'', a
city symphony showing daily life in 1927
Food and drink The Parisian diet was basically unchanged from what it had been in the 19th century and earlier, based on meat, wine and bread. Wine arrived in barrels, transported by river barge from the different regions of France, at the Halles aux Vins, on the Quai Saint-Bernard of the Left Bank, next to the Jardin des Plantes, where it was taxed and resold. It also arrived in huge quantities at the depot of Bercy, on the Right Bank, which was the largest wholesale center for wine and spirits in Europe. Meat was processed at the huge slaughterhouses built in the 19th century around the edges of the city; the largest was at
La Villette. Fish, fruits and vegetables arrived by truck very early in the morning at the huge iron and glass pavilions of
Les Halles, where they were arranged and sold to buyers from markets and restaurants. New technology brought fresher food products to the Paris table. In 1921, the first train station for the arrival of refrigerated railway cars was opened at Paris-Ivry, allowing the easier transportation of perishable fruits and vegetables and other food products. The first delivery by air of food products took place between Nice and Le Bourget in 1920. In 1921, the first refrigerated food depots were opened at the markets of Les Halles. In August 1935, the first aerial shipment of fresh fish took place from La Baule to Paris; sardines caught that morning were on sale in Paris by seven in the evening.
Housing Because of the economic crisis and the decline of the Paris population, little new housing was built between the wars. There were some notable changes to the interiors of apartment buildings: thanks to the introduction of elevators, the apartments of the wealthiest tenants moved to the upper floors, where the air was believed to be more healthy, and the servants moved down from the small rooms under the roof to the mezzanine or the ground floor. The old double-cage elevators were gradually replaced by more modern elevators. The hallways of the new buildings became narrower and less decorated. Beginning in the late 1930s, as the threat of war became more real, many new apartment buildings had basements which could also serve as bomb shelters. One important addition to the housing of Paris was the
Habitation à Bon Marché, or HBM, an apartment building built by the state for low-income Parisians. Beginning in 1920, hundreds of HBMs were built in the zone around the city cleared by the destruction of the old
Thiers Wall of fortifications. Others were built in neighbourhoods which the city administration identified as particularly unhealthy due to overcrowding, where epidemics of tuberculosis and other contagious diseases had been reported. Seventeen such neighbourhoods were identified. One area was at porte de Clignancourt, where an outbreak of plague had taken place in 1920. The old buildings were torn down and replaced in 1933 with HBMs. The new buildings usually were made of concrete and red brick, and were solidly constructed, with large windows and ornamental ironwork. From 1929 to 1949, the government built 22,000 low-income housing units in Paris, for 129,000 residents.
Transport From 1919 to 1939, seven of the original lines of the
Paris Metro were gradually extended from the center toward the suburbs, and two new lines, 9 and 11, were completed. From 1927 to 1930, the number 7 line was extended as far as Sully-Morland. In 1934, the first line reached the suburbs at the pont de Sèvres. By 1939, the network within the city was essentially complete, with 159 kilometres of track and 332 stations, carrying more than half a million passengers a year. From 1919 to 1929, the electric tramway was the major form of surface transport in Paris. There were 1,100 kilometres of tram lines on all the major streets of the city (except for the Champs-Élysées, the avenue de l'Opera and the Grands Boulevards). However, the motor bus and the growing number of automobiles threatened the existence of the tram, and automobile drivers complained that the trams blocked traffic. In 1929, the Municipal Council decided to eliminate the trams within the city and replace them with buses. On 15 May 1937, the last Paris tram made its journey from porte de Vincennes to porte de Saint-Cloud. In 1921, the Société des transports en commun de la région Parisienne (STCRP) was formed, and took charge of surface public transport. It operated 258 kilometres of auto bus lines. Sixteen different models of bus were introduced from 1921 to 1939, mostly from Renault. There were two thousand buses in service on the Paris streets in 1932 and four thousand by 1937. The number of taxicabs in Paris reached 21,000 in 1931, many of them driven by White Russian emigres fleeing the Russian Revolution, who spoke French and knew the city. With the Depression, the number of taxis fell to 14,000 in 1937. The number of private cars also grew rapidly. The wide boulevards built by Haussmann enabled the city to keep traffic moving more successfully than many other cities. The first traffic lights in Paris were installed at the intersection of the rue de Rivoli and the boulevard de Sébastopol. The most important innovation in Paris transport was the arrival of aviation and the first airport. In October 1914 a squadron of seven airplanes had been established on an airstrip at Le Bourget to protect Paris, after German planes had dropped bombs on the city. In August 1918, the first postal delivery by air arrived at this airport, carrying letters to American soldiers serving in France. The first commercial aviation line in the world, between London and Paris, opened on 8 February 1919. The first air cargo service began in 1920, with perishable food products flowing from Nice to Le Bourget. On 21 May 1927,
Charles Lindbergh made his historic transatlantic flight between New York and Le Bourget. In August 1933, a national airline,
Air France, was organised. Le Bourget received 6,421 plane passengers in 1920, and 112 tons of freight. In 1938, it received 138,267 passengers, and 2,303 tons of freight. A second airport, Orly, was built, but was used only by the military and by flying clubs.
Telephone, radio and television Paris was well behind many other large cities in the installation of telephones. Telephones were rare, equipment was antiquated, and service was poor. By 1953, there were only 1.7 million telephones in France. As of 1928 telephone numbers began with the three letters of the central switchboard for that neighbourhood (there were ten for Paris); for example, LOU for Louvre, followed by the four digit number of the subscriber. This system was in use until 1963. The first experimental radio transmission were made in Paris in 1908, between the Pantheon and a station on the third stage of the Eiffel Tower, a distance of four kilometres. The first musical broadcast took place in November 1921, when a banquet of electric engineers at the Hotel Lutetia was entertained by musicians performing three songs at a station in the Seine-et-Marne department. An experimental broadcasting station, called Radiona, began regular broadcasts in 1922. A state broadcasting radio station, Paris-P.T.T. was created in January 1923; the first private station, founded by the newspaper
Le Petit Parisien, began broadcasting in March 1924. All the radio stations were nationalised in 1945 and were not privatised until 1982. The first experimental television transmission in France was made at the Olympia Theater on 3 November 1930, and the first public broadcast made in April 1931, between a laboratory at Montrouge and the amphitheater of the École supérieure d'électricité. The first broadcast with sound took place in 1923, and the first broadcast of a theatrical event from the Lido theater on the Champs-Élysées in February 1933. The first official government broadcast was organised by Minister
Georges Mandel on 26 April 1935. The audience for television in Paris at this time was extremely small; there were from five hundred to one thousand receivers. Like radio, it became a state monopoly in 1945 and remained so until 1982. ==
Les années folles==