Les Deux Portes by Charles Marville. Today, four portals connect Rue des Innocents with Rue Ferronnerie.
Points of Transformation
A walk across Paris reveals points of transformation where buildings and neighborhoods were either removed, altered or left untouched. These points provide narratives of the evolving city.
Disappeared, facade reproduced
Court Du Dragon 6th Ar.
Marville photographed Court de Dragon in 1865. It shows a grandiose entranceway to the court, with a concentric series of arches are topped by a crouching winged dragon. Today, a smaller winged dragon sits atop a more modest entranceway—leading no longer to a courtyard but into an apartment building.
Court du Dragon, 1865
The Court du Dragon was built in 1735. The architect Cartault also contributed the dragon sculpture. This building was located on Rue de Logout (replaced by Rue de Rennes). The dragon sculpture was moved to the Louvre in 1957.
Photograph by Charles Marville 1865
Passage du Dragon, 1865
Passage du Dragon
The Inner courtyard of homes and businesses was occupied by a community of ironworkers.
Architect: Cartault, 1735
Photograph by Charles Marville
50 Rue de Rennes, 2021
Entranceway to the current building, erected in 1958, The dragon sculpture reproduced above the entrance is a reproduction of the original.
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Disappeared
Atelier Marville
Coin de Boulevard St. Jacques (66) 14th Ar.
This was the location of Marville’s studio. It haws been replaced with an 1895 apartment building of Belle Époque design. It’s located a stone’s throw from Place Denfert Rochereau and the entrance to the Catacombs.
This remarkable photograph shows Manville standing before his studio. Obviously, he was not behind the camera; he likely set it up for a technician who lifted the lens cap to take the impression. The New York Metropolitan Museum has a print of the photo on display, and it describes those in the picture. Marville stands at the entrance to the courtyard, wearing a top hat and accompanied by his lifelong companion, Jeanne-Louise Leuba. A sign above the entrance reads: “Ch. Marville, Photographer of the Imperial Museums and the City of Paris.” Also in the photo and positioned in casual conversation: Charles Delahaye, a longtime associate, several assistants and a servant, as well as a dog. For Marville, it is a surprisingly affectionate photo, but that assessment could be biased by the fact that this creative ground zero now is a memory. And a spot that few would note.
Nearby is Rue Saint Jacques, credited as the oldest street in Paris. It survived even Baron Haussmann. The street originated in Roman times, when Lutetia as the “South Road” leading to Orleans and Spain. Marville took several other photos of Rue Saint Jacques, which was relegated to a lesser-traveled street once Baron Haussmann created the broader Boulevard Saint-Michel parallel to it.
The Dominican Order was established in the Chapelle Saint-Jacques along this street, and they were called Jacobins in Paris. The name Jacobins took on new meaning in the French Revolution, when revolutionaries—called Jacobins—met at the former Dominican monastery, then renamed the Jacobins Club and located across the Seine on rue Saint-Honoré.
Largely Preserved
Court de Commerce
Court de Rohan
Rue Jardinier 6th Arr.
Three adjacent streets are located between Boulevard Saint Germain and rue Saint-Andre des Arts. They were spared destruction in Haussmann’s creation of Boulevard Saint Germain. Today, they are restricted to foot traffic, and these small streets (two of them private courts) provide respite from the city’s bustle--and a strong sense of anienne Paris..
Court du Commerce St. Andre
Altered but preserved
Court du Commerce St. Andre was opened in 1735 and connected Saint-André des Arts and la rue de l’ancient-Comédie. Its main portal on Boulevard Saint Germain once was located on rue des Ecole Medicin, at a spot now 50 meters out into the center of the Boulevard. Today, it affords a wonderful stroll, with beautiful shops and tea rooms—and the best place to step back in history. A tower base of the Wall of Philippe Auguste (1190) can be seen in the basement of #6. Le Procope, the oldest café in Paris (1686) backs onto the court. Countless philosophes of the 18th century dined here. Portraits of Diderot and Rousseau hang in its dining room, and Voltaire’s desk is displayed on the second floor. Marat published l’Ami du Peuple at his printing office at #8, and both Danton (#20) and Dr. Guillotin perfected his “more humane mechanism of decapitation” on sheep , in the basement at #9.
