THE IMPROVEMENTS OF PARIS.

THE works which have been executed in Paris since the re-establishment of the Empire have certainly made it the most admirable city in the world.

The new streets afford the best existing specimens of the straight line architecture which the popular taste of the moment regards with such affection; they present this type under the most striking conditions of width, height, and length. In some of them, especially in the Rue de Rivoli and the Boulevard de Sebastopol, the excessive regularity of the outline disappears in the almost endless perspective which they offer; the proportions are so large that the monotonous uniformity of the detail is forgotten under the impression produced by the splendour of the whole. The new public buildings are generally well placed and effective. The Louvre, though open to criticism in some minor points, is magnificent when regarded as a mass; the great barracks of Prince Eugène and Napoléon would be almost palaces elsewhere; the restorations, particularly those of the Bibliothèque Impériale, the Beaux Arts, Notre-Dame, and the Sainte-Chapelle, have been generally well studied and perfectly executed. Indeed, with the exception of a few glaring failures-among which the Mairie which has been stuck up as a pendant to the old church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and the two theatres now building on the Place du Châtelet, stand first for conspicuous ugliness and bad taste-all that has been done is externally complete and grand. This praise applies with still greater force to the parks and gardens which have of the Louvre, squares been so liberally created in and round Paris. The St. Jacques la Boucherie, the Conservatoire, the Temple, and the Innocents, are all pretty and attractive; while the new flower-beds of the Champs Elysées, the Bois de Boulogne, and the Bois de Vincennes, are really admirable specimens of ornamental gardening applied on the largest scale. Nothing so perfect, or so perfectly kept up, exists in England.

the is turned in the finished quarters of Paris it Whichever eye way meets the same magnificence of view, the same vastness of proportion. Strangers may well be bewildered by the interminable lines of splendid streets, with their six-floored white stone houses, showing twelve or fifteen windows in a row. At every large opening there is a fountain or a bed of many-coloured flowers, replaced as fast as they fade. The clear sky brings out the house-tops as if they were cut in cardboard, and shows up the distant green hills, with no smoke or mist to dim their outline. The senses yield to the pleasant influence of so much grandeur, and brightness, and colour; but just when you are thinking what a charming place Paris is, and how admirably it is all kept up, you suddenly come on to a street which is being pulled down from end to end; the palaces and gardens you have just left are replaced by crumbling walls and crashing timbers, the sky so bright just now is hidden by the dust of falling rubbish, the pavement is ankle-deep in dirt, and the road is barred by carts of old materials and swearing drivers. You are painfully and practically reminded that other streets have been demolished, and other houses pulled down by thousands, to make room for those which you

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were admiring before your day-dream was interrupted by this bitter contrast; and, in spite of you, a little question suggests itself to your mind, "How is all this done-what has it cost-and when is it going to stop?" The question is impertinent. It concerns nobody, and nobody can answer it. At least so they seem to think in Paris.

It is true that it is very difficult to answer; it is even admissible that the Parisians are right, and that they cannot answer it at all, not because reply is impossible, but because, with all their intelligence, they have never tried to make one.

It may be because they think the subject beyond human investigation that the people of Paris have never attempted to inquire into the system pursued, and the cost incurred in the reconstruction of their city since 1852; it may be because they are so much accustomed to see their paternal administration do every single thing for them, without consulting them, that they are, by habit, content and pleased beforehand with all the acts of their chiefs; it may be because they are afraid to calculate the outlay, for fear it should be too awfully big, and that they prefer doubt to certainty; or it may be because- -But no, that would be sedi

tious, so we will not say it.

Whatever be the cause of their silence on a subject which concerns them so profoundly, the fact is that, though there has been a good deal of grumbling about it lately, they have scarcely yet attempted to seriously discuss the system under which their houses are being demolished, aud still less to make a total of the various elements which have constituted the expenditure of the last nine years on the streets and public works of Paris.

It is true that they have talked between themselves, and that they have even ventured to cry out once or twice, with a timid little voice, against the continuation of so much destruction and so much expense without their leave being asked. They have hinted on one or two occasions that perhaps, with all respect and submission to the prefect and municipality, it might just be possible to do otherwise; and they have presumed to back this impudent suggestion by the observation that, after all, it is they who pay the bill. A small campaign on the point was attempted in the Chamber in March, and a series of good articles were published on it in the Opinion Nationale during the spring, by MM. Guéroult and Ferdinand de Lasteyrie. But the object of these futile efforts was rather to acquire some sort of control for the future than to help any one to ascertain the history or cost of what has already been done.

