Portrait: Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann and the modernization of Paris

Wednesday, 24 February 2016 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: Architecture, Paris / Île-de-France, Portrait
Reading Time:  16 minutes

Baron Haussmann monument on the cross road of Boulevard Haussmann and Rue de Laborde © Ralf.treinen/cc-by-sa-3.0

Baron Haussmann monument on the cross road of Boulevard Haussmann and Rue de Laborde © Ralf.treinen/cc-by-sa-3.0

Georges-Eugène Haussmann, commonly known as Baron Haussmann, 27 March 1809 – 11 January 1891), was the Prefect of the Seine Department in France, who was chosen by the Emperor Napoleon III to carry out a massive program of new boulevards, parks and public works in Paris, commonly called Haussmann’s renovation of Paris. Critics forced his resignation for extravagance, but his vision of the city still dominates Central Paris. Haussmann was born in Paris on 27 March 1809, at 55 rue du Faubourg-du-Roule, in the neighborhood called Beaujon, in a house which he later demolished during his renovation of the city. Haussmann’s family originated from Alsace. He was the son of Nicolas-Valentin Haussmann (1787–1876), a senior official in the military establishment of Napoleon Bonaparte, and of Ève-Marie-Henriette-Caroline Dentzel, the daughter of a general and a deputy of French National Convention, Georges Frédéric Dentzel, a baron of Napoleon’s First Empire. He was the grandson of Nicolas Haussmann (1759–1847), a deputy of the Legislative Assembly and of the National Convention, an administrator of the Department of Seine-et-Oise, and a commissioner to the army.

On 21 May 1831, Haussmann began his career in public administration; he was named the secretary-general of the prefecture of the Department of Vienne at Poitiers; then, on 15 June 1832, he became the deputy prefect of Yssingeaux. Following that post he became deputy prefect of the Lot-et-Garonne Department at Nérac on 9 October 1832; of the Ariège Department at Saint-Girons on 19 February 1840; of the Gironde Department at Blaye on 23 November 1841; then the Prefect of the Var at Draguignan on 24 January 1849, and then Prefect of the Yonne Department on 15 May 1850.

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, had become the first elected President in France in 1848. In 1850 he had started an ambitious project to connect the Louvre to the Hotel de Ville by extending the Rue de Rivoli, and for creating a new park, the Bois de Boulogne, on the outskirts of the city, but he was exasperated by the slow progress made by the prefect of the Seine, Berger. Louis-Napoleon was highly popular, but he was blocked from running for re-election by the Constitution of the French Republic, and while he had a majority of the votes in the Parliament to change to Constitution, he did not have the two-thirds majority needed. At the end of December 1851 he staged a coup d’état, and in 1852 declared himself Emperor of the French, under the title Napoleon III. A plebiscite in November 1852 overwhelmingly approved Napoleon’s taking the throne. He began searching for a new Prefect of the Seine to carry out his Paris reconstruction program. The Emperor’s minister of the interior, Victor de Persigny, interviewed the prefects of Rouen, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and Bordeaux for the Paris post. In his memoirs, he described his interview with Haussmann:

“It was Monsieur Haussmann who impressed me the most. It was a strange thing, but it was less his talents and his remarkable intelligence that appealed to me, but the defects in his character. I had in front of me one of the most extraordinary men of our time; big, strong, vigorous, energetic, and at the same time clever and devious, with a spirit full of resources. This audacious man wasn’t afraid to show who he was. … He told me all of his accomplishments during his administrative career, leaving out nothing; he could have talked for six hours without a break, since it was his favourite subject, himself. I wasn’t at all displeased. … It seemed to me that he was exactly the man I needed to fight against the ideas and prejudices of a whole school of economics, against devious people and skeptics coming from the Stock Market, against those who were not very scrupulous about their methods; he was just the man. Whereas a gentleman of the most elevated spirit, cleverness, with the most straight and noble character, would inevitably fail, this vigorous athlete … full of audacity and skill, capable of opposing expedients with better expedients, traps with more clever traps, would certainly succeed. I told him about the Paris works and offered to put him in charge.”

