Haussmann begins work – the Croisée de Paris (1853–1859) , shown here in 1855, was the first boulevard built by Haussmann, and it served as the model for the others. park (green area on the left), the
Bois de Vincennes park containing a zoo (green area on the right), the
Parc des Buttes Chaumont, the
Parc Montsouris and dozens of smaller parks and squares. Napoleon III dismissed Berger as the prefect of Seine and sought a more effective manager. His minister of the interior,
Victor de Persigny, interviewed several candidates, and selected Georges-Eugène Haussmann, a native of
Alsace and prefect of
Gironde, who impressed Persigny with his energy, audacity, and ability to overcome or get around problems and obstacles. He became prefect of Seine on 22 June 1853, and on 29 June, the Emperor showed him the map of Paris and instructed Haussmann to
aérer, unifier, et embellir Paris: to give it air and open space, to connect and unify the different parts of the city into one whole, and to make it more beautiful. Haussmann went to work immediately on the first phase of the renovation desired by Napoleon III: completing the
grande croisée de Paris, a great cross in the centre of Paris that would permit easier communication from east to west along the
Rue de Rivoli and rue Saint-Antoine, and north–south communication along two new Boulevards,
Strasbourg and
Sébastopol. The grand cross had been proposed by the
National Convention during the Revolution, and begun by Napoleon I; Napoleon III was determined to complete it. Completion of the Rue de Rivoli was given an even higher priority, because the Emperor wanted it finished before the opening of the
1855 Paris Universal Exposition, only two years away, and he wanted the project to include a new hotel, the
Grand Hôtel du Louvre, the first large luxury hotel in the city, to house the Imperial guests at the Exposition. Under the Emperor, Haussmann had greater power than any of his predecessors. In February 1851, the French Senate had simplified the laws on expropriation, giving him the authority to expropriate all the land on either side of a new street; and he did not have to report to the Parliament, only to the Emperor. The
French parliament, controlled by Napoleon III, provided 50 million francs, but this was not nearly enough. Napoleon III appealed to the
Péreire brothers, Émile and Isaac, two bankers who had created a new investment bank,
Crédit Mobilier. The Péreire brothers organised a new company which raised 24 million francs to finance the construction of the street, in exchange for the rights to develop real estate along the route. This became a model for the building of all of Haussmann's future boulevards. To meet the deadline, three thousand workers laboured on the new boulevard twenty-four hours a day. The Rue de Rivoli was completed, and the new hotel opened in March 1855, in time to welcome guests to the Exposition. The junction was made between the Rue de Rivoli and Rue Saint-Antoine; in the process, Haussmann restyled the
Place du Carrousel, opened up a new square, Place Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois facing the colonnade of the Louvre, and reorganised the space between the Hôtel de Ville and the
Place du Châtelet. Between the Hôtel de Ville and
Bastille Square, he widened the rue Saint-Antoine; he was careful to save the historic
Hôtel de Sully and Hôtel de Mayenne, but many other buildings, both medieval and modern, were knocked down to make room for the wider street, and several ancient, dark and narrow streets, Rue de l'Arche-Marion, rue du Chevalier-le-Guet and rue des Mauvaises-Paroles, disappeared from the map. In 1855, work began on the north–south axis, beginning with the Boulevard de Strasbourg and Boulevard Sébastopol, which cut through the centre of some of the most crowded neighbourhoods in Paris, where the cholera epidemic had been the worst, between Rue Saint-Martin and
Rue Saint-Denis. "It was the gutting of old Paris," Haussmann wrote with satisfaction in his
Memoires, "of the neighborhood of riots, and of barricades, from one end to the other." Boulevard Sébastopol ended at the new
Place du Châtelet; a new bridge, the
Pont-au-Change, was constructed across the Seine, and crossed the island on a newly built street. On the left bank, the north–south axis was continued by
Boulevard Saint-Michel, which was cut in a straight line from the Seine to the
Observatory, and then, as the Rue d'Enfer, extended all the way to the Rue d'Orléans. The north–south axis was completed in 1859. The two axes crossed at the Place du Châtelet, making it the centre of Haussmann's Paris. Haussmann widened the square, moved the
Fontaine du Palmier, built by Napoleon I, to the centre and built two new theatres, facing each other across the square; the Cirque Impérial (now the
Théâtre du Châtelet) and the Théâtre Lyrique (now
Théâtre de la Ville).