The care of the future belongs to the Parisians themselves; if they are satisfied to go on as they are, we have no right to tell them to do otherwise. But the past is the property of the whole world; it belongs to us as much as to them, and as they have not attempted to examine its details, there is no reason why we should not do so for our own instruction; they might be offended if we presumed to say for theirs also.

The question is triple. "How has it been done-what has it cost -and where is it going to end?" We will look at each part separately. HOW HAS IT BEEN DONE?

The improvements of Paris have been ordered by an absolute government, whose object and interest it was to adorn the capital and to provide sure living for its population by the creation of constant work. They have been directed and partly executed by a municipal administration named by the state, which, while obeying the orders it has received, has

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been stimulated to exaggeration by the inevitable ambition of associating its memory with the immensity of the results it has attained. They have been developed beyond all measure by the incredible rise which they have produced in the value of land, and by the profits which they have suddenly created in favour of those who have been mixed in their execution. If the gambling public had not been attracted to the operation the state and the town alone could never have performed a tenth part of what has been already done; but they called speculation to their aid, and it has come with such a rush that one-half of the destruction of the last nine years is the voluntary act of the house-owners themselves. The state and the prefect set the avalanche rolling, but others have helped them to push it on, and if it has come down on the people's heads it is not the sole fault of the government.

The improvements, though exclusively controlled and approved by the municipality, are divided into the two classes of works imposed and partly executed by it, and of works proposed and carried out by private speculators with the permission of the town. The whole moral responsibility, and the whole merit or demerit of the plans, rest with the administration; but the speculators of Paris have taken a large share in the execution, and have seized with avidity the opportunities of personal profit afforded by the huge commotion produced by the acts and initiative of the government.

See what M. Guéroult says on this point in almost the only publication that has appeared on the subject.*

"Until a few years ago building in Paris was a purely private affair. A proprietor restored an old house or built a new one on unoccupied ground. A builder put up a block in the hope of selling it at a profit. But in each case the proprietor or the builder took account of the habits and necessities of the inhabitants of the quarter. If they built in the Faubourg St. Honoré, they put up a large hotel in dressed stone; if they found themselves in a trading neighbourhood, the house was in rubble; in each case it was planned to meet the wants of its special class of tenants.

"Latterly, a different system has been followed. The destruction or construction of an entire district has been decreed à priori, and in order to find the money required for such a heavy undertaking, the municipality generally treats with a powerful company possessing large capital. And this is how the thing is done:

"The company, which is directed by very clever people, and which employs engineers and architects of talent, submits to the administration the plans which it has imagined for the creation of a new quarter. If there is any chance of their being adopted, the company buys beforehand, quietly and conditionally, all the land and buildings which lie in the road of the projected work. As the owners have no notion of the grand destiny reserved to their property, they sell it at a reasonable price. As soon as the plan is adopted, the Moniteur announces that it is to be executed, and then the price jumps up. We know of cases where the land was bought by the executing company at 21. per square yard, and was re-sold by it at 107.

"But the company cannot do everything itself. It re-sells part of the

*La Liberté et les Affaires, p. 9.

land to speculators, and, of course, as the latter buy it at 107., they sell it again at 127. or 147.

"With land costing so dear (and it is generally far above these rates), it is natural to try to make a good use of it. So a grand house in carved stone is put upon it, and as the house, therefore, costs a considerable quantity of money, it is equally natural that it should be let at an exceedingly high rent.

"The person who at last buys the house as an investment,* takes it at a price which covers all the profits previously realised by the company, the land speculator, and the builder; he only gets out of it a fair interest for his money."

