Paris: Bracing for Change

"The shape of a city, alas, changes faster than a mortal heart,” bemoaned Charles Baudelaire, who lived through Haussmann’s transformation of Paris. Victor Hugo gave vent to similar grief in a lament, The Fateful Years. Yet time and history proved both poets wrong: a mere glance at the scale model of Paris on display at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal suffices to take the measure of Haussmann’s genius and vision, and to admire the splendid, coherent and harmonious urban fabric he masterminded.

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The project for a bleachers-style stairway in front of the Musée d'Orsay

Project for a riverside promenade at the Port du Gros-Caillou

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Alas, indeed. By the 1950s the philistines of the day began to fray and dent Haussmann’s fabric. By the 1970s, a rampant sprawl of concrete had infiltrated the city and cluttered its skyline: the Montparnasse Tower, the Zamansky Tower at Jussieu University campus in the 5th arrondissement, the Beaugrenelle development (also called Front de Seine) west of the Eiffel Tower, and La Défense—just outside the city proper—which scarred the superb vista that sweeps from the small Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in front of the Louvre down the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. In 1977, a 37-meter (121-foot) cap was imposed on the height of new constructions, a damage control measure that remained in force for 30 years.