Haussmann's renovation of Paris

Boulevard Haussmann

Baron Haussmann, ca. 1865

Haussmann's Renovation of Paris, or the Haussmann Plan, was a modernization program of Paris commissioned by Napoléon III and directed by the Seine prefect, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, between 1853 and 1870. Though work continued until the end of the 19th century, well after the Second Empire's demise in 1870, it is often referred to as the "Second Empire reforms".

The project encompassed all aspects of urban planning, both in the centre of Paris and in the surrounding districts: streets and boulevards, regulations imposed on facades of buildings, public parks, sewers and water works, city facilities, and public monuments. The planning was influenced by many factors, not the least of which was the city's history of street revolutions.

Haussmann's philosophy of urban planning was criticised strongly by some of his contemporaries, largely ignored for a good part of the twentieth century, but later re-evaluated when modernist types of urban planning became discredited. His restructuring of Paris gave the city its present form; its long, straight, wide boulevards with their cafés and shops determined a new type of urban scenario and have had a profound influence on the everyday lives of Parisians. Haussmann's boulevards established the foundation of what is today the popular representation of the French capital around the world, cutting through the old Paris of dense and irregular medieval alleyways into a more rationally-designed city with wide avenues and open spaces which extended outwards far beyond the old city limits.

A medieval capital is modernised

The Île de la Cité and its medieval surroundings before the Haussmann works (Vaugondy map of 1771).

The Île de la Cité transformed by Haussmann: new transverse streets (red), public spaces (light blue) and buildings (dark blue).

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the centre of Paris had the same structure as it did in the Middle Ages. The narrow interweaving streets and cramped buildings impeded the flow of traffic, resulting in unhealthy conditions that were denounced by the first hygiene scientists. The successive regimes had pushed the outer limits of the city to where they are now, on the Paris périphérique (beltway), but none of them changed the heart of the capital. From the 1830s to 1860s, it remained the same.

Modernisation of a medieval city

The plan to modernise the city dates back to revolutionary times. In 1794, during the French Revolution, a "Commission of Artists" formed a project suggesting the opening of broader avenues in Paris, with a street making a straight line from Place de la Nation to the Louvre, where the Avenue Victoria is today. It anticipated an east-west "historical axis" of main thoroughfares that attempted to display several of Paris' public monuments, including the Tuileries palace (now just a garden), the Louvre palace and the Champs Elysées leading to the Arc de Triomphe.

Napoleon I commissioned the construction of a colossal street along the Jardin des Tuileries, the Rue de Rivoli, that extended under the Second Empire up to the Châtelet and the Rue Saint-Antoine; the new street was better adapted to traffic than the street designed by the Commission of Artists. It also served as the basis for a new legal device: the servitude d'alignement, which prevented real estate owners from renovating or rebuilding beyond certain limits established by the administration. However, the law's objective of eventually widening the streets was not implemented.

At the end of the 1830s, Paris prefect Claude-Philibert Barthelot, comte de Rambuteau, realised that the problems regarding traffic and hygiene in the old over-populated districts had become a cause for concern; in accordance with the miasma theory of disease, then prevailing, it was important to "let air and men circulate". This conclusion stemmed from the 1832 cholera epidemic—which killed 20,000 in Paris out of a total population of 650,000—and the new "social medicine" famously analysed by Michel Foucault (which focused on flux, circulation of air, location of cemeteries, etc.). Prefect Rambuteau thus designed a new street for the medieval centre of Paris, but the administration had limited powers due to the prevailing rules regulating expropriation. A new law approved on 3 May 1841 attempted to solve this issue.

It was with this background that the Second Empire opted for a huge program of expropriation and clearances, much more costly than the servitude d'alignement, but also much more effective.

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte

Elected president of the Republic of France in 1848, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte became emperor on 2 December 1852 and adopted the title Napoléon III. With his new rank, Napoléon III decided to modernize Paris after seeing London, a city transformed by the Industrial Revolution, which offered large public parks and a complete sewer system. Inspired by Rambuteau's ideas, and aware of social issues, he wished to improve the housing conditions of the lower class; in some neighbourhoods, the population density reached numbers of 100,000 people/km² (250,000 people/sq. mile) in conditions of very poor sanitation. The goal was also for public authority to better control a capital where several regimes had been overthrown since 1789. Some real-estate owners demanded large, straight avenues to help troops manoeuvre.

