Anthony Vidler | The Scenes of the Street

The Scenes of the Street:

Anthony Vidler

Transformations in ldeal and Reality' 1750-1871

Tour comme la société, Ia rue s'est transþrmée.

Gusrcve Kahn, The Aesthetic of the Street, /897

The cities are allowed to change But you are not allowed, to change.

Eertolr Brecht, Handbook for City'Dwelles, 1928 The industrial revolution in England and the political revolution in

France, each in different but ultimately interdependent ways. and in an inffedibly short period of time, forced new forms of life and understanding on the inhabirants olthe rapidly expanding cities. The radical effects

oithis

huge ovenurning, the clash between the emerging forces of

producrion and the rising polirical aspirarions of those who would sha¡e. ðr tu.te preúÉnted from sharing. in its material benefits were displayed

inenia: they were bodies, healthy or sick. with characteristic symptoms of disease or fitness: they were sentient beings' however monstrous or detbrmed, with humors and psychologies that varied with the circumstânces of their environment. And as these metaPhors described the cities, so they prescribed remedies and forms for reconstruction. Nature should be tamed, engines repaired, bodies operated upon. humors

therapeutically treated. Such were the determining images of planners and pìtiticiani, reformers and revolutiona¡ies; at special momenrs' they even touched the consciousness of the people and rallied their de' fenses.

The scenes of rhe srreet depicted in the following essay are charac¡er!\ tic in this sense: taking as their lrames of reference certain typical texts;

and paradigmatic spaces, either prescriptions for utopia or descriptions: of reälity, ihey acempt to lollow the interlocking fate of each by means; of rhe metaphoçiqsrn¡crures thar join rhem and determine their exis-, t"n.e. .vfetophors rhar produce form or describe life are thereby seen asi the vehicles. or more olten the masks, of the ideology they represent. In I the continuing struggle for the space of the city these forms have; reproduced thimselves again and again. in different guises .and in i diälectical opposi¡ion, as theêgents of rpaction, reform. or revolution' ,j

wirh panicular intensity in the city streets.

City dwellers, architects, and philosophers - those who framèd, so ro spèak, the discourse engendered by these transformations as they addressed the problems in ways impinged on the urban environment thaì wire sharply differentiated according to the interests they served' Archicects. concèrned with the order of rhe plan, the clear boundaries of '/ .,-c^ ^Åo< space, responded to apparent chaos with constantly reelaborated ideal h¿Þ. ^.lhorS. torms, iniiiatty inherited from their Renaissance tradition. Philosophers eirher dreamed of antiurban utopias, of the lost -earden of Eden, or put Prologue The Three Scenes of Social Life forward pracrical schemes for the renewal and extension of cities that From-the Theater to the Street: patently òonuadicted their ideals of civiliza¡ion. As for the populace' There are three kinds of scenes, one called rragic, second the co.mic , were no! served by the city of capital and luxury' they *trere ìtrey -best rhírd, the saryríc. Tragic scenes are delíneated with columns, pe.dí' their of extent the to to rheir needs. according coutd, they reacred as ments, statues and other obiects suited to kings; comic scenes exhibit life' provocation. and to the immediate circumstances of their everyday private ùvellíngs, with balconies and views representing rows of it, against revolt and outraged the intolerable to bet*.en submission '¡vindo¡vs, after the manner of ordinary dwellings: saryric scenes are they somehow defined a human existence within the walls and along the ¡virh tees, caverns, mountains and other rustic obiects decorarcd passages of their sreets. ' This discourse was bound together at its many, and often opposing delineated in landscaPe sryle.l levels, by the metaphors that served to characterize, assimilate, and Serlio. interpreting the three scenes of Vitruvius for the Renaissance, organizeihe perception ofthese new realities. Manifested in urban form all thiee in ¡he form of süeets, drawn as elaborate exercises in the depicted set devices metaphoric cenain dominant as-well as inìiærarry texts, rhe rragic scene became a street of public buildings perspecrive: tone for plan and riot alike, acting as the conscious mode ofrepresenta' froìtal ending in a triumphal arch lèading out of the city; style, cìassical ¡he in and eighteenth late In the tion of the city to its inhabitants and rulers' a residenrial süeet, less formal and in the illustrared throughout thê nineteenth century these metaphors were drawn im- rhe comic scene with and stores on the sreet level, apanments arcades gothic sryle, art as production; mediately from the forms of industrial and scientific the view; the satyric scene was completing tower church has ever been defined with reference to the nature it imita¡es, so the ãbove, and a path through the woods with rude a altogether city the ou¡side observa¡ion of techniques aniñce of the city was seen according to the Togetherthese three sreets Eees to eirherside.2 the huts in developed for naiural science. or endowed with all the anributes of the woodcuners' the Renaissance. the pubof environments paradigma¡ic the comprised sometimes were landscapes new industrial organism. Thus cities country life were to beand city of whiih dramas the [c råahs within jungles or forests and tater. gardens or parks; they were machines. the tragic sreet, of in public riual and of state dramas or out; ac¡ed of economics lngines, and factories that functioned according to laws

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l. Sebastiano Serlio, Il¡¿ Tragic Scene, c. 1537.

[Jacob Burkha¡dt. Die Kuhur der Renaissance in Italien (Yienna: Phiadon), Pl. ?9¿J f,. Sebastiano Serlio. Iåe Comic Scene' c. 1537.

IBurkhardt. Die Kultur, Pl. 295]

3. Sebasriano Serlio. Iå¿ Saryric Scene, c. 1537, lBurkhardt. Die Kuttur, Pl. 295]

30

Vidler

boisterous merchant and popular life in the residential sreet ofcomedy, and of bucolic manners and country sport in the forest path.

Nor mo¡e than twenry-five years later, palladiô bui¡t

three_

dimensional versions of the streets of olympus inro the scaena of his theater in vicenza.3 This synchrony of stieet and theater was not coincidental but represented the double role of urban space and theatrical space in humanistic culture; even as the public reàm of the street took on the funcrions of the theater of daily lifè the as a stage for -so did city the social acrion within its protecting walls thó theater ierain its place as the mnemonic device, the ideal depiction of the world.{ The building of the sreets inside the theater brought the space of the real inro the domain of the typical, the memory of the one allowing the observa_ tion and perhaps the cririque of the other.

The an of perspective, by means of which this fictive insenion was achieved, iself retained a determining and formative role. For the laws ofperspective were nor only those ofillusion, ofdepicting th¡ee dimensions in ¡wo, bur fundamentally the construcdve làws oÌ space iaelf.

Thus the srreet, subject to perspecrive represenration in rhe idèal rheater, was ransformed by this technique and shaped by it. The assemblage of monumenrs, each individually typical of religious or secular activities common to the Roman and early Renaissance vision of the sueet, gradually place to the unifying vista thar controlled the horizontals -eave of each facade and subdued the erratic cornice line in favor of the point

of view, the point of convergence of all horizontals.õ

From the streets of Palladio and Serlio, ro those of Vasari (Uffizi) and Fonrana (Rome) the great perspective project of the Renaissance was logically realized. The salient projections that had marked the individual doorway-s of Palladio's street had disappeared in the Rome of Sixtus V. The long'strai,eht sueets of Sixtus werè primarily means of communication, joining the bæilicas and providing access ro a reclaimed coun. tryside. The streec, reduced ro corridors for public procession, became in a very real sense outdoor passages where the buildings that enclosed them were simply facades for an international city. The tragic streer was thus the insrrument of urban conrrol and regulation, ¡nsenãd at the will of the planner into a hitheno private realm. The s¡reets of Fontana and the boulevards of Haussmann two and a half centuries later shared this common role.

The program for the planning of the Renaissance sreet had been already laid out by Albeni.6 He had classified the differences between

snee¡s outside the town and those inside, as well as differentiating between.those.-of importance wirhin the walls.? The srreec of the cit! were to be uniform in appearance all doorways the same, all build-- were ings the same height. At crossing points ro be a¡cades or triumphal arches the doorways to rhese public rooms. Major streets and intersections- should be protected by ponicoes,

The Scenes of the

P¡lladio. Teatro Olimpico, begun 1580; plan. The streets of Ol¡rmpus were built as permanent perspective sets. radiating from the cen¡er of (he proscenium. forming a replica of the Renaissancie ideal city rvithin the theater. lLe fabbriche e i disegni di Andrea Palladio, raccolti ed illustrad da Onavio Eenoni S<'amoe,i (Vincenza. 1796). with an introduction by J. Quentin Hughes (London: Alec -1. Andrea

Tiranti. 1968). pl.

ll

5. Andrea Patta¿io. Teatro Olimpico. elevation of Olympust the ñve radial streets in forced perspecrive. IPa¡ladio. Le fabbriche, pl. 2l

Street 3 I

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under which the old men may spend the heat of the day, or be doubt, but disorderly and often insalubrious, and therefore to be conmutually serviceable to each other; besides that, the presence of the rained or uansformed by planning. Occasionally the inhabitants of this fathers may deter and resaain the youth, who are sponing and diverting themselves in the other part of the place, from the mischievous

folly natural to their age.8 Palladio repeated these prescriptions and distinguished roads outside the rown by plandng rows of trees on either side, "by their verdure to

enliven our minds and by their shade to afford very great conveniency."s He recommended broad streets for the city as allorving

greater ventila¡ion, and also, understanding the problem of the frontally conceived facade on a perspective street, as permitting better views of each side. Ponicoes would shelter the citizens from heat, rains, or snow, while paved sidewalks should be provided to separate pedestrians from vehicles. The tragic scene, no longer just a backdrop for civic activity, was being given technical specifrcations and rational classification. Thp street, planned as a building, was gradually absorbing the functions of circulation (of materials, goods, and people) as it retained

domain would take up arrns to defend or appropriate it for themselves: at rimes ¡t would be endowed with a semiheroic cha¡acter on behalf of rhose who lived there. The rustic scene, increasingly as the critique of city life itself took hold in the eighteenth century, would emerge as the rallying sta-ge of the radical and revolutionary transformation of state of the disappearing city appealing to Rousseauand life - the image and anticapitalist alike. Here in these three scenes is esque individualist illusrated, at the very inception of the classical discourse, the problem of sreet form in its porential transformations. This problem, not surprisingly, is stated at this point in terms that are ineducibly both physical and political; the space that defines the politics and the mode of political thought is also the real condenser of public polidcal activity. The interpeneuarion of thought and life is complete, and the form of the sEeet thereby embodies both as its characteristic mode of existence.

its role as public scene.

As it was conceived in two-point perspective, so its typical form was envisaged in cross section from one public facade to the other, including

the services running beneath its surface. Thus the theatrical sreet became, wben realized in the city, a form of public order that at once demonstrated the unity of citizenship throughout the urban realm by means of its visual and technical artifice. It also incorporated the movement of the people into a general design planned to cons¡¡uct a world of symbols (monuments of religious and civic pride) and rites (processional paths) according to the vision of good government. Fontana even drew a plan of the routes and the monuments that left out the city fabric in between, as if the newly planned vistas in some way recreated a dream of the ancient Roman campagna: the tragic scene invested with rustic and antique vinue.to The tragic scene was thus displaced from the theater of Memory to mke its place among the insuuments of rational order; but i¡ nevenheless re¡ained a supremely effective function within the emerging theater of Utopia, as the domain of noplace gradually assened its new boundaries over those of an eadier, hermetic philosophy. That is, while the idea of Memory faded as the active agent of ideal themes in humanistic culture, and as the realm of Utopia. first deñned by the principal memory anists, Andrae and Campanella, became less a world of icons and more a paradigmatic representation of reality, so the scenes of the street were given special significance as the carriers of meaning.

In general, planners and architects would be preoccupied, on behalf of the order they bring and the power they serve, with the forms of the ragic scene for the next three hundred years, while the comic scene would take on the role of an environment of the people, homely no

The City of Enlightenment tAeab Morell¡, and the Geometries of Nature, 1750 l|/hat art vour empires but an heap of Rubbish and of pahry Cabbins? amongsî vhich, confusedly scanered, rise up some few great cities, Labyrinths of crooked, wittding streets, composed of houses as unequal, as little unþnn, as are the ntanners and conditions of their inhabitants,tl Overshadowed by Diderot, who was long -eiven the credit for his major wqrk, and distoned by his adoption into the canonical lineage of nineteenth-ceñtury utopian socialism, the Abbé Morelly, ambiguous

petit philosoph¿ and self-styled heir of Thomas More, nevertheless spoke directly from the mid-eighteenth century as the fabricator of Enlightenment utopia par excellence.12 His was the true radicalism of the reason of nature, the material reason of Locke and Berkeley through Condillac, presented as an ideal for mankind that might finally engender an order to resolve all contradictions between progress and happiness, city and country, community and the individual. The fabulous kingdom he described in ¡he Basiliade was in one sense a rue utopia in the grand tradition of his namesake, of Campanella, Andrae, and Fénelon; set in "the midst of a vast sea," always calm, beneath "a Pure and settled sky," the island he evoked was the very type of naturally abundant society. It was ruled by a wise prince, populated by a happy people, furnished with all they could desire and nature could provide, and accessible only in dreams. The laws, mores, and ans of this community were as paradigmatic as those of Utopia, and their cities as elegant as

The Scenes of the

Street

33

6. Plan of Karlsr¡¡åe, built in l7l5

as a hunting retreat tbr Karl Wilhelm. margrave of Baden. While the encircling ramprns that defined the ideal Re.

