeschamps,an old employee.He apparentlyhad chargeof the details of the cross-sectionsand profilesof the streets and the planningof the many trafficplazas. Haussmann

gives liberal credit to Deschamps." Le Plan de Paris, c'etait

M.Deschamps! " Andhe addsthat " if it is not well knownthat he laid

185




out all themagistralthoroughfaresof which the breadthandfinealignment

are now so much admired,his modesty is doubtlessto blame." But thisseems to referto detailing rather than to the inceptionof general plans,though Deschamps may have determined some street locations in thelater stages of the work, after the most pressing military needs hadbeen met. For the Etoile, Haussmann claims credit for himself and

Deschamps, since Napoleon's plan had only a croissee where there isnow a twelve-rayed star. For the criss-cross of streets around the

Opera, too, the Emperorcannot be blamed. Gamier, architect of the

Opera, says heatedly that its setting is the very worst known to archi-tecturalhistory, ancient or modern. Whenhe protestedto the Emperorin Haussmann's presence, the Emperor agreed and sketched on the

plan a setting of rectangular plazas. But he was a busy man andHaussmannbuilt his " fichus,"as the Emperorhad calledthem, just thesame. Haussmann's admirersusually praise this setting of the Operaas his masterpiece. In his memoirs (they were written after Garnier'sbook appeared)he hardly mentions it.

The parks- Boulogne, Vincennes,Monceau,Buttes Chaumont,andthe gardens of the ChampsElysees- which Haussmann consideredthe

crowningglory of his "edilite," are usually credited to Alphand. When

Haussmanncame to Paris the Emperortook him out to see the work

beginning in the Bois de Boulogne. The old gardenerin charge was

digging a river. Haussmann saw difficultiesand had profilesmade andshowed that instead of a river there would have to be two lakes. The

Emperorwas impressedand let Haussmann send for a member of hisstaff at Bordeaux, Alphand, an engineerin the "

Ponts et Chaussees."Now this Alphand, thanks to the opportunities thus opened to him,becamea famousarchitecte-paysagiste,enteredthe service of the republic,and was made grandofficerof the Legion of Honor after the Expositionof 1889, quite in contrast to the loyal Deschamps who died in a small

positionfound forhimby his old chief. Onesenses a consequentdifferenceof feeling, perhaps, in Haussmann's remark that Alphand was chosenbecausetherewereso many roadsto be built in the parks. And he goeson to say that Alphand showed marvellous facility in adopting theideas of the

"administration,"howeverthey might vary from his own,

andthat he carriedthem out withconscientiousfidelityandirreproachablezeal. In these little encounters it is pleasant to have the last word.

Alphand was elected to Haussmann's chair in the Academy of Fine

Arts, and deliveredthe conventionaleulogy."

His astonishingfacultyfor assimilation,"he said,

"enabledhim to understandand retain every-

thing, to sucha pointthat he often took forhis own,with entiregoodfaith,ideas he had adopted."

As for the Gardening in the parks, that was done by Barillet-

186




Deschamps,horticulteur. In 1873, Haussmannwas in Constantinople.

Being showna viceroy'spark,he felt "comme en pays de connaissance"-the familiarconcavelawns,the familiarcurving paths. Barillethad beenthere.

V

It is easier to say why and by whom Paris was transformed thanit is to solve the much more importantproblemof the aesthetic qualityof the transformation. That quality is not questioned, naturally, inofficialFrance, and English architects almost always look on Paris with

mingled love and envy. Yet, while he was still at work, Haussmannwas very sharply attacked because of the many fine old houses he was

pulling down (his own birthplacewas one of them) and on the groundthat his new streets were too long and too uniform. Gamier, in hisbitterness, said that the law should forbid setting two houses in line.There were letters to the papers. Politicians made charges, ministersansweredthem.