The second phase – a network of new boulevards (1859–1867) In the first phase of his renovation Haussmann constructed of new boulevards, at a net cost of 278 million francs. The official parliamentary report of 1859 found that it had "brought air, light and healthiness and procured easier circulation in a labyrinth that was constantly blocked and impenetrable, where streets were winding, narrow, and dark." It had employed thousands of workers, and most Parisians were pleased by the results. His second phase, approved by the Emperor and parliament in 1858 and begun in 1859, was much more ambitious. He intended to build a network of wide boulevards to connect the interior of Paris with the ring of grand boulevards built by
Louis XVIII during the restoration, and to the new railroad stations which Napoleon III considered the real gates of the city. He planned to construct of new avenues and streets, at a cost of 180 million francs. Haussmann's plan called for the following: On the right bank: • The construction of a large new square, (the modern ). This involved demolishing the famous theatre street known as "", made famous in the film ; and the construction of three new major streets: the (the modern ); the and . Boulevard Voltaire became one of the longest streets in the city, and became the central axis of the eastern neighbourhoods of the city. It would end at the (the modern ). • The extension of to connect it with the new railway station, the . • The construction of , to connect the to the new neighbourhood. The construction of this street obliterated one of the most sordid and dangerous neighbourhoods in the city, called , where Paris policemen rarely ventured at night. • A new square, , in front of the railway station. The station was served by two new boulevards, and . In addition, the was extended and two other streets, (the modern ) and , were built in this neighbourhood. • was redesigned and replanted, and part of the old park made into a residential quarter. • The and , under a new name, , was extended to . • The , around the , was completely redesigned. A star of new avenues radiated from the ; (now ); ; (now ); (now avenues
Mac-Mahon and Niel); (now ); and a wider (now ), forming with Champs-Elysées and other existing avenues a star of 12 avenues. • was built as far as the new , a huge new park being constructed on the east edge of the city. • The hill of was leveled, and a new square created at the . Three new boulevards were built in this neighbourhood: (the present
avenue George V); (the present ), which connected the , and . In addition, four new streets were built in that neighbourhood: , , and . On the left bank: • Two new boulevards, and , were constructed, beginning from the . • The was extended as far as the . • A new street, , was constructed, to open up . • A new street, (today's ) was built up to the intersection . • The streets around the on were extensively changed. A new street, , was created, and part of was expanded. Another new street, , was created on the east, while another new street, , on the south. , built by , was entirely rebuilt. On the : The island became an enormous construction site, which completely destroyed most of the old streets and neighbourhoods. Two new government buildings, the
Tribunal de Commerce and the , were built, occupying a large part of the island. Two new streets were also built, the and the . Two bridges, the and the were completely rebuilt, along with the embankments near them. The and were extensively modified. At the same time, Haussmann preserved and restored the jewels of the island; the square in front of the
Cathedral of Notre Dame was widened, the spire of the cathedral, pulled down during the Revolution, was restored, whilst and the ancient were saved and restored. The grand projects of the second phase were mostly welcomed, but also caused criticism. Haussmann was especially criticized for his taking large parts of the to make room for the present-day , and for its connection with the . The
Medici Fountain had to be moved further into the park, and was reconstructed with the addition of statuary and a long basin of water. Haussmann was also criticized for the growing cost of his projects; the estimated cost for the of new avenues had been 180 million francs, but grew to 410 million francs; property owners whose buildings had been expropriated won a legal case entitling them to larger payments, and many property owners found ingenious ways to increase the value of their expropriated properties by inventing non-existent shops and businesses, and charging the city for lost revenue. Haussmann found creative ways to raise more money for the grand projects while circumventing the Legislative Assembly, whose approval was otherwise needed for direct borrowing increases. The City of Paris began paying its contractors on the new works projects with vouchers instead of money; the vouchers were then purchased from the contractors by the city's lenders, mainly the mortgage bank
Crédit Foncier. In this way Haussmann indirectly raised 463 million francs by 1867; 86% of this debt was owned by Crédit Foncier. This debt conveniently did not have to be included on the city's balance sheets. Another method was the creation of a fund, the
Caisse des Travaux de Paris, decreed by Napoleon III on 14 November 1858. Ostensibly it was intended to give the city greater freedom in executing the grand projects. Revenue from the sale of materials salvaged from the demolitions and the sale of lots left over from the expropriations went into this fund, amounting to some 365 million francs between 1859 and 1869. The fund expended much more than it took in, some 1.2 billion francs towards the grand projects during the ten years it existed. To offset some of the deficit, which the City of Paris was responsible for, Haussmann issued 100 million francs in
securities from the fund guaranteed by the city. He only needed the approval of the city council to raise this new sum, and, like the voucher scheme, the securities were not included in the city's official debt obligations.