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city have disappeared.

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rvith the radials extending out inro rhe prince's hunting tbrest on three sides. and into ¡he torvn on rhe fourth. The cen(er. no longer a public civic space. ¡s now the point of authority and order: the enlightened. bur absolure. ruler surveys his domain t'rom r tower. Fourier will la¡er transfbrm this model into the Phalanstery of association. retaining the "Torver of Order. " The radial a//áes, intersected by í¡ rectilinear grid through the tbrest. tbrm the prototype tbr Morelly's benign princedom. as well as exemplifying Laugier's metaphor of the "city as a park" of fony years later. Key: A. Tower t'rom which the Prince viervs the 32 routes. 9 of rvhich form the streets ot'the town B. Gallery C. Châtccu

D. E.

Opera

F.

Tennis coun The Prince's quaners

K. L.

Orangeries Gentlemen's quaners

I.P. Stables tl G. H. Riding School

t

M.

Salons

N. Menagerie O. Hotels Q. Houses R. Lutheran Church

S. Calvinist Church T. Catholic Church V. Schools W.

X. Y. Z.

Pumps

Reservoirs Orangeries Greenhouses

[Le Rouge, Jardins a la mode (Pa¡is, l?76-88)]

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34

Vidler

those proposed by Mentor for Salentum. Indeed there is a hardly coincidental similariry between the ciry of More and that of Morelly: Aircastle, like the town depicted in ¡he Code de la Nature, is squarè, planned on a grid. and irs streets regularly and rationally planned. Both cities present in rheir form a three-dimensional model as it were of the

rest. The whole island was re-sularly crossed by these routes, "intersecting like threads which form a ner," and ro confirm the instirution of order the rivers themselves were straightened and canals cut. The twin powers of symmerry and an convened the ñelds into pleasanr gardens, and the order and disrinction thar was presenred to the sighr rvas a model perfect social srrucrure of their inhabitanrs. to every citizen.

But between More and Morelly, berween the paradigmatic uropia of The prince had found his subjects living in "an old and clumsy sixteenth-century critical sarire and the ei,chteenth-century realm of architecture"; their buildings were "little uniform and so ill-arranged" reason, ¡here is a fundamental difference of insrrumenrality. Morelly, and correspondin_sly their mores were rude and unpolished.ts These no matter how he dissimulated, in the end believed in rhe marerial sructures were desroyed, new ones erected in smooth and polished possibility of his dream being achieved. The revolurion in science, and stone. The "capricious monuments of the rich mans pride," for long so the development of knowledge from Bacon and Newton, meant thar ugly next to the feeble effons of the poor, rvere replaced by "spacious nothing was beyond the bounds of conrrol, and thereby of insrirution. buildings, simple indeed, but proper uniform and regular." Regularity And for this Locke had indicated the means. The power of environmenr was the dominant theme. Confusion, chaos, disorder were supplanted over the mind, its effects on the body and the soul, was the basic by an order and uniry that reigned in the heans and minds of men as the forming fr¡d transforming force for man and society. Sensationalist beneficent effect of their new architecrure. The labyrinth was opened, philosophy, the primitive machine of behaviorism, taught rhar the sur- the sreets were suaightened, and social disorder was dispelled. roundings of life were the first dererminant of character, composed of All this, of course, was couched in the terms of a lyrical poem "an inñnity of objecrs which form in each individual what wC call his hardly a model for social action in the present: "some will say, state of mind,"t3 From this it was an easy reversal to postulate that perhaps," complained Morelly, "that this is indeed a fine theoretical changes in environment would lead ro chan-ses in the state of mind; sysrem to found the fable of a poem on, and will grant rhat all these architects, princes, and philosophers were not slow to seize the delight- things are true in Specularion but impossible in Practice. " A more direct ful implications. What a wondrous invenrion for those who sensed the form was needed for the conversion of sociery, and this he provided in inractable qualities of existing sociery and grew imparient at irs refusal rhe Code de la Nature some two years later.r6 This code was no more to perceive its rrue path! The very form of the external world, over nor less than a complete legislative system, a new constitution for a new which material control was imminent, was in fact ro be the agent of sociery, whose adoption would immediately "cut off at the roors the redemption. Environmenral reconstruction was rhe logical precondirion vices and the ills of sociery." The prorocommunitarian and cooperative of moral regeneration and social happiness. orders of his earlier poetic fable were now rranslated into the laws-and Thus, although a simple literary analogy on the surface, Morelly's directives thar .would .ensure their support. And frrst in line was the comparison of the "crooked, winding streers" of past empires with the construction of the communal settlement. Morelly drew up thirteen ''manners and conditions" of their inhabiunts was a direcr statemenr of "Laws of Building" that described a complete model rown, with its cause and effect. Given streets of order and light, the mores of the institutions and functions ordered according ro an exacr rule of placecitizens would have remained srong and invincible, and the empires ment that followed an encyclopedic classificadon of activities and their would have survived. The inequality and lack of uniformity of the street requisite zoning pattems.rT The city's form was a precise map of its a¡chitecrure was an immediate reflection, and more panicularly rhe social strucrure: the units into which it was divided conesponded to generator, of the unequal and chaotic social order it sheltered. In the social units, each ouaner housing a tribe of fixed numbers. These were island of the I asíliade, Morelly described the first acr of the wise prince arranged symmefically about a commercial and recreational center, "a on his accession: he "began ro form large spacious roads, whièh led great square of regular shape." The whole was regularly divided by from one extremity of the kingdom to another," adding smaller ones, sûeets. Around the living a¡eas were the workshops sheltered by conlike branches ro a tree, until he had completed a network of communica- tinuous covered galleries; beyond these the agricultural workshops and tion throughour rhe land. "They cut through rocks, they levelled barns spread out inro the countryside. mountains and either filled up valleys or built bridges across them of a Together, the Basiliade and the Code de la Nature presented a picture most noble strucrure. " ti The countryside was filled with happy workers of the rationalist enlightenmenr model stare, physically constructed in undenaking these grand projects. Along the roads they planted trees for all respects to mirror the underlying geometrical perfection of nature. shade, with arbors and alcoves ofinterwoven branches for the traveler's The differences berween city and country, so marked in the Renaissance

The Scenes of the

by vinue of the defensive rampart, which were to return again with idealisric force in the later pan of the eighteenth cenrury and wi¡h such environmental force with the industrial revolutipn, were, for a moment at least. suspended and held in balance by the hierarchic network of roads. Each division and subdivision of this grid rendered each part of rhe state a smaller or larger unit in the whole; towns were but larger occupations of the grid, as were community buildings larger units of private houses. Ceomecry would bring regularity, parity, and equaliry.

Architecture would. so to speak, imbue society with irs own aesrheric qualities: based in rhe first place on the imirârion of natural order, its tunction was rctive and radically transtbrming. Morelly, disguised for the rest of the century as Diderot, had succeeded in joining archirecrure ro mores, the form ol the s¡reet ro rhe forms of irs social life, in a way rhar was at o¡ce recognized as radical: the primitive communist Gracchus Babeufused the Code de la Narure as the source for his attack on property and the picrure of its abundance as rhe image of a regenerated agriculturê.t8 The utopian socialisrs of the early nineteenth century saw Iforelly, more than Rousseau. as rheir foren¡nner. For he, alone of the radical egalitarians of the mid-eighteenrh-cenrury Enlightenment. had drawn up a tangible blueprint for the rarional society.

Slowly, but inevinbly, the a¡chitects were to realise rhe truly formative powers handed to them by Morelly's invention. Alberti might have served his Prince and minored the perfection of the social state in the perfecdon of his architecrure; More might have demonstrated that the forms of his streets intimately reflected the social strucrures of Utopia, but only with materialist psychology was architecture invested wirh the final constructive role. The consciousness of what this meant for the reformulation of architectural theory and practice was to take a half cenrury to emerge fully, but when, with Ledoux's monumental work, architects were finally presented to themselves as demigods, and to society as saviors. rhe readiness of social philosophy to embrace them and their structures as its own was in large measure the result of Morelly and his heirs.

Laugier and the Avenues of Enlightenment, t755

Our towns are still as they were, a mass of houses pited up pett-mell without system, economy or design. This disorder is nowhere more evident and shocking rhan in Paris. The center of this capital has remained almost unchangedfor three hundred years: there one still sees the same number of small, narrow and tortuous steets, exhalíng nothing but dirr and filth, where the nteeûng of vehìcles causes .obstruction

at every instant.te

The immediate problem posed to rhe philosopher of reason by the city

of P¡ris was one of order

Street

35

its complere lack of rarional plan. The gap betrveen the ideal model of ìvlorelly and the reality of the capital was immense: from Rousseau in 1732 to Voltaire in 1749, the philosophes united in their reactions of disgust and horror at rhe condirions of life in this. the most potenrially glorious of cities.2o "How greatly did my first sight of Paris belie the idea I had formed of it, " exclaimed Rousseau: ..I had imagined a city of a mosr imposing appearance, as beautitul as it was large, where nothing was ro be seen but splendid streets and palaces

-

of marble or gold." Forming his impressions from his knowledge ol

Turin. the rationalist city par excellence, Rousseau had imagined Paris even ñner in the beauty ol irs streets, the symmerry and alignment of the houses. His shock was profound and deeply formative on his furure attitudes toward the ciries of civilizadon: "As I entered through rhe Faubourg Sainr-Marcçau, I saw norhing but dirty stinking linle srreets. ugl-"- black houses. a general air of squalor and poveny, beggars. caners. menders of clorhs, sellers of herb drinks and old hats."2t From this, the fall of the dream of a nerv Babylon, he was to develop a total tversion to the ciry per se. Even for rhose like Voltaire and Diderot rvho were more reconciled to the conceits of civilization. the sight of Paris was a continual reminder of an imperfect reality in rhe face ol their symmetrical schemes for the ri,eht order.:! But for the circle ol Enc¡'clopedists in _general, the ma¡erialism and objecrive scienrific attitucies that sustained their intellecrual work was enough to _sive rhem hope that the city might finally be reconstructed in the image of rheir dream. For how could the Englightenment claim to be triumphanr over the material order of the universe and the social order of man if ir proved unable to constitute tbr irself a seuing wonhy of its brilliance? By the midcentury, the philosophes were impatient: It is time fbr those who rule the most opulenr capital in Europe, assened Voltaire. ro make of it the most comfonable and rhe most magnificent. There must be public markets, fountains which acrually provide water and regular pavements. The narrow and intècted streers must be widened. monuments that canno( be seen must be revealed anci new ones built for all to see.!3 The Abbé Laugier. a critic, historian, and member of the circle around Grimm and Didero¡, was perhaps the first to embody the image of the Enlightenment city as a central concern in a rreatise devoted ro the res¡oration of a truly rational architecture. Writing in 1753, and inlìuenced doubtless by his knowledge of Rousseau's First Discourse (1750). he evoked the celebrated picture of the primirive hut as rhe paradigmatic structure for an elemental, basic architecture that returned to principles of construction and form intended to be as immutable as those of Newton's physics. Readers of his lyrical account of primitive man engaged in a search for shelter and the final consrruction of rhe first cabin would have had no difficulty in relaring it to Rousseau's own

36

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7. Map of the surroundings of Paris, 1767: Paris surrounded by esrates. fores6. and gardens. Such a map. u,ith its regular routcs rraced rhrough the grcar huntin-e forests. implies that Paris irself would be

susceptible to the same rational ordering. Hence Laugier's image. To the nonh and noth-east are the forests of Montmorency and Ermcnonville. la¡er to provide shelter for Rousseau.