Le Marais was one of the rare neighbourhoods almost untouched by the Haussmann renovations (pictured: Hôtel de Sens).

To satisfy his ambitions the new emperor had a considerable amount of power at his disposal, enabling him to ignore any resistance, something his predecessors had lacked. But Napoléon III still had to find a man capable of implementing a project of such magnitude. He eventually found Georges Eugène Haussmann, an effective administrator of proven loyalty, and he nominated him Prefect of the Seine in 1853. The two men formed an efficient team, the emperor supporting the prefect against his adversaries, and Haussmann showing loyalty in all circumstances, while promoting his own ideas such as a project for Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Such considerable work required many different collaborators. Victor de Persigny, Minister of the Interior, who had introduced Haussmann to Napoleon, was given direction of the financial aspects, with the help of the Péreire brothers. Jean-Charles Alphand dealt with the parks and plantations of gardener Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps. Haussmann expanded the fundamental role of the Paris Map Services, directed by the architect Deschamps, who was in charge of drawing the new avenues and enforcing construction rules; in this area, "geometry and graphic design play a more important role than architecture itself", said Haussmann. Many other notable architects also took part in the project, including: Victor Baltard, Théodore Ballu, Gabriel Davioud, and Jacques Ignace Hittorff.

Collaboration between public regulation and private initiatives

Place Saint-Georges.

Inspired by Saint-Simonism, Napoleon III, and engineers such as Michel Chevalier or entrepreneurs like the Pereire brothers, believed that society could be transformed and poverty reduced by economic voluntarism, according to which the government should play an important part in economic affairs. It took a strong or even authoritarian regime to encourage capitalists to begin important projects that would benefit society as a whole, and particularly the poor. The basis of the economic system was the banks, which at the time underwent considerable expansion. The renovations of Paris matched this political orientation. Haussmann's projects would hence be decided and managed by the state, performed by private entrepreneurs and financed with loans backed by the state.

The Haussmann system

First, the state expropriated those owners whose land was in the way of the renovations. Jules Ferry condemned this financial issue in a pamphlet published in 1867: Les Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann (the title is a pun, translating as "The Fantastic Accounts of Haussmann", but homophonic with the title of Jacques Offenbach's opéra comique, Les Contes d'Hoffmann).

Public regulations

The Boulevard de Sébastopol. Opened in 1858, the boulevard runs through the center of Paris.

Haussmann had the opportunity of working in a legislative and regulatory context that was modified specifically for the renovations. The decree of 26 March 1852 regarding the streets of Paris, passed one year before Haussmann's appointment, established the main judicial methods:

• Expropriation "for purposes of public interest": the city could acquire buildings placed along the avenues to be constructed, whereas earlier it could only acquire the buildings placed directly on the future construction site. This would allow a considerable part of the Île de la Cité to be demolished. After 1860, the regime's increased liberalization made expropriations more difficult.
• Those who owned buildings were required to clean and refresh the facades every ten years.
• The levelling of the streets of Paris, the buildings' alignments and connections to the sewer were regulated.

The authorities intervened at the same time to regulate the dimensions of buildings and even on the aesthetic aspect of their frontages:

• The 1859 regulations for urban planning in Paris increased the maximum height of buildings from 17.55 meters (57.5 ft) to 20 meters (65.6 ft) in streets wider than 20 meters. The roofs were required to have at least a 12:12 pitch (45 degree incline). The combination of height and roof pitch requirements gave rise to some of the main characteristics of Second Empire architecture, including the mansard roof and the top-floor garret.

• Construction along the new avenues had to comply with a set of rules regarding outside appearance. Neighbouring buildings had to have their floors at the same height, and the façades' main lines had to be the same. The use of quarry stone was mandatory along these avenues. Paris started to acquire the features of an immense palace.

Already, the role played by the architects of the roads showed the importance of engineers as civil servants.

The plan develops

The main lines created or transformed between 1850 and 1870 in the centre of Paris.

The plans corresponded to the Empire's evolution: authoritarian until 1859, and more liberal after 1860. Twenty thousand houses were destroyed, and more than 40,000 built between 1852 and 1872.

Some of these projects were to continue during the Third Republic, after the tenure of Haussmann and Napoleon III had ended.