Paris doubles in size – the annexation of 1860 On 1 January 1860 Napoleon III officially annexed the suburbs of Paris out to the ring of fortifications around the city. The annexation included eleven communes;
Auteuil,
Batignolles-Monceau,
Montmartre,
La Chapelle,
Passy,
La Villette,
Belleville,
Charonne,
Bercy,
Grenelle and
Vaugirard, along with pieces of other outlying towns. The residents of these suburbs were not entirely happy to be annexed; they did not want to pay the higher taxes, and wanted to keep their independence, but they had no choice; Napoleon III was Emperor, and he could arrange boundaries as he wished. Haussmann was keen to expand the boundaries as well, since the enlarged tax base would provide vital funding for the public works then underway. Numerous factories and workshops had been established in the suburbs, some to specifically avoid paying the
Octroi, a tax on goods and materials paid at entry points into Paris. With the annexation, these facilities now had to pay tax on the raw materials and fuel they used. This was a deliberate way of discouraging the development of heavy industry in the environs of Paris, which neither Haussmann nor the city council wished to take root. With the annexation Paris was enlarged from twelve to twenty arrondissements, the number today. The annexation more than doubled the area of the city from 3,300 hectares to 7,100 hectares, and the population of Paris instantly grew by 400,000 to 1,600,000 people. The annexation made it necessary for Haussmann to enlarge his plans, and to construct new boulevards to connect the new arrondissements with the centre. In order to connect Auteuil and Passy to the centre of Paris, he built rues Michel-Ange, Molitor and Mirabeau. To connect the plain of Monceau, he built avenues Villers, Wagram, and boulevard Malesherbes. To reach the northern arrondissements he extended
Boulevard Magenta with boulevard d'Ornano as far as the Porte de la Chapelle, and in the east extended the rue des Pyrénées.
The third phase and mounting criticism (1869–1870) , 1878 The third phase of renovations was proposed in 1867 and approved in 1869, but it faced much more opposition than the earlier phases. Napoleon III had decided to liberalise his empire in 1860, and to give a greater voice to the parliament and to the opposition. The Emperor had always been less popular in Paris than in the rest of the country, and the republican opposition in parliament focused its attacks on Haussmann. Haussmann ignored the attacks and went ahead with the third phase, which planned the construction of of new boulevards at an estimated cost of 280 million francs. Haussmann did not have time to finish the third phase, as he soon came under intense attack from the opponents of Napoleon III.
The downfall of Haussmann (1870) and completion of his work (1927) In 1867, one of the leaders of the parliamentary opposition to Napoleon,
Jules Ferry, ridiculed the accounting practices of Haussmann as ''Les Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann'' ("The fantastic (bank) accounts of Haussmann"), a play-on-words based on the "
Les Contes d'Hoffman", the popular operetta by
Jacques Offenbach. In the autumn of 1867, the voucher program was ruled as official debt by the
Court of Accounts, rather than as the "deferred payments" which Haussmann argued they were. This made the voucher scheme illegal, since the City of Paris had not obtained the permission of the Legislative Assembly before borrowing. The city was forced to enter into renegotiations with the Crédit Foncier to convert the vouchers into regular debt. Two separate agreements were made with the Crédit Foncier; the city agreed to repay 465 million francs in total over 40 years and 39 years respectively. The debates in the Legislative Assembly surrounding the authorization of these new agreements lasted 11 sessions, with critics attacking Haussmann's borrowing, his questionable funding mechanisms, and the City of Paris's governing structure. In the parliamentary elections of May 1869, the government candidates won 4.43 million votes, while the opposition republicans won 3.35 million votes. In Paris, the republican candidates won 234,000 votes to 77,000 for the Bonapartist candidates, and took eight of the nine seats of Paris deputies. At the same time Napoleon III was increasingly ill, suffering from
gallstones which were to cause his death in 1873, and preoccupied by the political crisis that would lead to the
