Like his great predecessor Napoleon III’s vision saw a noble Paris, and at once he set about improvements which would beautify the city, give work to the poor, make the bourgeois forget his limitation of their power in the municipality, and compensate the suburbs now included within the city limits for the increase of their taxes.
Paris no longer had a mayor, but as to-day, two prefects, one “of the Seine” and the other “of police.” Haussmann, the prefect of the Seine, was a man amply fitted to carry out the emperor’s plans, and it is to him that the city owes much of the openness which is one of her greatest beauties and benefits. His was the idea of laying out streets radiating from a central point as do those around the Arch of the Star. This diagonal arrangement permits not only quick passage from one part of the city to another, but allows a small body of men and a few cannon to hold a commanding position. Napoleon probably had the habits of the Paris mob in mind when he ordered this plan and the asphalt surface which is far less useful for missiles than are paving stones. The rue de Rivoli was carried on eastward partly doing away with an unsavory neighborhood which crowded closely upon the Louvre; a long boulevard called “de Strasbourg” and “de Sebastopol” swept northward from the Seine and southward across the Cité to join the boulevard Saint Michel on the right bank. In all twenty-two new thoroughfares were opened and three bridges. Between the Place du Châtelet and the Hôtel de Ville was the old tower of Saint Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. It was restored to its former perfection and surrounded by one of the small parks which are the city’s best gifts to the poor and for which she utilizes every available spot. A new Hôtel Dieu on the north side of the Parvis de Notre Dame replaced the ancient building on the south side of the same square, and did a further good work in wiping out many wretched old streets.
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THE STRASBOURG STATUE. See [page 372.] |
THE EIFFEL TOWER. See [page 374.] |
Remembering Napoleon I’s intention with regard to the Louvre the emperor completed the long delayed project of joining the Tuileries and the older palace. On the side of the Seine he built the entrance to the Place du Carrousel, the connecting link between Henry IV’s unfinished gallery and Catherine de Medicis’; on the north side he swept away the remaining tangle of small streets adjoining the rue de Rivoli, thereby enlarging the Place du Carrousel to its present size and permitting the building of three quadrangles to match the three on the south,[9] which are partly of his construction. The architecture is massive, elaborate, over-decorated, yet, taken all in all, superb. Its heavy magnificence lessens our regret at the loss of the Tuileries which completed the rectangle at the west, for those who remember it say that the smaller palace was overpowered by the imposing “New Louvre.”
Several new churches added to the adornment of the city under the empire. One of these, Trinity, renaissance in style, is approached by a “rampe” somewhat recalling that of Saint Vincent-de-Paul. Another church, dedicated to Saint Augustin, is in the Byzantine style, and is ingeniously though not always acceptably adapted to the limitations of a small triangular space.
Among the improvements were the buildings of the present Halles Centrales on the age-old spot where markets have served Paris. An early morning visit to the Halles is an object lesson on the distribution of food for a large city. The crowd is terrific, the volubility ear-splitting. Certain characteristic stalls interest the traveler, as, for example, that where broken food from hotels and restaurants is sold for two sous a plate.
To this time belongs the new building—on the Cité now—for the Tribunal of Commerce; enlargements of the National Library and of the Bank of France; the construction of two theaters on the Place du Châtelet, one leased now by Sarah Bernhardt, and of the Opéra. This is huge and elaborate in renaissance style, a building much criticized but also much admired, especially for its staircase and for its decorative frescos and bronzes. It is the home of the National Academy of Music.