The Scenes of the

Street

37

less move from one to another. There were not enough bridges over the Seine: those that did exist rvere too narrow.!3 Indeed: Almost all the streets should be straightened and enlarged. They should be extended as much as possible to eliminate too frequen! windings. New streets should be driven through all blocks that are longer than 600 feet. At all intersections of streets the corners should be rounded; at all crossroads there should be squares.le And in response to these conditions. Laugier developed an idea that holds the same place in his theory as the hut in his principles of archirecture: "One must conceive a town as a tbrest. The streets of the former are the routes of the latter; and ought ¡o be cut in ¡he same rvav."3o At the very poinr when the formal, -geometrical layouts of classical gardens and parks brought to pert'ection by Le Nôtre were being subjected to the implied and soon-to-be-stated criticism of the srreets"; individualistic whim prevailed in the decoration gf every more naturalistic English landscape garden, Laugier introduced ¡he building, so that an overriding impression of "deformed inequality" ot' model of a seventeenth-century hunting tbrest or pleasure park as the confusion and disorder reigned where comfon, elegance, and mag- image of a city plan. "Let the design of our parks serve as the plan for nificence should be the rule.!{ The terms were similar to those ot' our rowns." he srated unambiguously. If a Le Nôtre could design the Morelly; their aesthe¡ic preferences were clear and common to those ol patterns ofcity streets as he laid out the alleys through a great park, taste his peers. Laugier. however, was concemed to guide the practice oi rnd thought at once would be introduced into a realm ol chaos and archirects.rather than the speculation o[ social philosophers, and the disorder. The park, alone of the large-scale environments of civilized solution appeared very simple: Paris was in sreat need of "embellish- man. had been able to develop rules for its planning unhampered by the e.rigencies of urban growth: a totality executed for a single client on a "l am going to detail here," stated Laugier, "the principles accord- vast stretch of open landscape, it represented the full play of Enlightening to which one must act. and the rules which it is essential to ment reason on nature, the real site of the ideal city of philosophy. Its follow."es Classification being vinually synonymous with action to the aes¡hetic precepts were paradiematic for the age: There one sees at the same time order and bizzarerie, symmetry and midcentury Encyclopedists. he began by characterizing the three elevariety; here one perceives anércile, there a crows-foot; on this side ments upon which the "beauty and magnificance" of a city depended: routes in a cluster, on the other routes in a fan shape; funher away, its entries, its streets, and its buildings. Wide and unobstructed avenues parallel routes: every where cross-roads of different shapes and deshould lead to the entrances of the city, which should be themselves free signs. The more choice, abundance. con(rast, and even disorder there and disengaged. The entrances in turn should give access to similarly wide avenues within the town: "it will even be desirable that at the entry is in the compositon, the more the park will have piquant and delighttul beauries.sr to a large city one should find a great place pierced with many streets. "!6 The gates of Saint Manin, Saint Jacques, and Saint Antoine, Here, depaning tiom a strictly academic classical stance, Laugier for example, should s¡and free in a square, with streets radiating from demonstrated that he had not been entirely unmoved by the newly them disrributing the traffic to the various quarters.:7 Anticipating the espoused principles of contrast and variety, the first intimations of monumen¡al barrières of Ledoux some thirty years later, Laugier pro- pre-Romantic vision in the Enlightenment. Even the picturesque formed posed the triumphal arch as the model for such entries: "let us give to all pan of his criteria: "the picturesque can be found in the embroidery of a the entries of our Capital this Roman air. " flower-bed, as well as in the composition of a picture." From a picture, But the entries were only the first of the elements of Laugier's and irs rules of compositon, to the landscape and thence to the city was a cityscape. Next, and no less imponant, were the streets themselves, and shift that placed Laugier on the very edge of tendencies soon to become their principal function was to "render communication easy and com- fully emergent. The aesthetics of sensation. ol pictorial drama. of the fonable." The narrow, twisting streets of Paris, "so tortuous, so full of sublime, to be such a powert'ul weapon in the hands of Boullée, bends and senseless angles" made i¡ almost impossible to drive vehi- Ledoux, and their peers, was hardly yet a conscious movement. nor was cles, or even sometimes to walk, within the differen¡ quarters, much the landscape garden yet its environmental seat. For the moment,

formulation of the emergence of society in the Discoarse on Inequaliry (1755); the corresponding analogy of natural society with natural ar' chirecture was one that established the Arcadian environment centrally rvirhin the developing tradition of socially radical architecture.

Bur when he turned to the problems of the city, especially lhose of Paris. Laugier made it clear that he. at least, was not at all cynical about rhe end of civilization. A classicis¡ at hean, he was only interested in narural origins as a conceptual tool: the final expression ol man's humanity was through a highly refined and directed taste, not in any bucolic rusticity. Serlio's tragic scene rvas still the most serious of all.

If civilized taste had progressed in the conduct of private tife during the eighteenth century, as everyone claimed. it was by no meÍìns evident its streets. "We build new houses," in the public realm of the city Laugier afgued, "but we do -not change the bad distribution of the

38

Vidler

Lau-eier was consrrained to measure the parks of crassical tradirion wirh the.po.rentially opposing canons of his'sensibiriry.

The ,.rrì;;¡ ihì; crirically imponant fact was to.freeze o ,p..in" rorr.l il;g;îrìiî srreet, one based on the srrai,ghr alleys oi rhe classical p.iR. i",o' o and iis pro.éss of conceprion iri u *uy-ìiruì .,1^. :1,i^,olq" relnrorcecl the conrinuing rife of crassicism as rire mode of áesisn suitable for ciries for the next cenrury or more. li lr"_"i.r;;ñ;:; wririn-g some five or six years rarer, when Rousseau's Noirril, n¿li¡i-, finally established rhe curt of landscape in France. and had .ppÎ;J.h; same meraphor. the implicarions for ðity form would have #.; ¡;r;il: cally differenr. As ir rvas, by the rime iedoux atrempted ro adclress ihe problem. Laugier's crassicar avenue was arready n*ry .r,*r.t.¿"ü urban composirional theory.

::,i::ïjf

Laugier's analo-ey went beyond rhe varied patterns park wãs,a holis¡ic conceition: i,,

:::::::..Pi:1.: |tr. was complere aoapreo ro rhe lerrain.

of

srreets and

pi.;.';t,;;;;;

and imposed on naruie from abovi.

To appl¡ rhe same merhods ro å city rhat arieady exisred, as opposed ro one in an idear re-gion of the mind, *as ro im¡y,tri,ri. ã-"illirTiti, was indeed a forest, a kind of natural phenornanon, to be seen as the -eround for rhe archirecr's inrerven¡ion. îo submit rhis foresr ro tt,.

of the designer, the rerrain must ue reuiureJ, the routes that *ili wi' become streets and the crossroads that wit become sguares traced. The merhod .of rhe -sardener would rhereby become ttri mert¡o¿ of iire

planner in a very real sense: Paris; it is an immense fo'est, varied by the inequalities of the plain and mounrain-,.cut right throu-sh rhe middle by a _sreat river. which orvrolns ltselt ¡nro many arms forms islands of difierent size, Ler us suppose that we rvere allowed to cut and prune at wi¡1, what meani could not be drawn from so many advanrå,geous diversiries?s3 The rural. uropian ima-ge of Moreity tras tt¡-ui-Ueen reversed: ,Iandscape-ciry, which was from a no more thãn an immense _eard.n spre.ã ãri over the enrire countryside, to a ciry_landscape, cultiiated uni ãui according ro rarional and_aestheric pian. Tracås år rr,i, "ut .ón".pi;;;; in the plans of Patre. of Ledoux und tt, Visionãries, of OaviO ;;il; Revolurionary Commission of Anisrs, of ñãfoi"on l, una n*ily'ái Haussma.nn: Lau_sier's dream of rhe ideal .n,.y io rhe capital ;;; iá b; realized in the place de I'Eroile a cenrury larJr: I ima_eine a grand avenue, very wide. in a strai-eht line, and bordered with two or four lines of trees. h ends in a rriuriphal a.cn; from it er. one enrers inro a sreat semi_circular, or half oval or frAi pofygon.l pl ace,. pierced w itñ many I or.s" ;;;;ì; b*i.îiru i, severat di rect ions, some. leading ro rhe cenrer, olhers ro the extrem-¡ries of the ,üãi which have a beautiful object rerminatin! "ity. ttrem.æ No sooner than rhe ideal.iorm.of tt. Sñ-fietiänrent city had been concrerized in rhe theory and practice of ur"hiË;i;, it *u,

"Jópiø-.

ffi

and wirhdelight, inro rhe rirerature of utopia a_sain. Sebastien Mercier, thar indefarigable criric and prayright whose piãtures of rear pa¡s *eie the pro-eenitors of Balzac Ãnd- zóla. erevaråd the imase or . nu*iu reconsrrucred Paris (or perhaps he was slyly saririzing- ¡tl in f,ii ,o_ Y.e ar 2 2 4.0, pubt ished in t 770.a{'simmetricaiiy ot it .

11n::.^lh. iru..J eno or rne elghreenrh cenrury, as wells's when the sleepei r4/akes was to be for the nineteenth. Mercier had his hero.awake in r'tre paris of four and half cenruries hence. No¡ surprisingly, ..everythin_s has changJ.;; The old familiar quaners were gone, iu-bmerged beniarh ne* e-Àuellishmenr. But the mosr amazing rransformatiõn of all was that of rhe

streets:

I lost myself in -srand and beauriful streets all perfectly aligned. I enrered.spacious cross-roads where such order reigned rtrat t noi the slightest obsrruc¡ion. I heard none of those biãarre and confuseì cries which formerly grared harshly on my ear. I mer no vehicles ready to crush me flat. A -eouty ord man *oúrd haue been able to wark about wirh ease. The town had an animared air. but without disruibance and without confusion.3s As in many dreams rhere were no people; indeed, no sounds, smells. or.untoward.sights. The enli_eh¡enrnent-was certainly triumphant: the volumes of the -ereat Encycroþedia had been dissemínared and tucked beneath every arm; children lèarned ro read from the works of Rous-

ü*

seau..Montesquieu, Buffon, and Volraire. paris was full of lisht and guiet harmony. and the air was purified by greenery an¿ u.n¡¡friiãn. i'f,. heroic srage of the new order was carm. s-uspendèd ber*een coilec¡ive power and individual desire: rhe order was rôrar no confusion.- and, prescientl,"- for its nineteenth-cen¡ury - no disrurbance. successors, supremely silent. People, crowds, their cries, smeils. and mou.r.ni h.d been absorbed inro rhe srabre equiribrium of the rational srreet.

In this srreet all would finally be ar peace, subjected to a therapeuri. space anã dominared by rhe power. of.perspectivãs alon-e .uenueì, limitiess per_ spectives where vision, both physical and meìral, would find irs irue home.

Techniques of Transformation Patte and the Surgical Incision, 1765 Und.erthe e¡,es of his listeners, he brought in the mosr seriously sick patients,. classifed their disease, anal"*ied irc fearures, outlined the action that was rc be þken, carried out the nbcessary operaüons, g@l a,n account of his.methods and the reasons for them', explained ea:l da! the.changes that had occurred, and then presented the stare of the cured patients.so

I

',:

r

r-;

lr

n:

The Scenes of the

Street

39

::'

r

i

Only_twelve years after the second edition

I

i' I f;

I

¡'

þ !_

t

t if I

!¡

ii

I !

;.

of Laugier's

treatise,

nevenheless is as interesting for what it does ,o¡ pretend to accomplish, especially so as the basic analogy of rhe plan itself is shifting. Èor if Laugier's archirect was a gardener, patte,s was a sur_seon. Theiity as a tbrest, to be tamed by the arts of cultivation, *as no* seen as a body in varying srates of sickness and disease, to be cured by the aní of m^edicine. And, just as rvith a patient, radical surgery *asihe last resorr of prolonged therapy.

We are witnessing in the las¡ decades of the eighteenth century a ^ fundamenral transformarion of the analo.qies rhar iriformed the ani of natural imitarion resulr, very simply, ãf the developing perceprions of the narure rhat- was ro be imitated. The principlei oinienaiisance design. based on the image of man, in symmerry and balance with rhe microcosmic tbrms of universal harmony, had reintroduced the plaroníc description. idea of the perfect form as the most organic. Advances in rhe science of Bu*t, lesr the facr that these were separare and isorated propositions medicine had funher redefined the spatial and menral attributes oi .detract from rhe overall idea of rhe plan of paris as a unified'plan for human harmony in terms of balanced flows (blood), stress and tension inrervention, Patte added a chapter entitled "The embellishmenrs of (muscles), srructure (skeleton), decay (tissues), and more recently a Paris, general reflections on rhe means that could be employed ro series of unseen, apparenrly unobservable phenomena like meátal embellish rhis city in its totality, " and "render ir as confonabtà as it was disorder, infecrion, and contagion. The effort-to classify and to locare agreeable." Like voltaire, he castigated rhe narrow and torn¡ous streers cause and effect in relation to this "unseen" led to the idenrificarion of andproposed ro open up the Ile de la Cité, joining it to the lle de Sainr agents, carrying and transmitting rhe air with newly discovered Louis as.a grand cenrer for the ciry. Such a-plan,ie claimed, might be composirion was a favorite - Now if the cityitswas culprit.{,¡ to be rebuilt in accomplished in rhe shon space of thiny yeari, given a consistent the image of man, and the city was exhibiting sevère problems, it was iolicy gd the requisire funds. Paris would-then beõome, as rhe cenìer of no more than a sick body, to be diagnosed and treaied as any man.