Franco-Prussian War. In December 1869 Napoleon III named an opposition leader and fierce critic of Haussmann,
Emile Ollivier, as his new prime minister. Napoleon gave in to the opposition demands in January 1870 and asked Haussmann to resign. Haussmann refused to resign, and the Emperor reluctantly dismissed him on 5 January 1870. Eight months later, during the
Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III was captured by the Germans, and the Empire was overthrown. In his memoirs, written many years later, Haussmann had this comment on his dismissal: "In the eyes of the Parisians, who like routine in things but are changeable when it comes to people, I committed two great wrongs: Over the course of seventeen years, I disturbed their daily habits by turning Paris upside down, and they had to look at the same face of the Prefect in the Hôtel de Ville. These were two unforgivable complaints." Haussmann's successor as prefect of Seine appointed
Adolphe Alphand, the head of Haussmann's department of parks and plantations, as the director of works of Paris. Alphand respected the basic concepts of his plan. Despite their intense criticism of Napoleon III and Haussmann during the Second Empire, the leaders of the new
Third Republic continued and finished his renovation projects. • 1875: completion of the Paris Opéra • 1877: completion of the
boulevard Saint-Germain • 1877: completion of the avenue de l'Opéra • 1879: completion of the boulevard Henri IV • 1889: completion of the avenue de la République • 1907: completion of the boulevard Raspail • 1927: completion of the
boulevard Haussmann Green space – parks and gardens (1852–1858) was inspired by
Hyde Park in London, and was designed to provide rest and relaxation for families of all classes of Parisians. Prior to Haussmann, Paris had only four public parks: the
Jardin des Tuileries, the
Jardin du Luxembourg, and the
Palais Royal, all in the centre of the city, and the
Parc Monceau, the former property of the family of King Louis Philippe, in addition to the
Jardin des Plantes, the city's botanical garden and oldest park. Napoleon III had already begun construction of the
Bois de Boulogne, and wanted to build more 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,
Adolphe Alphand, the engineer who headed the new Service of Promenades and Plantations, whom Haussmann brought with him from
Bordeaux, and his new chief gardener,
Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, also from Bordeaux, 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. Haussmann and Alphand 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. Under Louis Philippe, a single public square had been created, at the tip of the Ile-de-la-Cité. Haussmann wrote in his memoirs that Napoleon III instructed him: "do not miss an opportunity to build, in all the arrondissements of Paris, the greatest possible number of squares, in order to offer the Parisians, as they have done in London, places for relaxation and recreation for all the families and all the children, rich and poor." In response Haussmann created twenty-four new squares; seventeen in the older part of the city, eleven in the new arrondissements, adding of green space. Alphand termed these small parks "green and flowering salons." Haussmann's goal was to have one park in each of the eighty neighbourhoods of Paris, so that no one was more than ten minutes' walk from such a park. The parks and squares were an immediate success with all classes of Parisians. File:Bois de Vincennes 20060816 16.jpg|The
Bois de Vincennes (1860–1865) was (and is today) the largest park in Paris, designed to give green space to the working-class population of east Paris. File:070421 Parc des Buttes Chaumont 002.jpg|Haussmann built the
Parc des Buttes Chaumont on the site of a former limestone quarry at the northern edge of the city. File:Parc Montsouris lake - Paris.JPG|
Parc Montsouris (1865–1869) was built at the southern edge of the city, where some of the old
catacombs of Paris had been. File:GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE 1848 - 1894 LE PARC MONCEAU.jpg|
Parc Monceau, formerly the property of the family of King Louis-Philippe, was redesigned and replanted by Haussmann. A corner of the park was taken for a new residential quarter (painting by Gustave Caillebotte). File:Square des Batignolles 20060815 05.jpg|The
Square des Batignolles, one of the new squares that Haussmann built in the neighbourhoods annexed to Paris in 1860.