This quotation gives a fair general idea of how it has been done. There have been variations of detail; in some of the largest cases the town itself has played the part of the company, has bought the fated houses, has pulled them down, and has re-sold to the inevitable speculator the surface left after deducting the area of the new street created. In other cases, the proprietors have demolished their own houses of their own accord, and no better proof can be given of the profits gained by the substitution of new houses for old ones, than the fact that of the 4349 houses pulled down from 1852 to 1859, only 2236 were destroyed by the town, and the rest by the owners themselves. But whatever be the name or position of the destroyer, the same system has been followed, and the same result produced in every case: the land has come to the builder at such a price that he could not afford to put a poor house upon it: he was forced to build a splendid hotel with gilded rooms, in order to be able to let them at a rent sufficient to pay interest on the outlay. The purely speculative nature of nearly all this building is further proved by the circumstance that out of 814 houses built in 1854 and 1855, only 354 were directed by architects, the rest were constructed by the contractors themselves on their own plans, to sell again.

And these grand houses were dear, not only from their own magnificence, not only because the land they stood on was dear in itself, but because its price contained the value of the previous house pulled down to make room for the new one. M. Guéroult says:§ "If you pull down an old house to put a new one in its place, it is because you are certain to let the latter at a price which will pay interest not only on its own real cost, but on the value of the house you destroy, and on the cost of pulling it down.

"If you pull down existing houses to replace them by others, you cannot help raising rents, and if this is done simultaneously in every direction all over the town, you produce a rise beyond all measure, which is still further aggravated by every new application of the system.

"If you built on unoccupied land the result would be perfect; the new houses would then compete with the old ones, and rents would fall in both. But it is the exact contrary which is done."

Not only are the rents of the new houses enormous, for the reasons just given, but those of the old ones have been tripled, out of pure and natural sympathy with the splendid and expensive neighbours they have

As the system of ground-rent is unknown in France, all houses are freehold, and the land they stand on is bought with them.

† Moniteur, December 8, 1859.

§ La Liberté et les Affaires, p. 19.

Revue Municipale, June 16, 1855.

received. The proprietors of the old houses, that is to say, those who owned them before 1852, have now about three times their original income; while those who buy houses at present, whether new or old, only get five per cent. for their money, and will be ruined as soon as the inevitable reaction arrives. When that reaction takes place, the public will gain in one respect by the changes which have been effected, for they will return to ordinary rates of rent with infinitely finer-looking houses than they had before.

And this is not all. Not only have entire districts been swept away; not only have thriving streets been turned into blocks of houses, and blocks of good houses pulled down to make room for streets that nobody wanted; not only during the first four years of the improvements were the demolitions more numerous than the constructions, so suddenly depriving the constantly increasing populations of a sufficient supply of lodging.; not only have rents and land got up to such fantastic rates, that some of the fortunes made by land speculators since 1852 are almost as rapid, and almost as great, as those of Aladdin or Monte Christo; not only are the Parisians ruining themselves as fast as they can go, because the cost of life has grown beyond their means, and because they will not change their habits and go to live in the country, but, in addition to all this, some of the works executed, or projected, are so miserably planned that, as far as they are concerned, this wanton expense and riotous elevation of price have either been utterly thrown away as regards sensible and useful improvement, or have been incurred under circumstances which might have been avoided by a little management or forethought. The twelve concentric boulevards round the Arch of Triumph are a good example of the absurd folly which has sought destruction for destruction's sake; the new street through the gardens of the Luxembourg is another; the proposed reconstruction of the Rond Point of the Champs Elysées is a third; the prolongation of the Boulevard St. Germain is a fourth. Entirely new houses, only a year or two old, are being pulled down again, in consequence of a modification of the municipal plans. But perhaps the most striking case, because we have details about it, is that of the new Boulevard Malesherbes, which was opened on August 14. street was projected in 1808 by Frochot, then prefect of Paris, who estimated that it would cost the town 56,000l.; as it was not wanted it was not executed, and the project remained asleep until it was suddenly taken up and instantly executed eighteen months ago, no one knows why, unless it be to prove that the prefect can draw a hay-fork, which is its shape, as well as a straight line. If it had been constructed under the First Empire it might have been understood, as it would then have cheaply laid open a new quarter of Paris; but its execution now has cost the town 1,200,000l.,* more than twenty-one times the original estimate. The ten houses of the left side of the Rue Rumfort, which were destroyed to put that quiet street into the line required, cost alone 115,000l. What incredible folly!

This

We asked how has it been done? It has been done by the strong hand of irresponsible power; it has been carried out by obedient and irresponsible instruments; it has been backed up and developed by furious private speculation; it has been done recklessly and wildly, without measure or prudence, and everywhere at once. The town has been em. Revue Municipale, July 20, 1860.