Enlightenment culture, what Athens and Rome were for their own Accordingly Paue saw the disrribution sysrem of ciries æ vicious, rhe times, by means of works that conrribured to the dignity ãiì¡Ë-rio,., ,o air as in need of purification, rhe Hôrel-Dieu as an infectious cenrer of the comfort of the citizens, to the eæe of communicarion, to the disease, and the means of rectifying rhese illnesses as insertions and progress of rrade and commerce, to rhe cleansing of the streers, all judicious curs, not of the forester's axe but of the surgeon's knife. c_onsidered as.interdependent systems.3s As Blondeihad stated on openPaue, like Laugier, srood at a pivotal edge of rhe transformation of rng his school of architecture, one kind of knowledge to another. ln 1770, it was still not possible to Architecrure views everything on the large scale; in our towns ir talk.confidently, as we shall see the docrors of the nineteenth century prefers accessiblity and ease óf communicãtion to the decoration of talking, of a patholo-ey of the city; nor was it too clear where thê façades; it is concerned wirh the alignment of streers, with squares mechanical funcrions of human engineering sropped and rvhere truly and cross-roads, wirh the distribution of markes and biolo*eical and chemical processes took over. It wàs not, after all, unril iublic thoroughfares.3e the ñrst ten years of the ninereenth century thar the mind rvas finally the plan was inrroduced as a means of embeilishment, rhe idea selected as the seat and cause of insanity. So pane was both technical ot^once a complere restructuring was a rogicar extension; one woutd therefore and surgical, or rather his surgery rvas of a mechanical kind.{r With expect Paue, the technicaily mindeã, protèssionar architect-urbanist to meticulous care he determined rhe prototypical cur, the ideal form of rhe have devetoped compreheniive plans ior ttre services and ameniries of ei-ghteenth-cenrury streer. In plan and in secrion it combined the systems the new Paris, to be overlaid on the exisring fabric with grand abandon. of pedestrian a¡d vehicular movemenr. sewage disposal. drãinage, Could he nor, after all, like Laugier,i g.r¿1""r.-l"t anõprune at will? shelter. fresh water, and amenity (public conveniences, seats, ior But this was not his perception-of the-architeit's funcrion nor of ¡he example), and wirh equal care specified their propersite and dimension. process of planning. His very distinctive approach, while marking an Every paving srone was drawn in loving outline. Light and venrilation ¡mponant second stage in the rransformatioñ of the archirect inro sõciai were regulated oo, wi¡h the width oi the street proponioned to its redeemer and the architect's forms into agents of social change, height.{2 The means of consrrucrion were to be ñrepräof, and economic.

Piene Patte published a Plan of Paris which in almoit every detail seemed to correspond to the tbrmal idea of the ciry as a park. Þatte, a devoted pupil and colleague of the great academic teacÈer, Jacques_ François Blondel, brought ro-serher on a single plan the various pro¡ecrs for grandes /_ace1 that had been submitted in rhe competirion'foi rhe placement.of Inuis.XV's srarue.3? The assemblage of ail the proposed plans combined in this way formed an image of i multifocal cìty, each quafter with irs own square, arcades, and radiaring avenues, wirh an implicit triangulation set up between the different cenrers. The varierv of the. squares, the uniqueness of each project, rhe curs they inflecred ií the given terrain of the city, and the new scale of urban place they evoked all could well have been drarvn in direct response to Laugier's

40

Vidler

uuhrErpæt

@*-L.-Bui l[,:i$* .. /tt/,j

,, Ro ¿ ET rt' Èu B

p*t lz Qøiv &

tzCøi

ELtss.E t¿.

s

a&n Eaùw.

',¡

Þ Ro, t

r:î F,

l¿

Qts.Lt4|ú.

Pno¿Etùad¿ b òb&&I*a

l"\

\-J :a:

8. Pierre Pane.Plan of Paris, 1765: this plan. bring. ing together rhe various projecrs submined in rhe comperirion for an appropria¡c searing for a sratue of Louis XV ( 17.18) as well as a number of other proposals for embellishment. forms a rransirion be¡ween the forest analogy of Laugier and the more incisive cutting of the Plan das Ar¡is¡es developed by the painter David and his Commission of 1793, [Pierre Patte. Monumens érigós en France à la gloire de Louis XV (Paris. l7ó5)ì

i 9

lr

{ t t ¡

f t

t I

The Scenes of the

Street 4l

MOUCE¿\UX

l(otc -

-

l;

4nloitnaa¡* aa.*t*,1ca;¿h te ìlul .wt.t.Lib¿¿',hf.:pã,,vhi,/. ?¿ul/¿ n ?æ & !.g2 ú l, ù'tii*, :

& .úa¿114nàlct:./c J\ tæ,btbtl¿"ii,þL,h

ion,;i,*

tn',t.

p.i fu l; tt-'

.a&wh¿iau þl)¿Ãø & nr o&iicraaàlþa'r

,

9. Polard. Proiect for a circular place for Louis XV's statue. 1748; from Piene Paue. Pla n of Pails.

He projected a grand boulevard to run both inside and outside the wall, as well as eight la¡ge inns. to serve as recreation centers for ¡he citizens. The toll' gates, which were erected between 1785 and 1789' were for the populace a monumental symbolism of the oppression of the tax'farm and were sacked as the initial gestures of JulY 1789'

10. Claude Nicolas Ledoux , PIan of a protorypical tollgate or barrière, 1785. Ledoux. commissioned by the farm-generat to consûuct a wall and tollgates around the city of Paris, tried to seize the oPponu' nity ofembellishing the capital on a grandiose scale.

I l. The wall of the farmers-gener¿l, I 808. showing the grand bouleva¡d between the tollgates of Monçeaux and Blanche and the still undeveloped land inside ¡he barrières. lMaire's Plan de Paris,

With is segmentally Planned stores and continuous arcades. together with ¡he radiating avenues. this plan anticipates Ledoux' plan for the Sal¡rvorks of Chaux and establishes the ideal cit¡r t'orm once more in the center of the city.

I

8o8J

42

Vídler

srage managed. and dressed by the architects of The sreet was ro be washed down regularly, its rubbish carried outside carefully orchestrated, were ever poised uneasily on the edge of their most the city, and irs fountains numerous. Continuous ponicoes would allorv public ieremonial.16 riot, the looting spree, the l¡'nching, -and the counterpans weather heared bad from protected the reiident to walk rhroughout rhe town If the Revolution needed the people of the and the heat of the sun; whére there were no ¿¡rcades, stone posts rvould perhaps even ti¡e massacre. powerful and immediate weapon.' it most as its the streets ¡ir itreeti recuPeration of guard him from the passing vehicles. The instrument itself from the inherent cannibalism immune was far from ivas devised in a form that ðould be applied to any site in the cit," and nevenheless were frred by each successive frusrrations and whose hopes crowd the frnally of might decades. that, if diligently inserted over a period of several authority. Peaceful demonsgations (the revoÍutionary of demonsrra¡ion system. complete the of recovery lead to the Champ de Mars) might tum at an instant into bloody massacres; patri' otic b'anques (champs-Elysées) could degenerate into fierce clashes: The Riot and the Festival, 1789 iuá¿"n sttiftt in rhe price of grain, causing the scarcity of b¡ead, would Tlp Grande Rue du Faubourg is filled with platoons of cirizens armed consistently bring crowds inro the streets and squares of the c.ity .in with pikes and afew oldfashloncd muskets; wome¡t are assembled in proresr or in riot..-? The convention was threatened in its sessions by the (whire and blue) was the instrument of control everysrreet and are making a Sreat noise.ag _euns of the people, ter¡or and the all-pervading violence of the mob alike, which' äd The medical analogy possessed another dimension altogether, "ount"ir"volution respite. without victims its claimed a basic of in favor disappear to analogy tt¡e for a brief instant, cãusè¿ The crowd in ¡he street *as àt once demonstration of collective need identity between it and what it described; or, in oùer words, ùe total the temporary suspension of insdn¡tional control; as Georges as and was also seen patient, as sick seen enviro;ment of the city, first "in the crowds of the street, momentarily healing doctor. The ciqi, with all the effects it was capable of producing Lefebvre not¿d. the *oricer, which socialize his activities."{8 In the crowd insdrutions the ,r.up"r its own of capable was also their society, in rhe minds of men and of the July Monarchy would find theflâneurs as lose oneself, could therapy. on rhe eve of the Revolurion scienrists and doctors urned their one of the authority that remains was fearful also one pleasure. but their pans to 10 just but its cleanse to uneniiôn to the city as a whole, not the Between this^joy control. of its strucrures t".äy to reimpose develop is innate therapeutic character. Ventilation, lighting' drainage. the fear of the -forces "u", fear this and romp joy and fesiive of of functions were all þublic ¡ new hóspitals, the removal of the old cemeteries - attempted to use the govemments curing the urban disease; but the curing of the social disease rvas a äiorOe, - succesiiue Revolùtionary the conège, as both mediator and diversion' politiõal and, ultimately, a civic problem.{a The influence of morals on festival, ..After times oidisorganization," wrote the conservative functionary the frnally health, on political oppression of inffuence the health, "nothing is more diffrcult lhan to reorinfluence of liberty itself on health, were all themes explored with Jean-François Sobry in-1805, which tend towards reestablishment are ideas ganize weil, becauie rhe increasing fervor in the last years of the ancien,régirye. T.h3 insdrution which have served to break down'"{e those from *.y dlsengaged in * in habia of the rigÉt ordered state, wiih its population rained from birth public ceremony would serve to demon' of cleanliness, healthy exercise, and celebration of their freedom from At this pôint thJeiample of a the happiness of o.rder' the order, of "tñe example ci¡izen to the would straæ social ills, would finally render medicine unnecessary. The city order, the spectacle of or' of magnificence the of order, tu.y and irft its sustenance. and the ofhealth as site role righrful its then mke on became the necessary, even the inthe súeet, the public room par excellence, would ret¡ieve the civic and der.'oo Architecrure, for Sobry, of pu.blic order' Here he took the maintenance the an for his dispensible, from would rise citizen The age. natural more festive funcrions of a machine of behaviorism. primitive that of sensationalism, private sickbed and join his liberated peer¡.in procession:.like the ;;-""ilI"-ry "tlre shonest route to reach the soul is effects: its salutary Xe!'o ås'tfre be and age would run naked youth 3partans of Rousseau's dreams. he stated, paraphrasing.Rousseau on eloquence' unaying. This dream of a "festive city, inhabited by an lFen ail tirrougn th" .y"s," ,-.ceremonial is theiernent which binds to each other these Accoidingly, professional (as other every planning r-kinã,"4t took the realm of which make up the social edifice; it is in fact realm) and lifted it at the momeni of revolution bodily into the domain stones, sõOifferentty cut, and the strength, grace and solidity.''5r In totuiity the time the same at last at Prince, but the of benefrt for ùe of poiitics, not as at is inception was transformed into the instrument ary'conège *ry. rhe revolution on behalf of all the citizeni. There it remained, in theory at least, and täii of the government"' and "dumb eloquence thé of order, iorces the the of to practice haunt in throughout rhe nexr century and a halfreturned in 1848 would a repubOnly clole. to a come had ihe age of the festival fears of order and to fire the hopes of people. an entire revolution' for event catalytic as the act again licanianquet stage' the Revolutionary The great public festivals, processionals of

The Scenes of the

12. Burning

l

r,

of

¡he

Street

43

Barrière des Bonshommes, luly

1789.

13, The citizens of the faubourg SainçAntoine and

of the faubourg Saint Marçeau take ¡o the sueets to

Dresent a De¡ition to the Na¡ional Assembly, 20 June \lgz. lL. Prudhomme, Révolutions de Paris' de-

diées à

Ia Nation (Paris, 1792), no. 154, p.

5481

44

Vidler

+t 1r .t'.t..¡ ;¿.r T,

The Scenes of the

Street

45

14. Clash ín the Champs t/.vsles be¡ween Ma¡seillais soldiers and supponers of Lat'aye(te af¡er Santene's banquet of 30 July. 1792. IPrudhomme.