The architecture of Haussmann's Paris or Paris Opera (1875), then the largest theatre in the world, begun by Napoleon III but not finished until 1875. The style was described by its architect,
Charles Garnier, simply as "Napoleon III." Napoleon III and Haussmann commissioned a wide variety of architecture, some of it traditional, some of it very innovative, like the glass and iron pavilions of
Les Halles; and some of it, such as the
Opéra Garnier, commissioned by Napoleon III, designed by
Charles Garnier but not finished until 1875, is difficult to classify, coming to be known as
Second Empire style. Many of the buildings were designed by the city architect,
Gabriel Davioud, who designed everything from city halls and theatres to park benches and kiosks. His architectural projects included: • The construction of two new railroad stations, the
Gare du Nord and the
Gare de l'Est; and the rebuilding of the
Gare de Lyon. • Six new mairies, or town halls, for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th and 12th arrondissements, and the enlargement of the other mairies. • The reconstruction of
Les Halles, the central market, replacing the old market buildings with large glass and iron pavilions, designed by
Victor Baltard. In addition, Haussmann built a new market in the neighbourhood of the Temple, the Marché Saint-Honoré; the Marché de l'Europe in the 8th arrondissement; the Marché Saint-Quentin in the 10th arrondissement; the Marché de Belleville in the 20th; the Marché des Batignolles in the 17th; the Marché Saint-Didier and Marché d'Auteuil in the 16th; the Marché de Necker in the 15th; the Marché de Montrouge in the 14th; the Marché de Place d'Italie in the 13th; the Marché Saint-Maur-Popincourt in the 11th. • The Paris Opera (now Palais Garnier), begun under Napoleon III and finished in 1875; and five new theatres; the
Châtelet and Théâtre Lyrique on the Place du Châtelet; the
Gaîté,
Vaudeville and Panorama. • Five lycées were renovated, and in each of the eighty neighbourhoods Haussmann established one municipal school for boys and one for girls, in addition to the large network of schools run by the Catholic church. • The reconstruction and enlargement of the city's oldest hospital, the
Hôtel-Dieu de Paris on the Île de la Cité. • The completion of the last wing of the
Louvre, and the opening up of the
Place du Carrousel and the Place du Palais-Royal by the demolition of several old streets. • The building of the first railroad bridge across the Seine; originally called the Pont Napoléon-III, now called simply the
Pont National. Since 1801, under Napoleon I, the French government was responsible for the building and maintenance of churches. Haussmann built, renovated or purchased nineteen churches. New churches included the
Saint-Augustin, the Eglise
Saint-Vincent de Paul, the
Eglise de la Trinité. He bought six churches which had been purchased by private individuals during the French Revolution. Haussmann built or renovated five temples and built two new synagogues, on rue des Tournelles and
rue de la Victoire. Besides building churches, theatres and other public buildings, Haussmann paid attention to the details of the architecture along the street; his city architect, Gabriel Davioud, designed garden fences, kiosks, shelters for visitors to the parks, public toilets, and dozens of other small but important structures. File:Jean Béraud - Paris Kiosk - Walters 371055.jpg|The hexagonal Parisian street
advertising column (), introduced by Haussmann. File:Charles Marville, Châlet des petits marchands du Square des Arts et Métiers, ca. 1865.jpg|A kiosk for a street merchant on Square des Arts et Metiers (1865). File:Vedere a Halelor din Paris de pe Biserica Saint Eustache.jpg|The pavilions of
Les Halles, the great iron and glass central market designed by
Victor Baltard (1870). The market was demolished in the 1970s, but one original hall was moved to
Nogent-sur-Marne, where it can be seen today. File:Saint_Augustin_Church_Paris.jpg|The
Church of Saint Augustin (1860–1871), built by the same architect as the markets of Les Halles,
Victor Baltard, looked traditional on the outside but had a revolutionary iron frame on the inside. File:Fontaine Saint-Michel Paris DSC 4355.JPG|The
Fontaine Saint-Michel (1858–1860), designed by
Gabriel Davioud, marked the beginning of
Boulevard Saint-Michel. File:Théâtre de la Ville, façade.JPG|The Théâtre de la Ville, one of two matching theatres, designed by Gabriel Davioud, which Haussmann had constructed at the
Place du Châtelet, the meeting point of his north–south and east–west boulevards. File:P1090439 Paris IV Hôtel-Dieu rwk.JPG|The
Hotel-Dieu de Paris, the oldest hospital in Paris, next to the Cathedral of Notre Dame on the Île de la Cité, was enlarged and rebuilt by Haussmann beginning in 1864, and finished in 1876. It replaced several of the narrow, winding streets of the old medieval city. File:Préfecture de police from Notre-Dame de Paris 2011.jpg|The Préfecture de Police (shown here), the new Palais de Justice and the Tribunal de Commerce took the place of a dense web of medieval streets on the western part of the Île de la Cité. File:Gare du Nord Paris.jpg|The
Gare du Nord railway station (1861–64). Napoleon III and Haussmann saw the railway stations as the new gates of Paris, and built monumental new stations. File:Mairie du 12e arrondissement de Paris.JPG|The new mairie, or town hall, of the 12th arrondissement. Haussmann built new city halls for six of the original twelve arrondissements, and enlarged the other six. File:Pont paris iledelacité a saintmichel.jpg|Haussmann reconstructed the
Pont Saint-Michel connecting the Île de la Cité to the left bank. It still bears the initial
N of Napoleon III. File:P1030204 Paris XII et XIII pont National rwk.JPG|The first railroad bridge across the Seine (1852–53), originally called the Pont Napoléon-III, now called simply the
Pont National. File:Charles Marville, Cabinets water closets Dorion, Champs-Elysées, ca. 1865.jpg|A
chalet de nécessité, or public toilet, with a façade sculpted by Émile Gaudrier, built near the Champs-Élysées (1865).