The criticismstouched,and Haussmann'smemoirsstress the artisticside of his accomplishment,

- the section of the Boulevard St. Michelaxiated on the Sainte-Chapelle,the Boulevard Henry IV commandingvistas of the Colonnede Juli and the dome of the Pantheon, the dome ofthe Tribunal de Commerceset in line with the Boulevard de Sebastopol,and especiallythe Etoile. He hits back at the good peoplewhoregret,intheir libraries, the destruction of "

le vieux Paris "- and tells how

he started the CarnavaletMuseum.Duringthe last two or three decades,though the trafficconvenience

of the"

percements" has yearly grown more striking, the negative

panofthe scalesof aestheticcriticismhasgainedcountersand the positivehas lost. After all, are straightness and breadth of themselves verybeautiful? Ask the Renaissancemen who were masters of straightnessand breadthand take as their answersuch streets as the axial street of

Carlsruhe,the oldLowerRegentStreet,and the Avenuede l'Observatoire.These are not merely straight and convenient thoroughfares. They are

definitely mastered, rhythmically articulated aesthetic compositions.Whenyou comeinto the street you feel its organic entity, usually as part

of a dominant building. But come into the Boulevard Strasbourg-S6bastopol from the Gare de l'Est. You see, generally, a long vistalost in blue haze. Descending, you make out a smallishdome on axis ;still further, and you come into one corner of the Place du Chateletand discover that your street has no actual connection with the domed

building, which faces in another direction. The Avenue de l'Operaisbetter. But the buildingsnearthe Operaare too high and its fa§adeisnot especially effective as a vista-objective, the end pavilions and not

the central entrancebeing emphasised. Thus the Operadoes not seem

187




to dominate the avenue nor to integrate with it. Look the other way

and you see what appearsto be a domed building. Go nearer and youfindthat the Avenuebumpsagainstthe cut-offcornerof anordinaryhotel.The dome, square on plan and seen at an angle, is five hundred feet

beyond, in the new Louvre, and is finally wiped out by the perspective.Haussmann and Deschamps may have done the best they could, butit takes more than good intention to producegreat art. These casual

stagey effects are not the stuff of good civic design.The Etoile wasHaussmann'spride. Certainlythe plazaphotographs

well from the air, and the radiating streets make the fullest use of

Napoleon'sarch. The star, as a street-planmotive, is very old-perhaps

first used in hunting forests to facilitate watching game. The essentialsof a

goodstar

plaza (not consideringnow the views in from the

rays)are that you should be able to stand at or near the centre and that

correspondingrays should be or seem to be at the same groundlevel andof the same length. In the Etoile the twelve rays vary in length fromthreehundredmetres to infinityandslope away from the plazaat sharplyvarying gradients. Good plazas are generally level and enclosed by adefinite wall of buildings. The wall of houses around the Place del'Etoile is so broken that one hardly feels it as circular, and the flooris so convex that auto's encirclingthe arch disappearbehindthe centralhill. Howeverconvenienta trafficcentre it may be, andhowevereffective

may be each of the dozen shots in toward the arch, the Etoile surely hasno right to be called a "

place" in the sense of the word established

by the French architects of the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies.

VI

These criticisms would have meant little to Deschampsand nothingto Haussmann,Jforthe periodhad lost the feelingfor plaza design whichwas so stronga centurybefore. And it is not quite fairto say that theirworkis withoutaestheticvaluesimplybecauseit is not perfectarchitectureand because Blondel, in the time of Louis XV, could have done better.

Napoleondid not ask forgreatworks of art- beyondhis practicalrequire-ments he askedonlyforgrandiosesparkle. Aperiodthat thoughtofoperaas the

queenof arts

naturally thoughtthat

wide, straightavenues

laced with rows of trees would make Paris the queen of cities. An

inspired pamphlet, defending Haussmann, which appeared in 1868,quoted him as aimingat " un aspect general plein de grandeur." Andthat is exactly what, to the average man, he got. A trained artist,thinking specifically, finds the Place de l'Opera an odious sham anddreams of the Campidoglioat Rome. But the bank presidentand themidinette,feelingonly generaleffects,are struckby the silk-hat slicknessof everything. They like it, just as they like to be among prosperous

1S8




people, modishly dressed. They like the wide streets shooting in every

direction, revealing the bigness and wealth of the city. They are notcritically sensitive to specific aesthetic relations, but there is a sort of

grandeurwhich is quite within their grasp. And some elements in thiseffect lie within the hazy borderlandsof art. Along with-the banalitycan be found many passages of real beauty

- the harmony of dappledplane trees and shadow-spottedgrey stone, arrow-straightcornice lines

disappearinginto an evening mist, rows of street lamps reflected on wet

asphalt. And the general spaciousness, though crudely formed andnot makingthe most of its fine aestheticpossibilities,has a certainvalue,something like the value of cut building stones before they are laid inthe wall.

