T.J.  Clark,  The Painting of Modern Life

The Contemporary Case Against Haussmannization

The separate heads in the case against Haussmannization . . . an  be rehearsed  as follows. First, the business had been done  wastefully  and  dishonestly. The  empire was in league  with the  speculators and the Haute Banque, and the  baron  had used  his power  to sell off the  richest  shares  in the  new construction work to the brothers Pereire and  their unloved Crédit Mobilier. Boulevards and railways were all one in the  opposition's eyes:  things built too quickly, whose profits went to a secret few, and whose appetite for capital distorted the whole  industry of France. The  argument was only sharpened  by its distance from the  truth:  in fact the  profits of reconstruction had  been spread quite wide, to the small proprietors grown rich on  compensation, to the landlords making their fortune from  inflated rents, to the swarm of men who fattened on the process  ofrebuilding and  found a way to make money out of its side effects. The sight of such fortunes being made enraged those   bourgeois who  had  not  been richly expropriated or had somehow missed the chance to buy at the  right  time.  What a howl went up in 1867 when the tinsmith from Fontanges, Lapeyre,   was given the contract to demolish the pavilions of  the  Exposition Universelle [Universal Exposition – what we would call a world’s fair] and sell them off  for  scrap!  He  had  caught   Haussmann's eye  originally  in  the auctions of  rubbish from the slums; had  been given  key concessions: and when  his son  was married the baron had sent his card. It was all favours, kickbacks, and corruption, said  those  who  wanted  a part  of all three.

Second, the city that  resulted from this fever was supposed  to be regular, empty, and  boring. Haussmann had killed  the street  and  the quartier;  he had  made instead "Ia  CITE NEUTRE des peuples civilisés." [the neutral city of civilized peoples.] Once  upon a time there had ''existed groups, neighbourhoods, districts,  traditions" but all of them had  passed  away.''  There was no more  multiformity in Paris, no  more   surprise,  no  more  Paris inconnu [unknown Paris]. If the old  bohemian Privat d'Anglemont, the man who had  written the book

Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Prefect of the Seine, shown as a thief in a cartoon because of all the people who were displaced from their homes for his new Paris.

Street Criers in the Old Paris (c1700)

 of  that  name, could rise again from  his  humble grave at  Montmartre, and ... indulge in  one  of  those  wild night-walks his  spirit   loved, he would  lose his way at every  step: he would be bewildered indeed before the College de France, and streets  and  alleys and  wastes, which  once  had the  Clottre Saint-Jean de Latran for their centre. Here were the  headquarters of wandering Bohemians, street singers and  conjurors, the  vicious and the criminal and the unfortunate, all  afflicted with  the  common curse  of  poverty.  The  Boulevards  have  broken  through all.

''The straight line,"  need  one say it, has  killed  the  picturesque, the  unexpected. The Rue de  Rivoli is a symbol; a new street, long, wide, cold,  frequented by men  as well dressed, affected,  and  cold  as the street  itself.... There are no more  coats of many  colours, no more extravagant songs and extraordinary speeches. The open-air dentist, the strolling musicians, the ragpicker philosophers, the jugglers, the Northern Hercules, the hurdy-gurdy players, the sickly snake-swallowers, and  the  men  with  seals  who  said  "papa"-they have all emigrated. The street  existed  only in Paris, and  the street  is dying...