Révolutions, no. 160, p. t94l 15. Toppling the statue of Louis

Xlz, Place Louis

1792:. "a¡ the Place Louis XV and at the Hotel de Ville. rhe people make their own justice for

XV, July

the Kings of Bronze, throrving them to (he eanh.

This e,rample rvas followed in the 83 Depanments.

[Prudhomme, Révolutions, no. l6l, p. 2a0]

"

16. "The National Assembly and the King climb the Altar of the fatherland, to preach a sermon."

[Prudhomme, Révolutions, no. 158, p. 97., July, r'1921

17. Sunday, 22 July 1192: "amphitheaters were set up in rhe public squares and the magistra¡es of the people received enrollmenrs wi¡hout number from an ardent and vigourous

yourh." Following the state

of emergency of I I July, France was called to arms in detènse against the Prussian and Austrian armies.

IPrudhomme. Rtivolutions, no. 159.

p. t38]

18. Funeral celebration in honor ofcitizens killed.

1792. IPrudhomñe, R¿volutions, no.

l0 August

180, p. s69l

46

Vidler

The Condensers of Community Ledow and the Porricoes of Arcadia,

1804

Switzerland is the only place in the world which presenß this mixture of savage nature and lutnan industry. The entire realm of SlitzerIand is, in a way, nothing more than a great ciry, whose streets, Ionger and wider tlnn the Faubourg Saint Antoine, are lost in the forests and ct¿t by the mountains, and wlose houses, scattered and isolated, are linked to cach other solely by Englísh gardens.s2

propagarion and multiplying there would be nothing to reta¡d."5? Simila¡ sentiments were voiced by that "Rousseau of the gutter," Resdf de la Bretonne, who warned of the "dangers of the city" in his series of novels describing the moral fall ofpeasant boys and girls in the depravarion of the towns.58 And when the city had been dispersed, the street would disappear in its turn, supplanted by the route connecting settlements or the pathway through the park connecting individual retrea¡s.

In this rvay the social philosophy of equality was identified with the

landscape, and, for the a¡chitecs of the 1780s, the of the English landscape -sarden. Encouraged by a Paradoxically min-sled with the dream of a disappearing medicine and clientele of aristocratic landowners who played with the constn¡cts of the society of open air life in the communal streets of the city were the the hermit of Montmorency as fashionable romanticisms and who saw a strains of its precise opposite, or perhaps its logical corollary: the image cenain physiocratic economic interest in the return to their ancestral of rhe city that itself disappears, and with it the ills, the very sites of esrates, the a¡chitects le Camus. Hubert Robert, François Barbier, and social aod physical infection. Morelly had seen the future city of natural above all Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. developed a completely new philos' equality as disributed equally across the landscape, but Rousseau had ophy of architecture as they practiced the building of. fabríques and seen the cities themselves as tbe receptacles of comrption: '.'it was on follies in carefully designed natural settings.se Now, after more than twenty-ñve years the concealed message of the 9th of April 1756 that I left Paris," he wrote, "never to live in a Lau-gier's Primitive Hut was understood: it was no longer a phenomenal town again. "53 The proper environment of na¡ural society was nature, the only type of elemental a¡chitecture but a literal description of the proper sunoundings that could reconstitute the individual soul in harmony with social habitat of man; Ledoux built it in the gardens of Maupenhuis,60 himself and his fellows were natural, the only paths to a utopia situated monumentalized it in fifty different ways around the walls of Pa¡is.6¡ firmly within the personality were those of a promeneur through the and idealized it in timber and stone for the woodcutters and cha¡coal landscape, reffecting on Self and Other, and anempting to achieve a burners of his dream city of Chaux.62 Hubert Roben painted it in srate of [ansparent perception between both. l¿ Nouvelle HéIoïse was ruinous scenes and built it at Rambouillet; Le Camus made it Chinese written in seclusion from the city, and its environments were powerful and gave i¡ to the Duc de Choiseul on his forced retirement. and Barbier evocations of the healing forces of landscape.sa Rousseau's hero Saint- endowed it with the forms of symbolic Freemasonry for the eccenric Preux climbs high in the Alps, his heroine Julie closes herself in the François.Racine de Monville.63 This then was to be the final end of elysium of a privateTardin-anglais: both find themselves and thereby equality: the "paltry- cabbinsl' so despised by Morelly, given dignity, each other as a result of the experience. Emile is withdrawn from the anis¡ic value, and the imprimarur of architecture as the isolated city to protect him from the conceits and vices ofcivilization to a region monuments of individual idiosyncrasy. The sreet, a realm where the rvhere "nothing shall strike his eye but what is ñt for his sight." Men private interest was ever merged for the public good, was no more.

For all intents and purposes the society implied by the landscape are, by nature, Rousseau affirmed, "not meant to be crowded together in ant hills, but scattered over the earth to till it. " 55 The Social Contract conceits of the last decades of the eighteenth century was indeed more moved the argument from the personal and communitarian to the politi- like that of Rousseau's savage state, where each individual was isolated, environment

of

panicular forms

cal: People the territory evenly, extend the same rights to everyone, carry it is by these means the same abundance and life into every quaner that the state will become at once the srongest and the best governed

-

that is possible. Remember that the walls of towns are made only from the debris of rural houses.so Such was the a¡gument of the rural-revolutionary Babeuf to his executioners; he and his conspirators for equality worked toward "the exrinction of those receptacles of vice, large cities; thus covering France with villages adomed with immense and happy populations, whose

a world unto himself and running for survival in an alien world of

obstacles and beasts. The panicular conditions for the creation of the

natural, domestic society. the "-golden age," the/u.tte milieu sung by Rousseau at his most optimistic. were ignored. Appropriately so, for the society expressed in thefabriques of fashion was an emerging, primitive form of (high) bourgeois consumption where individual interest was ever to subsume the common.

The precepts of Rousseau were ignored by most excePt, that is' by Ledoux, who contrived to sustain a delicate balance between hierarchy and levelling. His construction of the social street in a new form under

The Scenes of the

2t

*Í

19. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. frontispiece ¡o hisDis' course on Inequaliry, 1755, detail showing ¡he savage who refused civilized life in favor of his simple. natural existence with the tribe. "So long as men rested content rvi¡h their rustic cabins . . . they lived free, healthy, honesc and haPPy"' wrote Rousseau, drawing an analogy with the "contemporary" savage and the quasi-anlkopological ideal of "natural rnan" before propeny and society had disturbed his natural state.

20. PIan of the Desert, or landscape garden of the Marquis de Girardin a¡ Ermenonville. where Rous' seau died and was buried in 1788. The fashion for the English landscape garden had taken hold in the l?60s as a retction to lhe formal. geomerical lay' outs of Le Nôue. Gira¡din himself had rvritten a treatise on garden designs în 1775, entitled D¿ /a composiúon des PaYsages.

21. The idealized landscape setting of Ledoux's Town of Chaux which he imagined developing around the Saltworks of Chaux (1774-79). This

'',;;:'1

'-'i¡l

: . .'j-.1

bridge over the river Loüe, a monumental version of the "bridge of boats" still used by military engineers in the eighteenth century' leads to the ialtworks: in the background to the right another cluster of buildings forms the indusrial and commercial center of lhe city. [Ledoux, l'¿lrchitecture considérée sous le rapport de !'art, des moeurs el de

la législation, vol.

l.

(Paris, l80a)l

Street

47

-!irí:;'T;i

18

Vidler

22. Tetnple of Friendship in the park of Be¡l, c.

I 780: a typical late-eighteenth-cemuryfabrit¡uc in a landscape park. [4. de Laborde. Dcscription dcs , rtouveanr jardins de la France et de ses unciens ci¡.âteaur (Paris, I 808)l

23. Claude Nicolas Ledoux, the Exchange of rhe Iölcal Town of Chaur, c. 1799. This idealized/aå.'ique is rypical of all rhe insrirurions of Ledoux' vision: set apan in clearings in the forest, they cenralize the various funcrions of moraliry and government in many nuclei. joined b¡ radiaring routes through the landscape. The plan of such a city would resemble. in reverse. that of Pierre Parre for Paris. [Ledoux

I' A

rchirecuref

24. Country house for Ledoux' ideal rown; like the insti¡utions of the city, ¡he houses a¡e isolared and designed for their occupanrs' trades and crafts and given symbolic and funcrional plans accordingly.

This one is for a ,erand master of u'a¡ers and forests who riesired to live nea¡ ro his work. that is, wirhin the forest irself. ILedoux l'Architecrurcf

The Scenes of the

ality alloweo in rhe country wirhout the shelter of the physical anifact' cicy. This solution was the portico. îhe realm in which Lecloux disposed rhe elemenrs of his ideal ciry ol with clumps of Chaux was a tènile and gently roliing plain, interspersed stream: a limpid by variegated trees and shrubs and irrigated Agriculture, commerce, literarure and the ans all have their meeting hails: gatleries. libraries and communal centers. Vast promenades and mãdicinal founrains are ser in rhe plain through which meander the precious waters ffowing tiom the mountains to irrigate the prod' ucti of labor. Already the new social pact distributes its influence everyrvhere.6{

monument:

A

majesric building is dedicated to wisdom; multiplied porticoe.s sunoúnd it. Childrãn play there under cover. young people stroìl through them. the old meditate beneath them. There a school is op.nâã where man is raught his duries betbre being instructed in his righrs.65

Tñe ponico no longer simply embetlishes, nor does it serve merely to

shelter the citizen fiom thè'rain

a positive - it is

instrument for

49

*'ïlryH

ol the landscape garden was an attemPt ihe last until Mor¡s-_tomaintainthecommunityimpliedbycitywiththeindiv.idu.

the exigencies

streers, psvemenrs. and the press of tratfic no longer intruded.on the ãirect exþerience of narure. In rheir stead,.pathways wandering through rhe pruk-city joined building to building. In.the.lorest, long'avenues formed of ptãntea trees linked clearing to clearing, triangulating the ..n,.rr of social acriviry. This image was, in fact, the exact reverse of Patte's plan tbr Paris and brought back Laugier's park to the country tiom whence it c¡me.

Even as nature and socie¡y rvere reconciled in this natural city, so on the scale of the buildings rhemselves Ledoux was concemed to make an explicit formal connecrion between the physical environment and public soòial rvelfare. Indeed, wirh rhe disappearance of the street, the only porentially public domain that remained was that nafrow zone that acted äs interfacå between building and nature. The street was in a way withdrawn to the outer skin of the house, even as the individual was drawn to the very center of each private space' Thus withdrawn' and pressed against the private wall. thè public realm could be nothing else bur a po,ìico. The þonico, however, was not the colonnade that surrounded the Greek iemple; ir was not a defense against the Penetration of sacred cella, but raih.r a space of transition where the individual could regain his social being añd the crowd gradually break down into i¡s individual parrs. Ledoux'1 ponicoes were at once frlters and covered ourdoor tooms in their own right. ttrey surrounded every public build' ing, and most private, and their autonomy was defined by their anifrcial floir, the platiorm that extends lrom within as the base of the entire

Street

23

50

Vidler

encouraging social activiry, much in the way that Fourier was ro con_ ceive it in the year of Ledoux's death. Therein lies Ledoux's crirical function in rhe constiturion of social archi¡ecture. Laugier and patte, as rve have seen, were in some way hesitating on the edge of developmenrs about to become dominant; Ledoux, a rrue studeni of Rousseäu, received the awful responsibilities rhat were devolved upon the architecr by the Enlighrenmenr, first with equanimiry, then with ìoral acceprance,

finally with rransforming enthusiasm. Wirh Ledoux, the promise of Locke through Condillac, of Shafrsbury through Burke, of Kènr rhrou_sh

Delille, of Morelly rhrough Rousseau, and oi architecrure for socieñ.

was realized and embodied in the forms of a new architecture for a niw society. The- aspirarions of rhe enrire Enlightenmenr, wherher againsr the city or for ir, were, as ir were. crysra-llized and deposired in the herme¡ic geomerries of the fabriqt¿¿s of Chaux. And again and a-sain Ledoux spoke of rhe ponicoes, the endless arcades, thè vaulred hìlls wh_erc his people would mee! in final equanimiry: Porticoes rvhere the inhabirant sheltering from rhe rain, seeks a way of conrinuing his useful activiries. It is benearh rhese vaults, couereâ in the_center to provide shade from the mid-day hear, open to rhe nonh for the refreshing air, that rhe hasrening crowd will find health, and srrengrhen its lungs; it is beneath rhese vaults consecrared ro mediation, to the discussion of individual inreresrs, ro science. ro the collecrion of the best books, ro _eames which occupy the mind rvirhour compromising morals, it is here, finally, thar one will ñnd ¡he har-

monious union of opposites.66

In the end, rhe portico is the

aesthetic mode of reconciliarion for society and for composirion both; rhe tendencies roward variery and con¡rast that Laugier was concedin-s had developed roo far to be unified in the matrix of classical -seomerry or proporrlonal harmony. Only a device that could enfold and subsume wirhout destroying individualiry,

that could acl as a foil and a srrucrure for the sharp and iniense effects ðf elements imbued with charaoer (and perhaps evèn a sublimity) of their own, could act .as lhe public and -general frame for bringing logerher private and panicular elemenrs. Thère are desi_ens whereleãoui uses the portico as the formal settin-s for disparare. ãuronomous enclosures

Fourier and the Gallery-Steets of Communiy,, Ig0g The gallery streets are a means of internal commwticarion which will enou^g^h to put to slntne all the palaces and fine to,tvns of .be

civilization.6s

On his first visit to Paris in January 1790, Chdes Fourier, accompanied by his brother-in-law the future gourmand Brillat-savarin was amaeed at the brilliance of rhe Palais Royale and its a¡cades: .,The first time you see ir," he wrore home to his morher. "you think you are entering a fairy palace. You find everything you could wish for there spectacles, magnificenr buildings, promenades. fashions. " æ If his taste for the art of eating was ro be formed by his guide, his passion for architecture was immediarely stimulated by this first vision of rhe social palace; the image of the Palais Royale was ro be the inspirarion and type for each succeeding project for social communitarian architecture

-

-

-

throughout his life. At once a fairy palace, a realm of dreams and fantasy, and a real frame for social and commerciat activity, the gardens, arcades, and galleries of rhe Palais provided Fourier wirhlhe essential in-eredients, if not the desired results, for the peculiar mix he called first "Tourbillon" and then "Phalanstery."zo For it was not simply the archirectural shell of the palace that excired the young srudent: barely six monrhs after the storming of.rhe Bastille.