A network of large avenues

When Rambuteau cleared the way for the first time in the city's history for a large avenue in the centre of Paris, Parisians were surprised by its width of 13 meters (45 ft). But Haussmann made the Rue Rambuteau a moderate-sized street after creating new avenues up to 30 meters wide (100 ft). To this day, the Haussmann network is still the backbone of Paris's urban body.

The north-south and east-west openings

The avenue de l'Opéra as seen by Pissarro when standing by the Comédie-Française.

Between 1854 and 1858, Haussmann took advantage of what was to be the most authoritarian period of Napoleon III's rule to achieve what could possibly not have been done during any other decade: transforming the heart of Paris by clearing a gigantic crossing in its centre.

Because of the construction of the North–South line, from Boulevard de Sébastopol to Boulevard Saint-Michel, a number of alleyways and dead-ends were cleared from the map. This line included an important intersection near the Châtelet and the Rue de Rivoli: the Second Empire extended it to the rue Saint-Antoine, a street Napoleon I had drawn alongside the Tuileries.

At the same time, Baltard was working on Les Halles, a project initiated by Rambuteau, and the Île de la Cité was largely demolished and transformed. The bridges surrounding were either rebuilt or considerably redone.

Haussmann completed this large intersection with a line connecting the first circle of boulevards, such as the rue de Rennes on the left bank and the avenue de l'Opéra on the right bank. The rue de Rennes, which was meant to reach the Seine, never did.

The rings of boulevards are completed

Haussmann continued the work of Louis XVIII. He widened the Grands Boulevards and designed and built new axes of great size such as the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.

Some of these axes connected Louis XIV's grand boulevards to those that ran alongside the Farmers General Wall. The Boulevard Haussmann and the Rue La Fayette, partially in place before 1870, guaranteed better access to the Opera neighbourhood from the outside districts. The Boulevard Voltaire made it easier to bypass the centre from the Place de la Nation.

On the Left Bank, as the Southern Boulevards, which go through Place d'Italie, Place Denfert-Rochereau and Montparnasse, were too far from the centre, the idea of another east-west access arose. Haussmann added the Rue des Écoles, designed by Napoléon III, to his pet project: the Boulevard Saint-Germain, a Left Bank extension of the Grands Boulevards of the Right Bank.

A third network: the outside arrondissements

The avenue des Gobelins and a view of the Panthéon.

During the last years of his term, Haussmann began to imagine converting the outside towns annexed in 1860 into arrondissements (districts). He decided to create a long, winding set of streets connecting the 12th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements: rue Simon-Bolivar, rue des Pyrénées, and avenue Michel-Bizot. The western neighbourhoods enjoy a prestigious set-up, with twelve avenues, most of them built during the Second Empire, converging to the place de l'Étoile.

Other lines, such as the avenue Daumesnil and the boulevard Malesherbes, enabled access to the centre from the outside arrondissements.

The squares at the crossroads

The connection between the great boulevards required the creation of squares on the same scale. The Place du Châtelet, converted by Davioud, is the crossroads of the two great axes crossing Paris from north to south and east to west. The works of Haussmann converted other great squares at crossing points across the whole city: Place de l'Étoile, Place Léon-Blum, Place de la République, and Place de l'Alma.

The railway stations

Opéra Garnier.

Haussmann had the railway station Gare de Lyon reconstructed in 1855 and the Gare du Nord in 1865.

He dreamed of connecting the Parisian railway termini with rail links but had to be content with making access easy by connecting them with important roads. From the Gare de Lyon, the Rue de Lyon, the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir and the Boulevard de Magenta run to the Gare de l'Est. Two parallel axes (Rue La Fayette and Boulevard Haussmann is the first, Rue de Châteaudun and Rue de Maubeuge the second) join the district around the Gare de l'Est and the Gare du Nord to that of the Gare Saint-Lazare. On the Left Bank, the Rue de Rennes serves Gare Montparnasse, then situated where the Tour Montparnasse stands now.

Monuments

The mairie (town hall) of the XIIIe arrondissement.

Napoléon III and Haussmann added many prestigious edifices. Charles Garnier constructed the Opéra Garnier in an eclectic style and Gabriel Davioud designed two symmetric theatres on the Place du Châtelet. L'Hôtel-Dieu, the prison of the Cité (and future police headquarters), and the tribunal of Commerce replaced the medieval districts on the Île de la Cité. Each of the twenty new local government districts (arrondissements) was given a town hall.