The Haussmann building The most famous and recognisable feature of Haussmann's renovation of Paris are the Haussmann apartment buildings which line the boulevards of Paris. Street
blocks were designed as homogeneous architectural wholes. He treated buildings not as independent structures, but as pieces of a unified urban landscape. In 18th-century Paris, buildings were usually narrow (often only six metres wide [20 feet]); deep (sometimes forty metres; 130 feet) and tall—as many as five or six stories. The ground floor usually contained a shop, and the shopkeeper lived in the rooms above the shop. The upper floors were occupied by families; the top floor, under the roof, was originally a storage place, but under the pressure of the growing population, was usually turned into a low-cost residence. In the early 19th century, before Haussmann, the height of buildings was strictly limited to , or four floors above the ground floor. The city also began to see a demographic shift; wealthier families began moving to the western neighbourhoods, partly because there was more space, and partly because the prevailing winds carried the smoke from the new factories in Paris toward the east. In Haussmann's Paris, the streets became much wider, growing from an average of wide to , and in the new arrondissements, often to wide. The interiors of the buildings were left to the owners of the buildings, but the façades were strictly regulated, to ensure that they were the same height, color, material, and general design, and were harmonious when all seen together. The reconstruction of the
Rue de Rivoli was the model for the rest of the Paris boulevards. The new apartment buildings followed the same general plan: • ground floor and basement with thick,
load-bearing walls, fronts usually parallel to the street. This was often occupied by shops or offices. •
mezzanine or entresol intermediate level, with low ceilings; often also used by shops or offices. • second,
piano nobile floor with a balcony. This floor, in the days before elevators were common, was the most desirable floor, and had the largest and best apartments. • third and fourth floors in the same style but with less elaborate stonework around the windows, sometimes lacking balconies. • fifth floor with a single, continuous, undecorated balcony. •
mansard roof, angled at 45°, with
garret rooms and
dormer windows. Originally this floor was to be occupied by lower-income tenants, but with time and with higher rents it came to be occupied almost exclusively by the concierges and servants of the people in the apartments below. The Haussmann façade was organised around horizontal lines that often continued from one building to the next:
balconies and
cornices were perfectly aligned without any noticeable alcoves or projections. The
Rue de Rivoli served as a model for the entire network of new Parisian boulevards. Although Haussmann enforced strict rules for design and construction, he also allowed some variation to account for neighbourhoods and for the budgets of building developers. As a result, the apartment buildings fall into three broad categories, from the most to the least luxurious: • First class buildings generally count four floors above ground level and the apartments had high ceilings. A servants' stairway leads to the fifth floor maids' rooms and service areas, while the richly decorated main staircases leads to the spacious apartments of the affluent residents. At the time, the courtyards had stables for horses and storage areas. The exterior of these buildings is often elaborately decorated, especially in the later post-Haussmann period when buildings were still being built in the Haussmann style. • Second class buildings generally have five floors as well as a servants' stairway leading to the sixth floor where the servants' rooms are located. The exterior decoration of these buildings tends to be simple. • Third class buildings usually have five floors and no servants' stairway. The facades often had no balconies and no exterior decoration. For the building façades, the technological progress of stone sawing and (steam) transportation allowed the use of massive stone blocks instead of simple stone facing. The street-side result was a "monumental" effect that exempted buildings from a dependence on decoration; sculpture and other elaborate stonework would not become widespread until the end of the century. Before Haussmann, most buildings in Paris were made of brick or wood and covered with plaster. Haussmann required that the buildings along the new boulevards be either built or faced with cut stone, usually the local cream-colored
Lutetian limestone, which gave more harmony to the appearance of the boulevards. He also required, using a decree from 1852, that the façades of all buildings be regularly maintained, repainted, or cleaned, at least every ten years. under the threat of a fine of one hundred francs.
