Haussmann's Renovation of Paris: Boulevards of the Second Empire

Haussmann’s renovation of Paris was the huge rebuilding of the French capital carried out between 1853 and 1870 under Emperor Napoleon III and his Prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Broad boulevards, uniform stone apartment buildings, parks, aqueducts and sewers replaced much of the crowded medieval city. The result created the Paris that visitors know today, but it came at a high price in money, history and displaced lives.

Background: a city in crisis

In the first half of the 19th century the population of Paris roughly doubled, reaching about one million by 1850. Most people lived in a dense core of narrow, dark streets with little clean water and open drains. Cholera killed around 18,000 to 19,000 Parisians in 1832 and thousands more in 1849.

Earlier rulers had attempted improvements, but on a small scale. The narrow streets also had a political meaning: they had been barricaded during the July Revolution of 1830 and the uprisings of 1848.

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who had lived in exile in London and admired its parks and squares, wanted a capital worthy of his regime. After seizing sweeping powers in the coup of 2 December 1851 and becoming emperor, he had the authority to act on a grand scale.

Haussmann takes charge

In June 1853 Napoleon III appointed Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891), a determined and efficient provincial prefect, as Prefect of the Seine, the official in charge of Paris. Legend says the emperor handed him a map with the new streets marked in colour. Whatever the exact form of the plan, the two men worked closely together for 17 years.

Haussmann gathered a talented team. The engineer Eugène Belgrand designed the new water and sewer systems. Adolphe Alphand created the parks and planted the boulevards with trees. Architects such as Victor Baltard, designer of the iron pavilions of the central market, Les Halles, gave the city new public buildings.

What was built

The core of the plan was a “great crossing” of routes through the centre. The Rue de Rivoli was extended eastwards, and the Boulevard de Sébastopol and Boulevard de Strasbourg formed a north-south axis, continued across the river by the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Later phases added the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the boulevards radiating from the Place de l’Étoile and new links to the railway stations.

The new streets were lined with apartment buildings built to strict rules. Heights were tied to the width of the street, and balconies and cornices were aligned, creating the uniform cream-coloured stone facades of “Haussmannian” Paris.

Green space was transformed. The old royal forests of the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes were turned into public parks, and new parks such as the Buttes-Chaumont and Montsouris were laid out, together with dozens of small squares. Gas street lighting spread across the city.

Below ground, Belgrand built aqueducts to bring spring water from distant rivers such as the Dhuis and the Vanne, and a large network of sewers. These tunnels, which visitors could tour, became one of the sights of the city.

In 1860 the city boundary was moved out to the line of the fortifications, annexing suburban villages such as Montmartre and Belleville. The number of arrondissements, or districts, rose from 12 to 20.

Key people

Napoleon III (1808-1873) was the driving force. He took a personal interest in street plans, parks and housing, and saw public works as a way to provide employment, encourage business and win popular support for the empire.

Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891), born in Paris to a Protestant family of Alsatian origin, was a career administrator rather than an architect or engineer. He was known for his energy, his command of detail and his readiness to override opposition. He became widely known as Baron Haussmann.

Eugène Belgrand (1810-1878), an engineer of the national roads and bridges corps, planned the separate supply of drinking water and the gravity-fed sewer network that transformed the city’s health.

Adolphe Alphand (1817-1891), an engineer who had worked with Haussmann in Bordeaux, designed the parks, squares and tree-lined avenues, and also the street furniture, such as benches, railings and lamp posts, that still gives Paris its character.

Cost and controversy

The works were enormously expensive, with total costs usually estimated at around 2.5 billion francs. Haussmann financed them with loans and with a system of credit through public works contractors that bypassed parliamentary control. In 1868 the young republican Jules Ferry attacked him in a pamphlet titled Les Comptes fantastiques d’Haussmann, a pun on the opera The Tales of Hoffmann. Investigations showed that the city’s debts were far larger than the official accounts suggested, and in 1869 the national legislature had to approve a large loan to put the city’s finances in order.

As the empire moved towards a more liberal parliamentary system, Haussmann became a political liability. The government of Emile Ollivier dismissed him on 5 January 1870.

What was lost

The rebuilding destroyed much of old Paris. On the Ile de la Cité, the island at the city’s heart, most of the medieval houses and many old churches were demolished, leaving Notre-Dame facing a large open square. Historians estimate that roughly 20,000 buildings were demolished across the city and more than 30,000 new ones were built.

Many workers and poor families could not afford the new apartments and moved to the east of the city and to the suburbs. Critics, then and now, argue that the renovation deepened the social divide between the wealthy west and the working-class east. Writers such as Charles Baudelaire lamented the loss of the old city, while the photographer Charles Marville was commissioned to record streets before they vanished. His photographs are now a key record of the medieval city.

Others welcomed the change. For many visitors and residents, the new boulevards, cafes, department stores and theatres made Paris the most modern and glamorous city in Europe, a reputation the Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867 were designed to display. Impressionist painters such as Gustave Caillebotte and Camille Pissarro later painted the new streets and their crowds.

Myths and facts

Myth: the boulevards were built only to crush revolts. Haussmann himself admitted that security was a consideration, and wide streets helped troops move. But traffic, health, commerce and prestige were just as important, and barricades returned during the Paris Commune of 1871.

Myth: Haussmann’s work ended in 1870. The Third Republic kept his plans and completed many projects, including the Avenue de l’Opéra in the 1870s and the last stretch of the Boulevard Haussmann in 1927.

Timeline

• 1853, June: Haussmann is appointed Prefect of the Seine.
• 1854-1855: The extension of the Rue de Rivoli is pushed forward for the Universal Exposition of 1855.
• 1858: The Boulevard de Sébastopol is opened.
• 1860, 1 January: Paris annexes its inner suburbs and expands to 20 arrondissements.
• 1861: Charles Garnier wins the design competition for the new Opera house.
• 1867: The Parc des Buttes-Chaumont opens during that year’s Universal Exposition.
• 1868: Jules Ferry publishes his attack on Haussmann’s finances.
• 1870, 5 January: Haussmann is dismissed.

Why it matters

Haussmann’s renovation created the model of the modern European capital, combining infrastructure, public health and grand design. Cities from Brussels to Buenos Aires copied its boulevards. It also remains a classic example of the tension between modernisation and the preservation of historic neighbourhoods and communities.