They took care to set these monuments in the town by creating vast perspectives. For example, the Avenue de l'Opéra offers a great frame for the edifice of the Opera Garnier, while the houses that prevented contemplation of the cathedral of Notre-Dame were demolished to provide a great open space.

Modern public facilities

The renovation of Paris was meant to be total. Clearing living areas implied not only a better air circulation but also better provision of water and better evacuation of waste.

The N of Napoléon III on the pont Saint-Michel (St Michael bridge).

In 1852, drinking water in Paris came mainly from the river Ourcq, a tributary of the river Marne. Steam engines also extracted water from the Seine, but the hygiene was appalling. Haussmann tasked the engineer Eugène Belgrand with the creation of a new system of water provision to the capital, which resulted in the construction of 600 kilometres of aqueduct between 1865 and 1900. The first, that of the Dhuis, brought water extracted near Château-Thierry. These aqueducts discharged their water in reservoirs situated within the city. Inside the city limits and opposite Parc Montsouris, Belgrand built the largest water reservoir in the world to hold the water from the River Vanne.

Green spaces

Green spaces in Paris were rare. Having visited and enjoyed the beautiful and plentiful London parks, Napoléon III hired engineer Jean-Charles Alphand, Haussmann's future successor, to create expansive parks and green spaces. On the east and west borders of the city the bois de Vincennes and the bois de Boulogne, respectively, were built. In the enceinte de Thiers, the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, the parc Monceau, and the parc Montsouris offered citizens beautiful scenery and a place to relax and be with nature. Also, in each district plazas were built, and trees were planted along avenues.

Paris expands

The twelve arrondissements of pre-1860 Paris shown within the limits of the expanded city.

In 1860, Paris absorbed the communities outside its gates as far as the enceinte de Thiers. The old twelve arrondissements became the new twenty arrondissements. See also Arrondissements of Paris.

Critics of Napoleon III's urban politics

Artists and architects (Charles Garnier) deplored the monotony of monumental architecture. Politicians and writers accused the spread of speculation and corruption (Émile Zola's "La Curée" ) and a few accused Haussmann of personal enrichment. Many of the criticisms targeted the base motivations of the venture and ended by eliminating the préfet.

Widening of streets: a tool for an authoritarian regime?

Napoléon III.

Many of Napoléon III's contemporaries accused him of hiding, under the guise of improving social and sanitary conditions, a project for more effective military policing of the capital. By this theory, the wide thoroughfares were constructed to facilitate troop movement and prevent easy blocking of streets with barricades, and their straightness allowed artillery to fire on rioting crowds and their barricades. A small number of large, open intersections allowed easy control by a small force. In addition, buildings set back from the center of the street could not be used so easily as fortifications. This interpretation has been widely repeated and accepted, notably in Lewis Mumford's writings.^{[citation needed]}

Australian military historian Dr Peter Stanley noticed while visiting Paris that the putative use of artillery in suppressing urban unrest could have determined the city's characteristic acute angles at intersections. A right-angled grid plan would have resulted guns shooting from side-streets onto boulevards hitting "friendly" forces. By contrast, artillery firing from subsidiary streets at acute angles would both direct an effective cross-fire onto insurgents on the boulevards and avoid the problem of friendly fire. Can this theory be verified from the documents, he asked.

The extent of the work itself shows that Napoleon III's objectives were, at least, not solely security-oriented in nature. Beyond the spectacular piercing of the main boulevards, city transformations also included the construction of a modern underground network of sewers and freshwater, the installation of an efficient building plan on the surface, and the harmonisation of the architecture along the new avenues.

Yet it is true that Napoleon III was concerned with maintaining strict order. Haussmann never hesitated to explain that his street plan would ease the maintenance of public order when presenting his projects to the Conseil de Paris or local landowners. When reports of the Paris Commune insurrection reached Haussmann he expressed his frustration at not having been able to implement his reforms quickly enough to make such an insurrection futile. The tactical dimension is thus indeed present, but it is but one element among others; it is perhaps most important where there was question of joining Paris' main casernes between them.

It should also be noted that the police were not one of Haussmann's responsibilities. His mandate actually reduced the position of préfet de police, as it removed from this office problems such as city hygiene and the lighting and cleaning of its streets.

Social disruption

Many contemporary observers denounced the demographic and social effects of Haussmann's urbanism operations.