Paris, and especially rhe area around the Tuileries and palais Royale. was seethin-s with acriviry. In October rhe crowd had entered the Tuileries and ir was this crowd, with irs conrrasrs, costumes, and unceasing movemenr that artracred Fourier the socíologue.' just before the onslaught of the Terror, and afrer the ñrst ebullient srcps of the

Revolution, two worlds of Paris were juxtaposed. ming,ling in the of rhe Palais. For a moment the Paris of duBany and Necker Iived side by side with the Pa¡is of Balzac, concentra¡ed in the shadow of the Galeries de Bois. The gardens in the center, sunounded by -gardens

Philippe Egalité's galleries and aparrmenrs were political forum (Camille Desmoulins) and club house (Masonic sects);

t-he arcades were

filled with cafés, -eambling houses, small traders of every descripion. and the hean of the publishin-e rvorld. Here pamphlets *ere turnèd off

for privare activities; there are plans *'here the ponico is left empty, ready.for its occupation by society. Bur always, the implication ,"mäins the presses and disrributed ro the crowd almost limultaneously that the very form of rhe shelrer will by its own example inform rhe acts of conceiving, wriring, printing, and - the communicaring compressed ac¡ions of people. A mulriplicity of columns unified in a grid, inrersect- into..a-single spatial domain. Here rich ladies and poór prosrirutes ing with narure on one side and with shelter on the orher: such was strolled and paraded, gazed and exhibited, bou,eht the-warej of others Ledoux's vision. After ¡his, the nature of architecrure and the nature of and sold those of their own. society. are. inseparable considerarions. despite all atremprs by econom.

The Théâtre Français at one end of the garden, and the Théâtre du ics and elitists to stand in between. Leboux was the first modem Palais Royale at the orher, made the disrrict rhe focus of parisian architect ro enritle his rreatise "Architecrure considered in relarion to entertainment. Cementing this heterogeneous and, to rhe casual visitor. art, mores and legislatio¡."e; incredible mélange were rhe _sallery streers, the Galeries de Bois, and

The Scenes of the

Street 5l

âf@ll

n :ù I

:[--'] E E [:".r: --""i l f7ll .J""'

K

IT-FTI EI E6Ë tr ITF-trf

rTHrik=/tiHi

l

i5\,..... .i'--"'l

26. Plan of a Phalanstery, 1829, developed from Fourier's diagram:

25. Charles François Fourier, Plan of a Phalanstery, 1829. Key: "The double lines represent the buildings, ¡he white spaces the couns and voids. The curved dotted lines represent ¡he course of a sream within a double canal. The line berween L and L is a wide road which would pass between the Phalansrery and the stables."

Parade ground at the center of the Phalanstery

P. A.

Court of honor forming a winrer promenade planted with evergreen vegetarion and giving shade

all year round

a,aa Couns placed

between the buildings

o, oo

"..

x,y,z

Colonnades and peristyles Counyards for ¡he rural buildings

xx' yy zz

ll

Ctosed and heated porches, not projecting ll E, ee Three ponicoes, jutring ouc. for the differenr services

:: Double poiàts. between two main buildings, - are passages on columns at rhe ñrst floor 'lCharles Fourier. Le Nouveau Monde industriel et sociétaire (paris, 1829)I

".{.

',

B.

Great parade ground at the cen¡er of the Phalanstery.

Winter garden. planted with evergreens. surrounded by warm greenhouses.

C.,D. Interiorservice couns, with trees, fountains, pools.

Great entry, grand stair. tower of order.

Theater Church H.,I. Grca¡ workshops, stores, granaries, sheds.

Stables, mews, and rural buildings.

Lower coun.

Note. The rural buildings will generally be more exrensive than in the âgure, The great road passes between the dwelling palace and the work buildings.

The gallery street is rcpresented along the interior facades of the Phalanstery. " IFourier, Le Nouveau

E. F. G.

J. K.

Monde, p. l23l

Vidler

t.

27. Victor Considerant. Pcrspecrive view of a Phalansteq', 1831. [Description du Phalansère (Paris, l83a)l 28. Victor Considerant. Perspeuive vie¡s of a lølansrer.t', 1834. ÍD c scripûon du P halanstère)

P

The Scenes of the

that rhe Galeries Vitrée, the ramshackle, leaky, and unplanned_shelter ,-:iãrt.¿ the garden condensing commercial exchange (¡he Bourse) and a physical form that was' some twenty years social exchan-ge "vithin i",*r. to .r"r-g" as the characteristic structure ot' the new consumer

Of alithe galleries the most spectacular, and the most shoniiuJ,'*ot rhe half iunken Circus, buili in ¡he middle of the garden in

t*i",y

1786 and destroyed by ñre some twelve years later: an enormous

above by clerestory windows and a glazed and ioof. anO terminared by apsidal arcades, it was used lbr spectacles and concerts.ir balls cntenainment,

.ofo""ì,1.4 interiôr. litiiom

-

S"i,- tbt Fourier, civilized consumPtion was pernicious' and

the

he saw social commerce ir generated even more so. The acrual society in the galleries *us iot his object; it was the.principle of social condeniå,ìónîi.,"plified by the gaileries that intimated the potential oi arin .tì,".,u." to reform ihe sociial world. If Fourier's major inventions.had all gourmandism.' even and structure, social ;;;;;t" folirics, rheir roôts'in his own e.rperience, their tbrms were the dialectical oppotiào¡ tt"it civilized ðounte.pa.ts.. Even as the price of apples in paris caused him to reflect on the social consequences that stemmed from rhe economy of a fruit that had been so scientifically usetul to ñ.ru,on, so it *as the inconveniences of cities that generated the ,r.hi,..*r. of social harmony, and the need for gallery streets in panicular. Above all Fourier hated the rain and the cold: ' I, rnur, be possible to circulate day and night from one palace to ono,tt.t by means of heated and ventilated passages' so that one does not run the risk' as in the Present order, of being ceaselessly soaked ii'tr""-*tt, dirtied and beset by colds and inflammation of the lungs by the sùdden transition tiom ólosed rooms to open streets'i2 Socialrelationsofpleasureandofbusinessshould,inordertooperate *i,ltout inhibition, be protecred from seasonal impediments' tr*ii ""à while social inrercourse would bè stimulated by the very possiblity of ."ty tnou"rn"nt. Fourier's ideal city was a city of arcades' a continuous UuìiAing, dedicated to play and iestivals, a community fostered bycommtinicatio¡. When àon ut last lea¡ned to use the gallery streets of rhe cities, then perhaps a new order would be born where cities themselves would nã longer be the centers of civilization' and' in the decenralized units of-Phalanstery the covered communications would take on their final role as the very instruments of community activiry' In would the Phalanstery palace, as in the Palais Royale, the gallery s¡reet world: act as the binding agenr. bur now ofa harmonious and unfettered "The most impõnãnt of the interior ¿urangements of the palace' that which ditfers rhe most tiom civilized customs, is the covered communi'

cationbymeansofgalleries,heatedinwinterandrefreshedinsummer. " 73 The promise of continuous communication, intimated by Fourier in

Street

53

theideaofthetransitionalcity,wasfulfilledinthePhalanstery:the

would prevent benelìts of Fourier's social invention were self-evident: it and horizontallythe community of activities the social all úi fr..iitt, link uenicatty in time and space. and operate as the, social center of the whole. ti was also an arc-hitectural form that combined these advantages wirh rhat of being a readily understood symbol of the transtbrmation of world civiliza¡ion inro ñarmony: ttre jostling, licentiousness, and frantic changeã, wirh rhe fairy wand of architecture, into ¡he of consumption 'busrling añd inrricately intermingling sm¡clures of associa' iuminous. iion. fno*r"¿g" õf ,n" tbrmer aliowed understanding of the latter' and grew up imperceptibly side by side with of the"arcades thereby-iõn ii'"

tyìt

iü"i, í.ority, long betbre rhe

and glass halls of Louis Philippe's

shoP windows' bourgeois --As"Fou.i"t ãescribed his notion. as early as 1805, the gallery street was to run alongside the different blocks of building in the Phalanstery' puÞl¡c sometimes above ground as it linked all the apanments and joined rvorkshops' the it as rooms of the dwelling, somerimes below height stables, hotel, and opeia: "In the combined order, one can in the ái *i","t go to the ball' to spectacles' plays, .to the workshops' in colored shães and ffimsy dreises withouc noticing- the cold-.or^the ,, r{ Gone rvould te rhe colds, inflammations. fevers. chills of the t uãiOi y.

pr.sent;..ePtacingthemwouldbeincreasedinterrelationshipofall.the sects oi the community, day and night' movin-e' meeting' eYery tvpe, of social . and il;.;ãil;ì"c,-;ê.;Pì"s, and déveloþincunchanging clima1e of these "iå"ot'-,i in¿i"iá*i iti"r.oúrs" in ñi¿ an¿ love. The be c.arried might activity every vinually oublic rooms would ensure that through rheir city il"i;.fril.. ñ,h; citizens could not run naked allow them to iii..,s U..oute of the weather, the gallery street would children of naiure among the flowers' aromatic

il.y-itk; t;Ñonate

festive tables of the new social green house' section the gallery would operate in the same way to venical iis' In ioin every story of the builã'ing. And here, in the complex sectional of the most ä"".r"J"í.", o'f the gallery, *e are presented with onemodel.

It ocPhalanstery in rhe ;ig"iìä;¡;r.hi ".,urãl inórvenrions the on side; one on building the of venical height entire .uîi"t ttt. service and kitchens, rooms, ;;å;;; äooiìi *n, along the iarious store F;;iÏ;i.t;t*;rruptea frim time to time by porticoes and cross-openings it is continuous' i; Ji;; vehiculår passage. on the frrst floor, though' into it on one down apanmentslook the all thãt ìL." t,o¡.i high,io apaÍments these to side and ouer the countryside on the other'-Stairs rooms attic rhe smaller to gallery.itself' the of space inside the

iroio. -å '

;iñt"p

ãnd down io the lower mezzanine rooms for the by high windows'The' .tiùt"n. The outside wall of the gallery is litthe critlcal elemenl or gott"ty, in this way, became tbr Fourier

ioi

tr,e ìntellectuais

of the communÞtrãiuíttt"ty; for having aniculated the various activities

54

Vidler

ity, only rhe -sallery could

acr as rhe bi;ding caralyst for the whole.

Engines of Industrial Order So imponant was rhis space ro Fourier that no building would serve Bentham and the Galleries of Inspection, l79t the purposes of harmony without it; ..there is no way of using the buildings of civilizarion," ?5 he wrote to his disciples, who proceedid ro In a Panopticon-prison, one general problem applies to all: to extend elevate the gallery inro rhe prime insrrumenr of ideal social ihange even to all of then, +vithout exception or relaxation, the influence o! thc as it fou¡d its perfecr architectural form in the real galleries of iion and commandin g principle, C ells, com¡nunicarions, outlets, approaches, glass. Vicror Considerant, military en_eineer, a grãduare of the Ecole therc ought not anyr+,here to be a single foot square, or, trhíàh man or Polytechnique, established the gallery street once and for all in rhe boy shall be able to plant himself - no not for a moment - under ant, conventions of social architecture: assurance of not being observed. Leave but a s'ingle spot thus utrThe gallery srreet is cenainry one of the most characterisric organs of guarded, that spot teill sure to be a lurking place for the ntost social archirecture. It serves for reprobare of rhe prisoners, and the scene of all sorts offorbidden -srear feasts and special gathärings.