Persigny sent him to Napoleon III with the recommendation that he was exactly the man the Emperor needed to carry out his renewal of Paris. Napoleon made him prefect of the Seine on 22 June 1853, and on 29 June the Emperor gave him the mission of making the city more healthy, less congested and more grand. Haussmann held this post until 1870.

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Napoleon III and Haussmann launched a series of enormous public works projects in Paris, hiring tens of thousands of workers to improve the sanitation, water supply and traffic circulation of the city. Napoleon III installed a huge map of Paris in his office, marked with coloured lines where he wanted new boulevards to be. He and Haussmann met almost every day to discuss the projects and overcome the enormous obstacles and opposition they faced as they built the new Paris. The population of Paris had doubled since 1815, with no increase in its area. To accommodate the growing population and those who would be forced from the centre by the new boulevards and squares Napoleon III planned to build, he issued a decree annexing eleven surrounding communes, and increasing the number of arrondissements from twelve to twenty, which enlarged the city to its modern boundaries. For the nearly two decades of Napoleon III’s reign, and for a decade afterwards, most of Paris was an enormous construction site. To bring fresh water to the city, his hydraulic engineer, Eugène Belgrand, built a new aqueduct to bring clean water from the Vanne River in Champagne, and a new huge reservoir near the future Parc Montsouris. These two works increased the water supply of Paris from 87,000 to 400,000 cubic meters of water a day. He laid hundreds of kilometres of pipes to distribute the water throughout the city, and built a second network, using the less-clean water from the Ourq and the Seine, to wash the streets and water the new park and gardens. He completely rebuilt the Paris sewers, and installed miles of pipes to distribute gas for thousands of new streetlights along the Paris streets. Beginning in 1854, In the centre of the city, Haussmann’s workers tore down hundreds of old buildings and cut eighty kilometres of new avenues, connecting the central points of the city. Buildings along these avenues were required to be the same height and in a similar style, and to be faced with cream-coloured stone, creating the signature look of Paris boulevards. Baron Haussmann achieved Paris’ being of a particular shape, uniform. Victor Hugo mentioned that it was hardly possible to distinguish what the house in front of you was for: theatre, shop or library. Haussmann managed to rebuild the city in 17 years. “On his own estimation the new boulevards and open spaces displaced 350,000 people; … by 1870 one-fifth of the streets in central Paris were his creation; he had spent … 2.5 billion francs on the city; … one in five Parisian workers was employed in the building trade”.

To connect the city with the rest of France, Napoleon III built two new railroad stations: the Gare de Lyon (1855) and the Gare du Nord (1865). He completed Les Halles, the great iron in glass produce market in the centre of the city, and built a new municipal hospital, the Hotel Dieu, in the place of crumbling medieval buildings on the Ile de la Cite. The signature architectural landmark was the Paris Opera, the largest theatre in the world, designed by Charles Garnier, crowning the center of Napoleon III’s new Paris. When the Empress Eugenie saw the model of the opera house, and asked the architect what the style was, Garnier said simply, “Napoleon the Third.” Napoleon III also wanted to build new parks and gardens for the recreation and relaxation of the Parisians, particularly those in the new neighbourhoods of the expanding city. Napoleon III’s new parks were inspired by his memories of the parks in London, especially Hyde Park, where he had strolled and promenaded in a carriage while in exile; but he wanted to build on a much larger scale. Working with Haussmann and Jean-Charles Alphand, the engineer who headed the new Service of Promenades and Plantations, he laid out a plan for four major parks at the cardinal points of the compass around the city. Thousands of workers and gardeners began to dig lakes, build cascades, plant lawns, flowerbeds and trees. construct chalets and grottoes. Napoleon III created the Bois de Boulogne (1852–1858) to the west of Paris: the Bois de Vincennes (1860–1865) to the east; the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont (1865–1867) to the north, and Parc Montsouris (1865–1878) to the south. In addition to building the four large parks, Haussmann had the city’s older parks, including Parc Monceau, formerly owned by the Orleans family, and the Jardin du Luxembourg, refurbished and replanted. He also created some twenty small parks and gardens in the neighbourhoods, as miniature versions of his large parks. Alphand termed this small parks “Green and flowering salons.” The intention of Napoleon’s plan was to have one park in each of the eighty neighbourhoods of Paris, so that no one was more than a ten minute’s walk from such a park. The parks were an immediate success with all classes of Parisians.