Louis Lazare, author, under Haussmann's predecessor Rambuteau, of an important "dictionary of Paris streets", considered in 1861 in the journal Revue municipale that Haussmann's works disproportionately increased state-dependent populations in attracting masses of poor to Paris. In reality, in certain respects Haussmann himself slowed the progress of his renovations in order to avoid a massive flood of workers to the capital.^{[citation needed]}

However, critics denounced as early as 1850 the effect that the renovations would have on the social composition of Paris. In a slightly oversimplified manner, they described pre-Haussmannian buildings as a synthesis of the Parisian social hierarchy: the bourgeoisie on the second floor, civil servants and employees on the third and fourth, low-wage employees on the fifth, house staff, students and the poor under the eaves. Thus one building was shown to represent and house all social classes. This cohabitation, of course varying from quarter to quarter, disappeared in its majority after the completion of Haussmann's work. This had two effects on the dispersion of dwellings in Paris:

• The city-centre renovations provoked a rise in rents, and this forced poorer families towards Paris' outer arrondissements. This we can perhaps note by population statistics:^{[citation needed]}

Arrondissement	1861	1866	1872
1er	89,519	81,665	74,286
6e	95,931	99,115	90,288
17e	75,288	93,193	101,804
20e	70,060	87,844	92,712

• Certain urbanism decisions contributed to a social imbalance between Paris's wealthy west and its underprivileged east. Therefore no eastern neighborhood in Paris benefited from renovations comparable to the large avenues surrounding the place de l'Étoile in the XVIe and XVIIe arrondissements. The poor were concentrated in arrondissements neglected by the city renovations.

As an answer to this, Haussmann presented the complex creation of the bois de Vincennes forest-parklands that would give working populations a promenade comparable to the bois de Boulogne. Also, the unsanitary quarters "cleaned" by Haussmann contained very few of the bourgeois class. Indeed, the parting of established working-class residential areas may have been another security measure, as a disrupted and scattered community will find it harder to unite and so will pose less of a threat. To moderns this may seem odd, but working-class people were still known as "the dangerous classes" to Parisians and the French in general, and the 1789 and 1848 revolutions, in which workers revolted against the state, were still remembered well.

That way, a sort of "zonage" was established that still dominates the distribution of housing and activities in Paris and its nearest suburbs: from the centre to the west, offices and wealthy neighborhoods; from the east and outer rim, poorer housing and industry.

Financial crisis

The financial system funding the renovations began to fail towards the end of the 1860s. Paris' annexation of its intra-muros suburbs at the beginning of the decade came at a greater price: Paris' newer outer quarters required even more renovations than the still-incomplete city centre, and the budgets prepared before the work's beginning were proven to be much less than the reality. Also, a liberalization of the regime's more authoritarian aspects made obtaining the necessary expropriations more difficult, as the Conseil d'État (Council of State) and Cour de cassation (court of appeals) often intervened in favour of landowners.

In addition to the above, Parisians were becoming intolerant of the renovations that had disrupted the city for nearly twenty years. Also, the utility of the network of boulevards in the outer quarters was not as obvious as the piercing of, for example, the Boulevard de Sébastopol or the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

The journalist Jules Ferry made a name for himself by a series of articles titled "Les Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann" (or "Haussmann's fantastical accounts (tales)") in which he denounced the exaggerated ambitions of the renovation projects and their uncertain finances. These projects were effectively financed not by loan, but by bonds sold through the Caisse des travaux de Paris (Paris works fund) quite outside of parliament control.

Haussmann was honest, but he spent 2.5 billion francs on rebuilding Paris, a sum that staggered his critics. Ferry and other enemies of Napoleon alleged that Haussmann had recklessly squandered money and planned poorly. They further alleged that he had falsified accounts. The political attacks were so intense that Napoleon made Haussmann a scapegoat, hoping his resignation would satisfy the bourgeois parties which had become increasingly angry during the economic depression of the late 1860s.

Haussmann was removed from office in the beginning of 1870, a few months before the end of the 2nd Empire he had served for almost its entire duration. The debts incurred were absorbed quickly by the government of the 3rd Republic.

The impact of Paris' renovations

Aesthetics of the "Street-Wall"

Rue Monge: three levels of "Classical Haussmannism".

Hausmann's efforts were not limited to new streets and utilities, but also dictated the facade of buildings.

