9-8-2010

9-8-2010
Originally uploaded by cspatrick

From the park we walked to Avenue Hoche, deep in the heart of Haussmann territory. I have mentioned Haussmann before, but for those unfamiliar with Paris, I will give a brief history here, courtesy of an agglomeration of travel books and my good friend, Wikipedia. Apparently Napoleon III had ideas for the modernization of Paris in the mid 1800s, and turned execution of them over to Haussmann. Included were water and sewer works, parks, the widening of streets into magnificent boulevards and the erection of buildings with uniform facades and strict building regulations. In doing so, he destroyed the warrens of dense and irregular medieval alleyways, razed thousands of buildings and displaced many thousands of primarily lower-class individuals. He caused to be erected buildings which were uniform in height and whose structure had to match those of their neighbors to the extent that the floors had to line up in horizontal lines from one building to the next. Napoleon III had an ulterior motive in all this – control of the masses. This with a history of several prior rulers of France having met with untimely and unfortunate deaths. “Under 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 so easily be used as fortifications.” Thanks, Wikipedia. As Roger says, they did this so they could fire straight down the long streets – those narrow alleyways are hard to get a cannon down!

The Boulevard Hoche and its neighbors exemplify the Haussmann ideal: Street blocks were designed as homogeneous architectural wholes. Buildings were not treated as independent structures, but together created — on a block, if not the same street or even quarter — a unified urban landscape. Ticky-tacky on a grand scale? The ground floors (and basements) had thick, load-bearing walls. These were usually occupied by stores and shops. The second, or “noble” floors had one or two balconies with large floor plans. The third and fourth floors were done in the same style, but had less elaborate stonework around the windows. The fifth floors usually had single, continuous balconies with little or no ornamentation. The eaves were to have an angle of 45º. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Paris you know and love today.

Yesterday we took our cracked pitcher to the corner recycle container, but it would not fit into the holes on the container, which have rubber flanges on them and will accept bottles and other glass. Because of the handle projecting out from the pitcher, it was too large, so we set it on the sidewalk beside the container, where there were a few other bottles and some miscellaneous trash. Today when we walked by the corner, we noted that it was gone! The other bottles were still there, as was the trash, but our pitcher had disappeared. Somebody is going to be in for a surprise if they try to use it as a pitcher – it has a slow, steady leak, which is why we parted with it.

A note on Roger’s hat – the other day we were walking home from somewhere and a couple of older French women were flirting with him, enjoying his hat!