Underneath the streets of Haussmann's Paris – the renovation of the city's infrastructure While he was rebuilding the boulevards of Paris, Haussmann simultaneously rebuilt the dense labyrinth of pipes, sewers and tunnels under the streets which provided Parisians with basic services. Haussmann wrote in his memoirs: "The underground galleries are an organ of the great city, functioning like an organ of the human body, without seeing the light of day; clean and fresh water, light and heat circulate like the various fluids whose movement and maintenance serves the life of the body; the secretions are taken away mysteriously and don't disturb the good functioning of the city and without spoiling its beautiful exterior." Haussmann began with the water supply. Before Haussmann, drinking water in Paris was either lifted by steam engines from the Seine, or brought by a canal, started by Napoleon I, from the River
Ourcq, a tributary of the River
Marne. The quantity of water was insufficient for the fast-growing city, and, since the sewers also emptied into the Seine near the intakes for drinking water, it was also notoriously unhealthy. In March 1855 Haussmann appointed
Eugène Belgrand, a graduate of the
École polytechnique, to the post of Director of Water and Sewers of Paris. Belgrand first addressed the city's fresh water needs, constructing a system of
aqueducts that nearly doubled the amount of water available per person per day and quadrupled the number of homes with running water. These aqueducts discharged their water in reservoirs situated within the city. Inside the city limits and opposite
Parc Montsouris, Belgrand built the largest water reservoir in the world,
Montsouris Reservoir, to hold the water from the River
Vanne. At the same time Belgrand began rebuilding the water distribution and
sewer system under the streets. In 1852 Paris had of sewers, which could carry only liquid waste. Containers of solid waste were picked up each night by people called
vidangeurs, who carried it to waste dumps on the outskirts of the city. The tunnels he designed were intended to be clean, easily accessible, and substantially larger than the previous Parisian underground. Under his guidance, Paris's sewer system expanded fourfold between 1852 and 1869. Haussmann and Belgrand built new sewer tunnels under each sidewalk of the new boulevards. The sewers were designed to be large enough to evacuate rain water immediately; the large amount of water used to wash the city streets; waste water from both industries and individual households; and water that collected in basements when the level of the Seine was high. Before Haussmann, the sewer tunnels (featured in Victor Hugo's
Les Miserables) were cramped and narrow, just high and 75 to wide. The new tunnels were high and wide, large enough for men to work standing up. These flowed into larger tunnels that carried the waste water to even larger collector tunnels, which were high and wide. A channel down the centre of the tunnel carried away the waste water, with sidewalks on either side for the
égoutiers, or sewer workers. Specially designed wagons and boats moved on rails up and down the channels, cleaning them. Belgrand proudly invited tourists to visit his sewers and ride in the boats under the streets of the city. The underground labyrinth built by Haussmann also provided gas for heat and for lights to illuminate Paris. At the beginning of the Second Empire, gas was provided by six different private companies. Haussmann forced them to consolidate into a single company, the ''Compagnie parisienne d'éclairage et de chauffage par le gaz'', with rights to provide gas to Parisians for 50 years. Consumption of gas tripled between 1855 and 1859. In 1850 there were only 9000 gaslights in Paris; by 1867, the Paris Opera and four other major theatres alone had fifteen thousand gas lights. Almost all the new residential buildings of Paris had gaslights in the courtyards and stairways; the monuments and public buildings of Paris, the
arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, and the squares, boulevards and streets were illuminated at night by gaslights. For the first time, Paris was the City of Light. == Critics of Haussmann's Paris ==