Court de Rohan
Preserved, private
Court de Rohan has been spared rounds of demolition threats, according to Leonard Pitt, and many of the buildings there are only marginally changed from their construction in the 14th century. The court is private.
Photograph by Charles Marville
Rue de Jardiner
Preserved, private
Rue de Jardiner, as photographed by Marville, presents one of the most inviting-looking streets in Paris. Today, when the street is viewed from rue de Leperon,
Photograph by Charles Marville
Changed but Recognizable
Rue Chanoinesse, Ile de la Cité, 4th Ar.
If there is a street that unabashedly invites you to take three steps and walk straight into the past, it is Rue Chanoinesse on Ile de la Cité. The street is located a block from Notre Dame Cathedral, and it once was home to Heloise and Abelard, the ill-fated lovers who in the 12th century (arguably) made Paris the city of romance, both joyous and tragic.
Rue Chanoinesse was photographed by Charles Marville in 1865. The photo captures an intersection in a quartier of homes made of well-worn stone.
Rue Chanoinesse is a narrow cobblestone street in the center that bends left at the end. Rue de Massillon comes into the photo from the left foreground. Rue de Columbe intersects at the far end of the street. Rue des Chantres is not visible, but it is implicit as the photo caption confirms that the photo is taken where the street meets Rue Chanoinesse.
A house with an open passageway on the ground floor is central in the photo. The open space may allow foot traffic from homes in an inner courtyard; maps of the period indicate such. Two buckets and a broom lean against a wall. On the premiere étage is a shuttered window and a glass-paned gas lamp that hangs on an ornate iron bracket and juts out over the street. A horse-drawn carriage is parked on the right. The street appears to be residential, but at the end is a commercial building with “Laublin” painted atop a large window. Barely legible is a street sign Rue la Colombe (Dove Street).
Rue de la Colombe is a bit of a tease in the photo. Once you learn something about it, you’ll want to stroll down it, as well. Remains of a Roman wall built in the Third Century to protect Lutetia are at number 4. Rue de la Colombe also is cited in “Les Dit des Rues de Paris” (1280-1300), a remarkable ode to Paris that could serve as the oldest “guidebook” to the city.)
But this reads a great deal into Marville’s photo, and not undeservedly.
To make matters more interesting, we have an alternate view of this street from the same era. In 1862, Charles Meryon etched “Rues de Chantres,” the side street where Marville had set his camera. A small stretch of Rue Chanoinesse is visible, as is the looming spire on the rooftop of Notre Dame, the Violet le Duc addition that was destroyed in the 2019 fire. Again, in contrast to the antiseptic quality of Marville, Meryon’s depiction fills the street with a dozen or more people and several animals. A dimly lit crowd at the bottom of the picture shows some official action, with a man in military uniform and passers-by looking sideways at what’s going on. As is typical of Meryon’s etchings, there is contrast between the lofty glory of the spire and the dark cluster of human activity—possibly sinister activity—in a shadowy foreground. Today, it begs the question: Do we want to walk down this street or not? Hard to know.
Visible at the end of the street are several Parisians walking along Rue de Chanoinesse, holding parcels, and several women are seen peering out windows. The etching is long and narrow, which accentuates the height of the buildings that loom above the narrow street, as well as the majesty of the church spire, shown its all its Gothic detail.
Baudelaire reportedly met Meryon, loved his work and encouraged friends to purchase his etchings. Baudelaire asked the artist if he had read Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue”? What had inspired his renderings of birds of prey? We don’t know the answers, but we have to marvel at the intersection of these two visionaries meeting in Paris—just as their creative visions intersected at Rue Chanoinesse and Rue des Chantres.
Both streets remain today. Rue des Chantres much the same, a narrow side street, but Rue Chanoinesse has been paved and widened.