Adorned wirh flo*,ers like the most beauriful glass-houses, decorared pracrices.8r wirh the richesr producrs of an and industry, ihe galleries and salons of the Phalansreries provide splendid perrnanenr-exhibitions for the had proposed rhat the environmenr influenced the development anisrs of harmony. It is probable that ihey will ofren be consrrucred of^Locke the faculties of menl condillac and then Helverius had converted this entirely of _glass.t6 into a principle of psychology at the same time as Burke was transformNow invesred with the display functions of the exhibirion _eallery, the in_s.it und-er the _suise of sensationalist aesthetics into a principle of tech¡lical advances of industrialization, and the organic analogies of rhe sublime effect. The Enlightenment as a whole had placed ihe onus on new biology, the gallery had become the repository of n-ineteenth- the science and an of observation to reveal and instruct, to mediate century social progressivism. In Considerant's eyes it had a life of irs berween object and subject; the instrument of observation was the eve own, the independent existence of a natural organism. It was the ..major and its commanding quality the faculry of vision. Bentham, with a aftery," a "canal through which life circulates," it ca¡ried the bloodof passion for detail that would -have fitted a new naturalisr like Buffon, a the community from the hean to all rhe veins, and ñnally, ir was the mathematical precision that would have delighted a d'Alemben, and unitary symbol of harmony, one linking all, exhaus¡ive specifications that would have saùsfied an ironmasrer in a Sometimes outside, sometimes inside the palace, sometimes widen- machine shop, rook all these in-qredients and constructed a'building our ing out ro form a wide rorunda, an atium flooded with light, pro- of them. jecting irs corridors across rhe counyards on columns or lighi suspenIt was not jusr an ordinary building submirred to the tradirional laws sion brid-ees to join to_eether the two parallel faces of ttrè UuitOìng, of proponion, or even ro the new themes of sensation, but a building finally branching out to the whìte stainvays and opening rip that while completely tactile and material (even the width of the railin-es -srear wide and sumptuous communication throughout.zz was noted) was nevenheless a principle in itself and the instrúment of The great preoccupation of this or-eanizarion, as Banhes has seen, was that principle. Thè Panopticon was in fact an en(ire ..mode of architeccommunication.ts By means of unceasing, continually varied, and a¡. ture" (named "from two Greek words one of which signified chitecturally structured communication, mankind would artain a bal- everything, the orher a place of sight") conceived explicitly ro carry our anced and reconciled harmony. Every element, function, and space of the task of enlightenment rhe provision of happiness with rhe roóls of the new social habitar was to be cha¡acterized, delineated, andplaced materialism the power -of sighr and thereby of surroundings:,.Morals within the roral system: the gallery street would unify rhe wholã. The reformed - health preserved invigorated instruction grand pany of Fourier would be realized in the grand glass houses ofthe diffused - public - industryeconomy - as it were. burdens lightened seared, industrial city; the dream and the ideal were insensibly merged through- upon a rock - in Architecture."82 all by a simple idea out the nineteenth cenrury. Adopted into the architecture of social The general form of this all-powerful principle was remarkably simhabitat from Godin through Borie to Le Corbusier,Te utilized as rhe ple; Bentham had invenred ir on a visit to his brother Samuel in Russia: shelter for the exhibitions of commercial progress and the promenades the occasion was the recalcitrance of shipyard workers to submit themof flâneurs, by the end of the century ii wãs vinually impossible to selves to the discipline of the new technolo_eical rourine.s3 Whar berter leparate a glass-covered street from implications of sociat reform. form of control than ro arrange the workshops radially from a central Walter Benjamin was ro wrire on Fourier or the arcades as if the two observation poinr where the inspector could immediately detect and were interchan-9eable.80 suitably admonish lag_sardly conductfa Thus rhe Panopticon, an idea

The Scenes of the

,t

,o'^Y E[l l¡

Blsl^, r l..v^t:¡i .

N/i

t:rN,:

ü;-;ra..:k-.

29

29. Jeremy Bentham. Section and PIan of a Panoptícotr bttilding, 1797; the section shows the chapel on the top floor, the cells and their galleries to the left, and a stepped arena looking in¡o the chapel on the right, The cells shown on the plan are larger rhan those previously proposed by Bentham for a Panopticon prison: this version is for an "Industry House." or workhouse, Bentham's solution to ¡he problem of poveny. [Jeremy Bentham.Outline of a tvork entitled "Pauper Management Improved,"

.{

..tfl

(London,1797)l

.L-=.:

30 , 31. Augustus Welby Pugin; a Carholic town in l*10 contrasred with the same rown in 1840; rhis celebrated pair of plates from rhe second edition of Pugin's Cozras¡s ( I 84 I ), uses Benrham's Panopticon as ¡he type of "the new jail" in rhe rbreground

of the industrial town.

Street

.-

¡

Li il

r¡t

¡ir

4iIr;

J.5

56

Vidl¿r

zrìí.* I

l@E:fu.Ì li:..4Ë@l

.) .-

3iii¡l;'fii¡---:

32,33. Augusrus Welby Pugin, Modern Poor

House, l84l; again Pugin attacks Bentham in

¡he

conûast berween a modern poorhouse and the medieval institurion of monastic charity. Bentham, by the I 840s, had become rhe epirome of a rechnical. mathema¡ical. mechanical solution to ¡he ills of industrial society to rhose who, like Pugin, Carlyle, and later Ruskin, srill held onto a dream of an or_ganic medieval past reinstated, with all the human and spiritual values atrribured ro it. by means of a revived medieval archi¡ecrure. [a. W. N. Pugin, Contrasts, with an inrroduction by H. R. Hitchcock (New York: Humanides Press. 1969)l

I I I

.t a

I I

The Scenes oJ the

'

rhar Benrham first applied ro rhe problem of rhe poor and rhe criminal.

The building was ro be circular. the cells of iis inhabiranrs radiallv

disposed around rhe perimeter; in the center was a circular trouse t¡e Lodge of the Inspector. Between the Lodge and rhe cells nothins would

Street

57

moved abour the circre at every lever, providing access and surveillance in equal degrees. Only one passage in itre UuitOIng was ro run across and i.diametrical

through its diameter: rhe

passagel,, serving ,t" ..ni.i lodge and the adminisrrators, and moving bur ¡o"the exit rn¿i¡. .*.i"ir. srand in rhe wav oi uninrerrupred supervision of the inmares-bv rhã yards.

Inspector:."The more constantry rhe persons ro be inspecreo are únder These galleries were nor confined to the inside, however: Bentham the eyes of rhe persons w-ho should inspecr them, the móre pertectty *iti envisaged a complete colony of panopticons, linked togethe, aÀil; the purpose of rhe esrablishment have been arrained.'.8õ central open space by covered arcadei: The circula¡ form ensured thar one person cenrraily praced mighr Suppose two of these rotu.ndas requisite: these two might. lry rr view all rhe celrs withour changing poiition; rtre possiuitity b;i;; cgver.e/ gallery consrrucred upon the same principl.r. uJ .o*bliseen ar all times. as much as the facr'of being so, would coidi¡ion "f rhã dated into o-ne inspecrion housä. And by the help of suctr . ;;;;;; behavior of every prisoner. At cenain times thã vision would ,t thefeld of inspecrions might be dilated to any exrenr.se -uallery _. other way towa¡d, tbr examp-le the salutary example of tfre"*,rnã Insfeciår" Thar is' rhe extension ot'rhe cove¡edgallery might extend the potentiar eating wirh- his welr-regulaced family. But the cen*ar function òf tne area of inspection. But always rhis reãrm woulõhave ro be cenrrarizid entire e3tablishmenr was exercised by the annular galreries, *r" joir"rr", for rhe principle to be observed. Bentham pròposed that rhe ,"!rtu of inspection: "ln the three sroriei oi the inspeition tower.-annura¡ area.rhus opened to inspection mighrbe circular,,qu^rË, oi inspection galleries. low and na¡row, .unounàing in rtre to*ermìst :l:"-ir.d¡ccording oorong, to local convenience: ..a chain of any length comsro¡y a circular inspection lodge."ae The design c-riteria of ttrese !ai- posed of inspection houses adapred ro the same or diffeien¡ p-u.por.i, leries was twotbrd: first. the necessity of seeing úirhour ueing seen, rñen might in this way be canied round an area ol any exrenr. ,, H.-"ii.oiÇ the economic need tbr speedy communica¡ioñ b.t*e.n all ot- the sealed against outside inrìuence or inside .r.op., rhe silent ians machines o'f building. Bentham was panicularly concerned with rhe pi."ise æ"ÀPanopticon would srand as implemenrs oisocial progress. Wi¡hin them niques to be u¡ilized in designing the gallery so as ro protect rhe the aberranr, rhe devianr. the-sick and rhe insa¡ie, îhe young .;J,h; seen by the piisoneri. He'investigatedìhe ptay of aged. would be protected (for rheir own inrerest, of colrse)-from the lf¡::ll.:,ri",r.being ¡¡ghr ancl shade in rhe rotunda, rhe use ofbrinds and scriens, tneìizä o¡ society thar regarded them as an obstacle to its happiness. peep.holes, the types of smoked glass available.

In the end he settled for Pain and pleasure being rhe sovereign masteÀ'of mankind, and as narrow as possible, pãinred black on the inside, Cîl]:q and shielded quantity being the measure ot'satisfacrioñ, rhe aim of ..directing Ioy orlnds. men;i r'he whole was calcurated with mathematical accuracy: actions.ro the producrion of the greatest possible quantity of nopfiineii,; station-the inspector anywhere with his eye contiguous to the outer would be fulfilled auromatically by rewarding pleasura-bry rtre greatest circumtèrence of his ring, he c^an, withour quitting-th. ,pot t" ,tuø, number according to their inrerests, and paintúl'iy reminding rt¡o-se *to or si.' on' command a view of seven ceils ôn eac-tr side. In ¡tre s.¿mè might nor immediatery conform rhar rheir o*n int.r.rt, were invorved feet may be described walking in wirhout deviaring from the lng, :16 rnregralry rvirh ¡he rest.s The preoccupation of good govemmenr, then, right line: and 46 feer is- rhe lengrh of the-chord suurenainftÀ" sfu.e was ro "promote the happiness of society, by-puniihing *¿ ,é*oiJoccupied in the circumtèrence by 5 cells.s? _ in-e, " and all who tbr any reason. whethei uy ácðioent ofiint , *isioiIf- this were not enough' Bentham invented a funher devise for observatune' ill health, antisociar behavior, or crimlnal tendency interfered ton: a lanrem to be suspended in the center of the building, ..shaped in any way with ¡he accumularion of happiness by rhe majoritv were somewhat like two shon-necked funnels joined ro be togethei' uy ttieir separdted our, treared according to theii condition, and iernáps .enAe..ã necks." Placed in rhis container, the inspector wourd be-able ui.*, ur fit to return. will and unobserved, through small spy hotes, anã, when he to enrered the contraption from below through a trap door, his presence . utopias had presupposed an inrorerable world of disorderand corrup. would remain tion undetected by the inmares. .and .the. escape of.a few ro preserve their saniry; rhe asyluL provided by the ideal environmenr wàs protective against'rhe innlträiion these of ¡he.outside and supponive of the morbs within. B-entham, il ;;i.l;; -ealleries wourd be the access gaileries ro the ce[s, - Parallel to the orher, again narrow, and protecreA wittr gritts to p."u"ni tumed uropia inside out and utirized its structures of form and is :1:-.bo". p.nsoners pushing the inspectors over. Fòr cheapness, and for the over- functions of.suppon on behalf of those ourside. The grear ;g; ;¡ riding visual need of rransparency, these gratiigs should be few and be-eun; from now, in quick succession, it" t'toriitoi, slender, surmounred by long stende*pikditilË gdleries ^t:lql9t*l,had in rhis ;;t pnson, the insane asylum. the old age home, rhe crèche. anà the the

-

J8

Vidler

;::å:1,ä::1,::,:åï:ï:1,:T"iî::fi:,jlì:,Ëf,îli ;:i:.":?nï:î sain,-si¡non and ,he rracks of ,,,orrd t)niq,, tsre had onlv to be identified as socialþ i"¡iànioìå.i,;;ä';t;ffii:åö Drai1ing,..clearing, rhe guyting of nerv roads and the opening of tnår::lfri;*oiåihï;r ca,,ats i,iu be coìsidere,t ,nu i,oií npo,,ãî)o,r of this tr ,ilfi:ff"ff:iiÍ'å-1rÏ;,"iËå þ*iec1tí or.onnn.,i."ni-.it" rn 18re, Henri saint-Simon announced the inception ffiïiïiJ'.l,l.ltiXjihil'r:î:nLilct-uie Even as rt'' .on..fr-úur ø.m oí uiopi.ïã, uåop,.a ror these nucrei social reform' so were the spatiat crtaåcte¡ü¡ci oi.tr. io.ui.i,y to the performance principles of the machine itself.