In December 1854, with no time to lose before the opening of the exposition, the Pereire brothers created a new company to construct the street and the hotel. They sold 240,000 shares for one hundred francs each, with 106,665 shares purchased by Credit Mobilier, 42,220 by the Pereire brothers, and the rest to private investors. At Napoleon’s request, new laws had been passed in 1850 and 1851 making it easier for the city to expropriate private land for public purposes. They also allowed the city to expropriate, in the public interest, not only land for new streets, but all of the building sites on both sides of the new streets, an asset of enormous value. The government expropriated the land, with buildings, that it needed to build the new street and hotel; the owners were paid a price set by an arbitration board. The government then in turn sold the land and buildings to the company established by the Pereire brothers, which tore down the old buildings, constructed a new street, sidewalks and a new square, the Place du Palais Royale; built new buildings along the new street, and sold them or rented them to new owners. They constructed the Hotel de Louvre, one of the largest buildings in the city and one of the first modern luxury hotel in Paris. The company also built rows of luxury shops under a covered arcade along the Rue de Rivoli and around the hotel, which they rented to shopkeepers, Construction began immediately; three thousand workers laboured both day and night for two years to complete the street and hotel, which were finished in time for the Exposition. This was the basic method adopted by Haussmann to finance the reconstruction of Paris; the government expropriated the old buildings, compensated the owners, and private companies built the new streets and buildings, following the standards set by Haussmann. The private companies were often paid for the construction work they did with city land, which they could then develop and sell. In 1854 the Parliament approved another loan of sixty million francs, but Haussmann needed far more for his future projects. On 14 November 1858 Napoleon and Haussmann created the Caisse des travaux de la Ville, specifically to finance the reconstruction projects. It borrowed money at a higher rate of interest than regular city bonds, and used the money to pay private companies, such as that of Pereire brothers, to rebuild the city. “It was a great relief for the city’s finances,” Haussmann wrote later in his Memoirs “which allowed the city to carry out several grand operations at the same time, with rapid execution, in short more economically.” It also functioned entirely independently of the Parliament, which greatly irritated the members of Parliament.

To thank Haussmann for his work, Napoleon III proposed in 1857 to make Haussmann a member of the French Senate and to give him an honorary title, as he had done for some of his generals. Haussmann asked for the title of Baron, which, as he said in his memoirs, had been the title of his maternal grandfather, Georges Frédéric, Baron Dentzel, a general under the first Napoleon, of whom Haussmann was the only living male descendant. According to his memoirs, he joked that he might consider the title aqueduc (a pun on the French words for ‘duke’ and ‘aqueduct’) but that no such title existed. This use of baron, however, was not officially sanctioned, and he remained, legally, Monsieur Haussmann.

Haussmann’s plan for Paris inspired the urban planning and creation of similar boulevards, squares and parks in Brussels, Rome, Vienna, Stockholm, Madrid, and Barcelona. After the Paris International Exposition of 1867, William I, the King of Prussia, carried back to Berlin a large map showing Haussmann’s projects, which influenced the future planning of that city. His work also inspired the City Beautiful Movement in the United States. Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park in New York, visited the Bois de Boulogne eight times during his 1859 study trip to Europe, and was also influenced by the innovations of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. The American architect Daniel Burnham borrowed liberally from Haussmann’s plan and incorporated the diagonal street designs in his 1909 Plan of Chicago.

Read more on urbanplanet.info – Haussmann and the buildings of Paris and Wikipedia Georges-Eugène Haussmann (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.




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