The centerpiece of the street is Au Vieux Paris d’Arcole, a cafe with a spectacular wisteria vine climbing up its facade and exploding in all directions with brilliant purple blossoms. This picture-perfect recreation of “Vieux Paris” is a prime example of “marked authenticity,” as defined by Roland Barthes: Having been identified and marked as such, it no longer is authentic; it is a sign of something authentic. What remains authentic on Rue Chanoinesse is the ease with which you can slip through time, literally walking into the Marville photo.
Photograph by Charles Marville
New Development
Boulevard Malsherbes 8th, 9th, 17th Ar.
There is an irony in that Baron Haussmann created textbook Parisian boulevards that are both graceful and soulless. His boulevards are uniformly of generous width with shade trees and expansive luxury apartment buildings with imposing doorways and uniform balconies. Such elements would seem to present a red carpet for the flaneur—yet compared with the crooked, pock-marked alleyways of ancienne Paris, his boulevards are remarkably uninviting to walk down.
"Fanfarlo"
“Cramer profoundly hated—and he was perfectly right, in my opinion—apartments built in long, straight lines and architecture imported into family homes.”
—Charles Baudelaire
Haussmann’s broad streets have been called boring, bourgeois “cannonball boulevards” for their artillery friendly straight pathways. Much has been made of the uniform dimensions of the boulevards (streets as wide as the buildings are tall), as a foil to seditionists who hardly could construct barricades across such spans. More likely, Haussmann was just a uniformity freak, an accountant in place of a creative visionary. Either way, the boulevards are car-centric and tedious, the towering front doors are foreboding, not inviting. The paucity of diverse features makes a modern-day flaneur feel the distance of each long block instead of getting lost in a flow. Coming upon a rare feature like l’Eglise Saint-Augustin (1860) on Boulevard Malsherbes is a welcome diversion from uniformity.
Boulevard Malsherbes in the 8th Arrondissement runs from Place de Wagram, past Parc Monceau, crosses Boulevard Haussmann and terminates at Place de la Madeleine. It runs 2.7 kilometers and spans three arrondissements, unusual in a city where street names can change every few blocks.
Boulevard Malsherbes is a typical Haussmann creation in that it replaced diversity with uniformity, created long vistas, presented speculators with a windfall, and created a domain for the wealthy. Haussmann captured a new and pristine Boulevard Malsherbes in 1877. But that photo covers up more than it reveals about the creation of the street.
A first leg of Boulevard Malsherbes was created under Napoleon I in 1808, as part of his reconfiguring of La Madeleine, in an area that had been annexed by Paris in 1722. Plans to extend the boulevard to Parc Monceau were made in 1852 and were formalized in 1858 with Haussmann’s Plan de Paris. An 1860 agreement brought in a group of four developers, including the Péreires brothers, to extend the boulevard beyond Parc Monceau. This included an undeveloped area known as the Plaine de Monceau that the Péreires among others had purchased cheaply. The group of developers transferred 82,000 square meters to the city (at no charge) in return for Haussmann providing streets, water mains and sewers to the area.
The creation of Boulevard Malsherbes provided access to the undeveloped area—and it raised the value of the remaining property owned by the developers exponentially more valuable. Haussmann sold to the developers two-thirds of the area occupied by Parc Monceau, where they built their own enormous mansions on the former park land. The Péreires also built luxury apartment building along the new Boulevard Malsherbes.
Parc Monceau was originally a royal park, created by the very wealthy Philippe d’Orleans, Duc of Chartres in 1778. It was designed in the style of an English garden with whimsical touches like a pyramid and windmill. It was nationalized in 1793 after the duke was guillotined. The Park returned to royal hands during the Bourbon Restoration, finally being purchased by the city and becoming a public park in 1860.
Different from other Haussmann projects that removed just low-income neighborhoods, the creation of Boulevard Malsherbes required the expropriation and demotion of 84 houses, among them some mansions and a slum called Petite Pologne. The new boulevard premiered to much fol-de rol in 1861, which included Napoleon III and his wife Eugenie in a carriage surrounded by military guard rolling past 114 new buildings. The marketing of the new luxury neighborhood had begun: It attracted residents that included Alexander Dumas, Marcel Proust and Gabriel Fauré. In 1909, Coco Chanel opened a hat shop at 160 Boulevard Malsherbes, at the start of her fashion empire. In 1953, Francoise Sagan wrote Bonjour Tristesse, while living on the street.