Street blocks are designed as homogeneous architectural wholes. Buildings are not treated as independent structures, but together must create—on a block, if not the same street or even quarter—a unified urban landscape.

The regulations and constraints imposed by the authorities favoured a typology that brings the classical evolution of the Parisian building to its term in the façade typical of the Haussmann era:

• ground floor and basement with thick, load-bearing walls, fronts usually parallel to the street;
• mezzanine or entresol intermediate level, with low ceilings;
• second, piano nobile floor with a balcony;
• third and fourth floors in the same style but with less elaborate stonework around the windows, sometimes lacking balconies;
• fifth floor with a single, continuous, undecorated balcony;
• mansard roof, angled at 45°, with garret rooms and dormer windows.

The Haussmann façade is organised around horizontal lines that often continue from one building to the next: balconies and cornices are perfectly aligned without any noticeable alcoves or projections. At the risk of the uniformity of certain quarters, the rue de Rivoli served as a model for the entire network of new Parisian boulevards. For the building façades, the technological progress of stone sawing and (steam) transportation allowed the use of massive stone blocks instead of simple stone facing. The street-side result was a "monumental" effect that exempted buildings from a dependence on decoration; sculpture and other elaborate stonework would not become widespread until the end of the century.

Legacy

Panoramic view over the western side of Paris, at dusk, from the top of the Tour Montparnasse.

The Baron Haussmann's transformations to Paris improved the quality of life in the capital. Disease epidemics (save tuberculosis) ceased, traffic circulation improved and new buildings were better-built and more functional than their predecessors.

The Second Empire renovations left such a mark on Paris' urban history that all subsequent trends and influences were forced to refer to, adapt to, or reject, or to reuse some of its elements. By intervening only once in Paris's ancient districts, pockets of insalubrity remained which explain the resurgence of both hygienic ideals and radicalness of some planners of the 20th century.

The end of "pure Haussmannism" can be traced to urban legislation of 1882 and 1884 that ended the uniformity of the classical street, by permitting staggered facades and the first creativity for roof-level architecture; the latter would develop greatly after restrictions were further liberalized by a 1902 law. All the same, this period was merely "post-Haussmann", rejecting only the austerity of the Napoleon-era architecture, without questioning the urban planning itself.

A century after Napoleon III's reign, new housing needs and the rise of a new voluntarist Fifth Republic began a new era of Parisian urbanism. The new era rejected Haussmannian ideas as a whole to embrace those represented by architects such as Le Corbusier in abandoning unbroken street-side facades, limitations of building size and dimension, and even closing the street itself to automobiles with the creation of separated, car-free spaces between the buildings for pedestrians. This new model was quickly brought into question by the 1970s, a period featuring a reemphasis of the Haussmann heritage: a new promotion of the multifunctional street was accompanied by limitations of the building model and, in certain quarters, by an attempt to rediscover the architectural homogeneity of the Second Empire street-block.

The Parisian public now has a generally positive opinion of the Haussmann legacy^{[citation needed]}, to the extent that certain suburban towns, for example Issy-les-Moulineaux and Puteaux, have built new quarters that even by their name claim "Quartier Haussmannian", the Haussmanian heritage. These quarters are, in reality, but a pastiche of early 20th-century post-Haussmann architecture, with its bow windows and loggias.

See also

• Baron Haussmann
• Demographics of Paris

References

This article has been translated from its equivalent in the French language Wikipedia.

Further reading

• Carmona, Michel, and Patrick Camiller. Haussmann: His Life and Times and the Making of Modern Paris (2002) 505pp
• Jones, Colin. Paris: Biography of a City (2004), pp 299–343 excerpt and text search
• Pinkney, David H. "Napoleon III's Transformation of Paris: The Origins and Development of the Idea", Journal of Modern History (1955) 27#2 pp 125–134 in JSTOR
• Pinkney, David H. Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris (Princeton University Press, 1958)
• Pinkney, David H. "Money and Politics in the Rebuilding of Paris, 1860-1870", Journal of Economic History (1957) 17#1 pp 45–61. in JSTOR
• Richardson, Joanna. "Emperor of Paris Baron Haussmann 1809–1891", History Today (1975), 25#12 pp 843–49.
• Weeks, Willet. Man Who Made Paris: The Illustrated Biography of Georges-Eugene Haussmann (2000) 160pp.

External links

• (French) Map of Paris in 1840