Transforming Paris: the life and labors of Baron Haussmann.

Jordan, David P., 1939-

Published by New York: Free Press, 1995

About this Item

very good dust-jacket, cover price $28.00, very good white half-cloth with blue boards, slight wear. remainder stripe on bottom foredge. JORDAN, DAVID P. Transforming Paris: the life and labors of Baron Haussmann. New York: Free Press, 1995, 1st printing number line starting with 1, xxii, 455pp., . The Paris we know today, with its grand boulevards, its bridges and parks, its monumental beauty, was essentially built in only seventeen years, in the middle of the nineteenth century. In this brief period, whole neighborhoods of medieval and revolutionary Pais - overcrowded, dangerous, and filthy - were razed, and from the rubble a modern city of light and air emerged. This triumphant rebuilding was chiefly the work of one man, Baron Georges Haussmann, Napoleon III's Prefect of the Seine. It was Haussmann's task to assert, in stone, the power and permanence of Paris, to show the world that it was the seat of an empire of mythic proportions. To this end, he imposed grand visual perspectives, as when he transformed Napoleon I's Arc de Triomphe into a magnificent twelve-armed star from which radiated the broadest boulevards of Europe. Below ground, his modern sewer system became one of the wonders of the civilized world, eagerly toured by royalty and commoners alike. Haussmann's mandate was not only to create an impression of grandeur, but to secure the city for better control by government. By creating formal spaces where there had previously been a maze of chaotic streets, Haussmann opened Paris to effective police control and thwarted the recurrent demonstration of its well-known revolutionary fervor. The determined and autocratic Haussmann imprinted rational order and bourgeois civility on the unruly city which had for so long simmered with riot and insurrection. - CONTENTS: Paris before Haussmann -- Haussmann before Paris -- Climbing the greasy pole -- Paris in crisis -- "My combative prefectship" -- "This province I have so loved" -- "A state within the state" -- "The implacable axes of a straight line ." -- "The vice-emperor is the prefect of the Seine" -- Money -- "Lackey of a good house" -- "Organs of the large city" -- "The vandalism of triumph' -- Haussmann after Paris -- Paris after Haussmann. 9780029165317 ISBN 0029165318.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Transforming Paris: the life and labors of Baron Haussmann.
• Publisher: New York: Free Press, 1995
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included