Never Touched by Haussmann
Rue du Faubourg Saint Martin 10th Ar.
An Un-Haussmann Street
A counterpoint to the Haussmann boulevard is found in Rue du Faubourg Saint Martin. The street, which extends from Porte St. Martin to Gare de l’Est, was unmarked by the hand of Haussmann, and the diversity of the streetscape—varied building heights, a-colonnade-here-a-passageway-there, and the absence to trademark “running balcony” reveals what far more of Paris might have looked like if a more delicate hand had wielded the urban renovation scalpel.
Eric Hazan, a lifelong Parisian, describes how one feels a change in the "geopsychology of the perimeter" when stepping through the Porte San Martin and onto this street where diversity of design prevails over renovation uniformity. One can feel a neighborhood feeling of quartier, and, in some places, the cozier sense of coin.
Design and Urbanism
Innovations in design were an integral part of the transformation of the urban landscape.
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism or a return to Greek and Roman modes in architecture flourished in Paris in the 18th century into the 19th century. Under Haussmann, a modified form of neoclassicism was standardized with uniformly designed buildings with running balconies and classical flourishes.
Detail, Boulevard Malsherbes
Arcades
Passage courverts or covered shopping arcades emerged around 1800 and proliferated. They changes both shopping and social habits. These indoor public spaces were Illuminated by glass ceilings and gas lights. They invited Parisians to step in from muddy streets to socialize and be seen in public. Shop girls, known as grissettes for their grey uniforms, emerged as a new social sub-class.
Galerie Vivienne, 1823
Promenades
Grandiose open spaces promoted promenading, or casually strolling through gardens and down wide boulevards. The Tuileries were a prime destination for walkers, known as flaneurs or boulevardiers. Baudelaire, in a rare geographic citation, describes the new Carousel of the Louvre as a place where "cities change faster than the human heart."
Les Tuileries
Technology and Urbanism
Innovations in technology accelerated changes to the look and use of the urban landscape.
Street Lights
Gas lighting was introduced to Paris in 1829, and soon 9,000 gas lanterns illuminated the city and promoted night life. Lighting greatly proliferated under the Second Empire, and new lighting fixtures were documented by Marville). Baudelaire describes a "dazzling" café where glass "burned with all the ardor of a début" in The Eyes of the Poor. Guy de Maupassant described the cafés along the Champs Elysées as "blazing hearths among the leaves." Walter Benjamin includes a chapter "Modes of Lighting" in The Paris Projects, documenting the social changes brought on by the widespread use of gas lighting.
Photograph by Charles Marville
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Omnibuses
The horse-drawn omnibus, which carried 12-18 passengers, was introduced in Paris in 1828. In 1855, Emperor Napoleon III created the combined Compagnie Generale des Omnibus. This form of transportation flourished on the newly created wide boulevards of the Second Empire. Urban mobility, once limited to nobles with private carriages, expanded the activities and perspectives of all Parisians.
"Fiacres on Boulevard Montmartre" by Camille Pissaro
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Sewers
One of Haussmann's most vital improvements to Paris was the introduction of a comprehensive sewer system. Engineer Eugène Belgrand was named director of water and sewers and by 1867 had constructed an extensive network of underground sewers that raised the hygiene level of the city out of the Middle Ages. These modern sewers became a popular tourist attraction with boat tours by the end of the 19th century. The Musée des Egouts (Museum of the Sewers) can be toured today.
Musées des Egouts
The Paris Sewer Museum
Resources
Piercing Time: Paris After Marville and Atget (1865-2012). (2013)
by Peter Sramek
Marville Paris (1994)
by Marie de Thézy
Walks Through Lost Paris (2006)
by Leonard Pitt
Charles Marville
Photographs of Paris 1852-1878
Exhibit catalog from the Musée Carnavalet, French Institute / Alliance Francaise (1981)
Metropolitan Museum Exhibit 2014:
“Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris” (2014)
A Walk Through Paris (2016)
by Eric Hazan
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