The Things I Enjoy: People and places in Paris during the first years of the "Belle Epoque"

Place de la Concorde (drawing by Boudier)

During the second half of the 19th century, Paris was totally transformed. In 1852 Napoleon III commissioned Georges-Eugène Haussmann to devise a bold plan to beautify and modernize the city. Haussmann replaced shabby shacks with elegant six and seven story white stone buildings on wide, tree lined avenues and boulevards. He also created many beautiful parks and open places.

Lately some historians have concluded that baron Haussman´s role as urban modernizer has been somewhat overblown. In reality, much of what has been called "Haussmannisation" actually happened during the the Third Republic between 1872 and the 1930s, as the American historian Peter S. Soppelsa points out in his thesis "The Fragility of Modernity: Infrastructure and Everyday Life in Paris, 1870 - 1914":

Simply put, much of what we think of as “Haussmannization”—even including road development—actually happened under the Third Republic, between 1872 and the 1930s.
Historical memory of Haussmann is distorted because we confuse what he started with what he finished. He started the long, uneven process of modern infrastructural development in Paris, but he by no means finished it.

Still, Soppelsa also recognizes Haussmann´s lasting legacy:

Surely the most famous of Haussmann's works are the boulevards, one of his most lasting contributions to Paris's history. While it remained unfinished in his career and his lifetime, his street network created a template that the Travaux de Paris would continue to follow into the 20th century.

During "La Belle Epoque" ( approximately 1890 - 1914) Paris became the chic center of international arts and culture, although there were many artists who decried the fact that Haussmann´s and his successors´renovation projects had destroyed the city´s medieval center. One of them was Charles Rabelais, who described his feelings in a poem:

Old Paris is gone (no human heart
changes half so fast as a city's face)…
There used to be a poultry market here,
and one cold morning… I saw

a swan that had broken out of its cage,
webbed feet clumsy on the cobblestones,
white fathers dragging in the uneven ruts,
and obstinately pecking at the drains…

Paris changes . . . but in sadness like mine
nothing stirs—new buildings, old
neighbourhoods turn to allegory,
and memories weigh more than stone

Below is a small collection of photographs, drawings and etchings from Paris, which show people and places during the first years of "La Belle Epoque":

Rue de Rivoli

Hôtel de ville, the Paris city hall

Place de la Concorde

Palais de la Bourse

Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile

The Eiffel tower in the 1880s

Boulevard de la Madeleine

The Regiment is marching (etching by Rosseau)

Notre-Dame and the Île de la Cité

A scene from La Rive Gauche, the southern bank of the river Seine
(etching by Flórian, based on a painting by Béraud)

A rastaquouère (social upstart)
(etching by Rousseau, based on a painting by Forsin)

Destitution - "when you have not been able to pay the rent"
(etching by Rosseau, based on a painting by Geoffray)

A boulevardier - a man who promenades through the fashionable city streets of
Paris, "a man about town"
(etching by Rosseau, based on a drawing by Forsin)