Leah Spigelman

Mr. Meyers

Birth of Modern Europe

March 13, 2000

THE RISE OF PHYSICAL AND POLITICAL ORDER

     From the Middle Ages until the mid-1800s, Paris, France developed a powerful, absolutist government, became a centralized capital, and gained international authority.  This historical and political path was fostered by advances in urban-planning by the monarchs.  Although these developments preceded the boulevards of Baron Haussmann, they were portents of the in-depth city planning to come.  In response to Paris’s rapid expansion and disorder, France’s monarchs designed open spaces and larger streets to unify and organize the physical city so it would mirror its intellectual excellence and serve the monarch’s absolute political authority.

     The city of Paris has traditionally been defined geographically in relation to the banks of the Seine.  The Right Bank is more commercial and administrative and contains the marketplace.  The Left Bank, on the other hand, is the center of intellectualism.  The University of Paris and residential neighborhoods with more unique land ownership patterns, houses, small shops, and churches constitute the Left Bank.

     Monarch Philip II Auguste(1180-1223) began the trend of physically improving the city of Paris.  He most significantly altered the structure of the city by enlarging the market, le marche des Champeaux.  By demolishing Jewish neighborhoods, Philip II built two halles (sheds) to establish the first marketplace and designed it in a grid formation.  He enlarged the
wall around Paris and built the first Louvre palace.  Philip also constructed bridges over the Seine and paved Paris’s streets for the first time (although only motivated by the stench of the open sewers).  This medieval city grew, even as larger walls attempted to contain it.  Philip II improved Parisian life by politically acknowledging and giving power to merchants and intellectuals.  In 1200, he formally recognized the University of Paris, acknowledging the existence and beliefs of citizens other than aristocrats.  In 1220, he allowed townsmen to collect duty on imported merchandise and took a more laissez-faire stance than in the past.  In physically improving the city, Philip II Auguste also improved relationships between the monarchy and the public, hence improving Parisian society on the whole.

     Unlike Philip II, Francis I held a more powerful position in his monarchy, yet he similarly enriched and improved the city’s physical layout.  In 1528, Francis I began building the classical Paris loved by Voltaire.  He built the new Louvre in 1546, located so that its centrality affected the future of Parisian urbanization. In 1548, Henri II attempted to regulate urban growth by banning building outside the city walls.  However, he began to build the Tuileries Palace, against his own proclamation.  This construction set the trend for focusing Paris on its Western edge.

     Henri IV continued the effort to further centralize the monarchy’s power in France, and more specifically, in Paris.  In 1594, Henri IV began the first large-scale renovation of the city, creating a classical city near the disorderly medieval one.  He built churches, gardens, promenades, convents, bridges, streets, and palaces.  He built up the Pont-Neuf bridge, constructed a pedestrian walk, made three larger streets continue from it on the Left Bank, and determined a singular style of buildings.  Other new bridges, such as the Pont-Royal, encouraged the western trend of growth in Paris that would eventually lead Louis XIV to tear down the city walls.  Henri IV created the Place Royale (Place des Vosges), an open square surrounded by residential housing.  On the Ile de la Cite, Henri IV established the Place Dauphine, an isosceles triangle-shaped courtyard, around which lived members of the bourgeoisie.  Another endeavor of Henri IV was his design for the Place de France which was supposed to outline official buildings and lead into streets named for the provinces.  This plan, if executed, would have not only physically structured and centralized the city further, but also focused the public on the power of the government by having continual reminders of its power in the buildings and street names.  In designing and leading all of these constructions, Henri IV’s authority became apparent.  Although still somewhat Baroque rather than Neo-Classical, Henri IV had the means and power to dictate the city-planning of Paris, a power previously controlled by the city.

     Although the building was directed by Henri IV, much of his work recognized and even benefitted Paris’ inhabitants and merchants.  The Hotel de Ville, started in 1605, was intended to “project the image of a vigorous Parisian mercantile tradition.”^[1]  Paris grew into an assertive capital because the presence of the king, the court, and Henri IV’s building endeavors encouraged the French to move to Paris and help improve the environment.

     Prior to the 1840s, Parisian city-planning of boulevards and radiating streets developed gradually along with the monarchy’s authority.  In 1667, the tree-lined Champs-Elysees took root and began the urban-planning of Paris so well known today.  Louis XIV, who held ideas for even more extravagant boulevards, constructed the cours de Vincennes, a wide road leading from the Louvre to the Place du Trone, yet stopping before the Bastille.  One of the most significant decrees by the monarchy required all builders to submit their plans to a planning department.  This would later develop into the workings of Baron Haussmann.  Such a ruling showed the political control of Louis XIV.  He had the authority to not only alter the layout of Paris, but rule as an absolutist monarch.  Although each of Paris’s monarchs may have held different views of the ideal form of government, they attained the power to fulfil their political goals once they showed authority in the urban-planning of Paris. 

     As the King moved to Versailles, Paris and its physical structure became directed toward the public.  In the 18^th century, the Odeon theater became one of Paris’s most significant public buildings, and the Rue de l’Odeon became the first street in Paris to have sidewalks, making such a luxury available to the people.  Five new access streets to the Odeon helped begin the deliberate organization of Paris’s streets.  New streets and lots were determined by the public in the 1780s.  Paris’s government and citizens began to care for the cleanliness and width of their streets as well as the orderliness and perspective of urban planning.

     Philip’s city wall lasted until the French Revolution, when it was torn down in 1785 by Tax Farmers.  As Paris developed, it grew more aware of its planning.  Accurate maps were made and styles of boulevards and buildings became somewhat consistent.  In 1793, a Commission des Artists developed to help plan the future of land confiscated in the revolution.  The Commission suggested mainly Baroque-style streets that established connective routes within the city.  The plans improved communication within Paris, rather than between cities.

     Napoleon’s destruction of much of Paris allowed for more open spaces and a new start in urban planning.  As a precedent for Haussmann’s extravagant monuments and boulevards, Napoleon planned the building of the arches of the Carrousel and the Etoile in 1806.  Both would emphasize the centrality and authority held by Paris in relation to the rest of France.

     Voltaire prayed in 1749,

may God find some man zealous enough to undertake such projects, possessed of a soul firm enough to complete his undertakings, a mind enlightened enough to plan them, and may he have sufficient social stature to make them succeed.^[2] 

     Paris saw these prayers fulfil and exceed their thinker’s hopes.  France’s leaders all held varying beliefs on the monarch’s and working class’s respective roles.  However, even as the role of the monarch varied in approach, leaders such as Philip II Auguste, Henri IV, Louis XIV, and Napoleon I each developed Paris’s urban planning, facilitating Paris’s rise in organization and authority.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ballon, Hilary, The Paris of Henry IV: Architecture and Urbanism.  New York: The Architectural History Foundation and MIT, 1991

Jordan, David P., Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann.  New York, The Free Press, 1995

Loyer, Francois, Paris: Nineteenth Century Architecture and Urbanism.  New York: Abbeville Press, 1988

Meyers, Andrew, “The Search for the Neoclassical Street,” unpublished manuscript

Olsen, Donald J., The City as a Work of Art.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986

“Paris,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 25, pp.435-448b