The uncritical visitor makes somewhat the same reaction toHaussmann'sParis as he does to the gardensof Versailles. The trainedcritic sees Versaillesas a perfectly co-ordinatedspace-composition,andHaussmann's boulevards as spacial raw material, from which Le Notreand Mansardcould have fashioneda Paris infinitelymore beautiful thanthe one we know.

What the transformationof Paris cost us in architecturalbeautydestroyedmust not be counted in judging the work of Haussmann and

Napoleon as it stands, but such damagescan justly be assessed againstthem as artists and as the heroes and models of city planning. Theindictmentis not a brief one. Thespoilingof the little Place desVictoiresand of the circularstreet roundthe old Halle au

B16,some

changesin the

Place Dauphine, clipping a corner off the gardens of the Luxembourgand moving the MediciFountain, buildingthe Palais d'Industriein oneof the large open

"Elysian Fields " and filling the other with inane

gardening, the destruction of beautiful old courtyards, buildings, and"

bits" uncountable- these are some of the sins of vandalism civic art

must hold against emperorand prefect. And we must debit most ofHaussmann's

"fifty-eight old buildings restored, isolated, etc." The

restorationsweregenerallyin bad taste andthe policy of"

degagement"

is now quitediscredited. In particularhave clearing,irrelevantplanting,and inappropriatebuildingharmed both near and distant views of NotreDame.

That Haussmannwasnot oneof those sensitive souls (as the AustrianSitte was, for instance) to whom one could trust a conflict between"

practicality" anda preciousheritageof civic art, is shownclearlyenough

by a story he tells in his memoirs. Travellingin Italy, in 1871, he wasinvitedby a groupofbigbusinessmento take the presidencyof a companyfor which they were seeking a contract for the transformationof Kome," k l'instarde Paris." He declined,but offeredto make a plan showingthe necessary

"percements

"through the Eternal City's

"tangle of

189



190


crookedstreets and uneventopography." The seven hills have not been

levelled, but it is possible that to Haussmann we owe the gash in thenorth end of the Piazza Navona. He tells the story as evidence of his

honesty and professionalstanding, apparentlyunconsciousof the lightit sheds on the motives that may lie at the back of zeal for city planningundertakings.

Whether Haussmann was the "greatest city builder of all time

"

dependson what you mean by city building. In any case it is certainthat what is most genuinely beautiful in Paris was built long beforeHaussmann'stime, that NapoleonIII and the architectDeschampshadmore to do than Haussmannwith the planning of the work he carriedout, that the motives at the back of the work were not exclusively

humanitarian,and that its aesthetic quality is not the highest. Butsuchbanderillasmake no mortal wounds. Haussmannwas not an artistandhad no need to be : he wasthe apotheosisof a steamshovel. He wasthe perfectsymbol of the ideals of his time, an honest, tireless, successfulworker. He had a right to be proud of his work and to tell his peersin the senate of France that he would leave his post of duty with head

high and heart firm- " la tete haute et le coeur ferme! "

Elbert Peets.

SDITO^AL ^COTE

A notable step towards the full fruition of Haussmann's projectfor the replanningof Paris has taken place duringthe last few months.This consists of opening up the Boulevard Haussmann, running in a

comparativelydirect line betweenPlace de la Republiqueand the Arc de

Triomphe.This will relievethe trafficcongestionin the innercity andboulevards,

particularlyin the neighbourhoodof the OperaHouse and Place de laConcorde.

The buildings now being erected on the new boulevardare, in themain, eight to ten storeys in height, as comparedwith the earlier six-

storey structures which they are replacing. This is made possible bythe presentday zoning regulationsof Paris.

Editor.

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Peets, Famous Town Planners I