The oomin"ntän- dabbred trality' the radiating lines, even the defensive wall

or his

ì'iì.

I.

sreat

or

¿:

,: lL",-;m ¿[l;,lïl',f,,ïJlÏ ïii:ï Ï,i3'fi,äiì'?i;å,ii:H",il: r¿liiì"i :ff:.1.'* ;y"";;;;;rurer saint-simon and business specurator,

in itre oiganizaiion of

pa¡is

rí

had

routes from to Borrrnopti.on'*er. ;ä,; il,Ë;iËï:iad thrown coachinto promoting venrures for immediate translations of cirv form into uril¿¡n-e rorr, u".i'i,r' i*pãr- canats in,panar. ;;i ¡;;l;.iï'w;;;.himserf polytechnique ili;;;:\ tant differences: the radial iines, which in ttle-ioeal .i,y *.r. lir!ãi, was. estabrishea to proiioe technicar_training for ¿Ecote converging on rhe cenrer, were a new eli¡e corps of

of

sta-ee

t¡e engineers ln rhe frencfr army, Saint_Simon ser t¡imself up in an apanment across the srreer. There he herd impromptu seminars for the .."*; s¡udents ru."ri/ã, ìhe potential social tiansformarions to be hoped "no for ;; ;;;;åi;;;ricärion or s"i"nce ìnJ iechnorogy to pubric ,wit! ;n;ä;;;'*ur tã p.ii works; for on.-out oi t¡'.:three years of education at the Ecole, diametrically through the plan, und ut u tin-nl" a srudent l.ti"l ,h. iñ!i" had to study ,o,n^iriìoì¡or¡s.e{ Thus identified wirh passage that gave access to the inspectors' movement and ir quui"',' infrasructures, s"in-,--siron Rousseau had depicted early socieries du"¿i";, .developed a coherent and immensely hands linked, abour a influen¡ial oo.ii"" ãi i"áustrial progress, aided by rhe new routes of tree' the symbol of natural otder, orabout a puu'ti. rp."., the confirma- rade and.orr"r.., *i,ìcn.woula finally bring tion of their communitv ' Ledoux had peace and prosperity ro -et*p;ã Ë ,uorkeri' o*.iii"s; or a' wortd divided through politics and self-inrerest. the citv orchaux in a íemicircle otouñìi',ãir-"ormon space. He hä,t, was rue' placed a house of Surveillance ray its appear. especiarry as it .d:':.:lr'.';ä;l':ffii,1, .*.rhetherein at the centei, but. with the coincided almost exactl! with emer-eing forcei of change as indusfactorv sheds on either side' his plan iiiu iÃpii.a a reciprocar rerarion- ;ffi;.oiït¡ä îâi1,.í,,"', rransformed Europe: The French Revoruship between the director and hii ,uU.¡..ir.-Är'in a rheaier, tf,e ftun-of iion fra¿.faileA;-r" i"ãi.O had the philosophical revolution of the which Ledoux had self-consciously tt"i.t"ã, ¿i...to, á, u.,; ;; eigtrreentrr.!rui.y. rü. Ën-erish revorurion, worker as audience were bound oñ the other h.and. accordnow.the panition walls oi t¡e cells;

center was no longer the commo¡ public þlace but the exclusive ¿omain of the all-powerful inspecror. Visiän .^,ånã"ãio¿ially from t¡. movernÊnt was forced into the.concentric -ealleries that surrounded the hollow shaft of the Lodge, while only privileged

to iach ott'"iJ¡tn o,utu"l in,"i"ri, unã irg ro saint-s¡ron, *rs a¿.vancing from strength ro strength, tolether the community buildinss of the workett- ,ã.à' ot mediators berween *iìti¡ãì:l'iu.räi;i lo"r,i*,t"n rhat appeared ro theirsocial life and theiipolitical control. wìi¡-s"ntl,o*, -euaranree freedom to irs however, the ci¡izens. The aim ãi-õuìir-sin.,on *ás to instaìr in France, arong the triumph of order throush vision had the cenier o, .n,ir"lv ün"s or the parriameni.¡, ,yr,.r, an entirery new poritics ordered on occupied bv authorirviwit¡ "ontrltuì.J sunoui.,ïiiì-i"r'.i¡ü",J'räi..ä"iiiå .ttre breed orprofessionar, theidéorosue.sõ From complete individuali¡v and' thereby, subserv-ience by their isolarion. iiritosophicar The role of the center was from the development this'wtv inu.n"ài-th; ;p*; ;ä;äi "É,iJ¡*'. i¿eological positivism, 5r r,noi"r.a-*-ìä'lü".pî,itation .in control had been concretized in the guíse or rhis was the shared impulse of ttt"lot-unity '.'nä dwelling.

- de Tracy; the writings of SaintMon-n", of ðondorcet, or Desrutt The routes galleries rnd passagEi:;; solety meäni ;il;:; öimon,fromhisquasi-Baconian..LertersfromanlnhabirantofGeneva,, -

t!ñiàiïãiöË;;äi

ffiäTil:il:i

or ræi:r"";br;;" ï,iï',':ff::,ït::!:',"fff:;lig:il;:î:# f"i:i,Xf.ÈilïffiÍ;:' "' The

and the inmates were denied ttl tonn"ãtlon 'rã"ìãi t'"u" tttut or sPace' as conceived bv Ledoux' and "¡tion; larer by the utopian socialiits,

been rendered

nonexiítenr

¡ai

prãn ãT

,heme wi,h pas

-oou",nr.nt. that he proposed was entirely given over to of Invenrions. a

the opèrations-of indusrriar progress: a chamber

íl*m:miä;üjnïj:ñiü::#:i.,iï:ï,n:j."iïì,iJ:î:

tion. composed of two hundred civil en,eineeis. together with

assoned

poers' artists' and archirecrs, would be õharged wñh submining at the

I

r T

I

The Scenes of the

end

of each year, "a program of public works to be undenaken to

increase the prosperity of France and to ameliorate the lot of its inhabitants. taking-into account utility and amenity in every case."e7 The most imponant aspect of the projects conceived in this way was' of course, the construction of communication routes throughout France.

The roads and canals to be built, while thcilitating transport and thereby commerce and industry, should also be seen as public amenities in their own right: "their construction ought to be worked out in order to make rhem ai pleasant as possible to travellers."es Fifty thousand acres of land. or more if necessary' would be selected and set aside from the regions crossed by the roads or canals, to be developed into vast cultural parks with anists' dwellings supponed by the state' musicians to enliven ihe populace, and resting places tbr travelers: "the whole of France should becoifÍe a superb English park, embellished with everything the ñne ans can add to the beauties of nature."-ee Following Ledoux and perhaps even Babeuf, Saint-Simon saw the development of commúnica' tions as a natural force of decentralization, a way of rendering luxury hitheno confined and concentrated in the palaces and chateau of the rich national in its distribution.

- The movement he inspired, from his death in 1825 to the Revolution ot 18.18 and on into the Second Empire . was similarly dedicated to the across continents and within opening up of communication routes sect. ended up as cities. Père Ent'antin, the leader of the Saint-Simonian secretary general of the Paris-Lyons railway and encouraged Ferdinand de Lesseps in his Suez Canal project. Indeed, the manifesto ol the movement, published from the community of Menilmontant in 1832'

stated unequivocably:

The aim is neither popular sovereignty, nor the legitimacy of the ancient regime, nor legality, but the development of industry, the organization of labor on a grand scale, the peaceful and progressive entianchisement of the workers. And we have indicated the actual means of anaining this:

l.

by beginning immediately the railroad from Paris to Marseilles; by executing the project, for so long in existence, for a general distribution of water in Paris; 3. by piercing a street from the Louvre to the Bastille.loo Against the bloody uprising of the June days of that year, the provision of a complete drainage system for the capital, the cutting of a street that exrended the east-west axis of the city, and the joining of the city to Marseilles were seen as the primary and peaceful steps in the establishment of a new social order. Perhaps the espousal of the cut in the city fabric was a survival from the Enlightenment projects ol Laugier and Patte, but the dominant motive now was technical; no traces of aesrheric theory lingered in the practical proposals of the Saint-simonians. Remembering that their own master had shifted his

2.

34. J. J. Grandville, The Flôneur of the Universei a saryrical engraving illustraring the popular vision of the Saint-simonian view of progress through the development of universal communic¡tions. Here. the planets a¡e united by an iron bridge' lit by gas. and observa¡ion galleries of iron and glass ring the earth. allowing unintemrpted vision of the solar system.

Street

59

ó0

Vidler

allegiance from Ecole Polytechnique ro rhe Ecole de Chirurgie at the tum of the cenrury, they talked of the "physiology" of sociery and rhe "biology" of the city in rerms thar exrended the primirive mèchanical surgery of Pane ro rhe sophisricared terminology of the new schools of pathology and applied it to the reconstruction of the environment: Louis Blanc wrore, "Let these insanitary streers be torn down and spacious routes opened upl Let room be made for the sun in the darkesr quaners, let lun-ss be given to Paris where it feels the need to 6r.u¡¡..';tot 1¡¡t was the program thar was ro inspire Louis Napoleon afrer 185 l; bur in I 832. the marerial aspecrs of social recuperation were srill indissolubly merged wirh rhe spiritual in a cult that had a Ne,n, Christianr4, for irs principal text. The concenrrarion on iron and glass, on railways and bridges, which characrerized the late flowering of Saint-Simonianism in the Second Empire, was in this period of communitarian free love and sociaf,romanricisms imbued wirh a mysrical cast that emerged mosr strongly in the poerry of Charles Duveyrier, as he portrayed rhe new Paris of the Sainr-Simonians.to2 Duveyrier, speaking on behalf of the brotherhood assembled in Menilmonrant, began by casrigating the "primitive chaos," the confusion ofhouses, churches, and buildings ofold Paris, a verirable dance of death, with slau,ghrerhouses, hospitals, prisons. cemereries, and houses mingled wirhout reason: And in the midst of this grand satanic dance, men and women, pell-mell. pressed rogerher like anrs. feet in mud, brearhing an infested air. walking through all the obsrrucrions of their strèers and sguares, buried in the rows of tall houses, black or dim, wirh neither hope nor care for anything better.ro3 The problem was ro inrroduce this unhappy populace to the pleasures of an anricipared future wirh order, suirability, and beaury; the solution was to reform the enrire ciry accordin_s to the image of rhe mores, customs, and civilizarion of the inhabirants. Accordingly (as society had not yet emer_ged from its unfonunarely predominately male srare), the city of Saint-Simonian furure was ro be in rhe shape of a gigantic man, lying prone along the Seine, with his head ar the Ile de la Cité and his feet splayed around the Bois de Boulogne. This was to be a..living city" risin-e out of rhe morass of the oid, with the power of the neõ industry. Its streets would be arcaded, galleried, wide, and rree-lined: "The streers are sinuous like interlaced rings; their walls are set on the -ground, firm and puffed up like a pasha's turban, or suspended in the air, transparent and light in reed-like tresses."t04 Columns and vaults would cover rhem like fields of high planrs with their leaves rouching; the -creat circular places, with their irregular gardens, would acr as cen¡ers of moving light and sound. From there the citizen could view all the marvels of advanced industrialism huge engines, clouds of - the vapor, sparks. and resounding din marking the pro_eress of society as it

lighted the sky of the ciry arnight. Risin-e high in the midst of all this. ñnally, would be the Temple. a -sigantic statue of triumphant Woman built of iron and glass, with galleries winding up and around her dress like ñligreed lace.ros

Model Towns for Health and Welfare Owen and tlrc Cloisrers of Cooperarion, 1820 As courts, alleys, lanes and streets create ,nany unnecessary inconveniences, are injurious to health, and destructivc to alnost all the natural comforrs of human lífe, rhc¡' will be excluded.r06

Taking over the management

of the corton manufactory of

New

Lanark in January 1800. Roben Owen, enlighrened, paternalistic. and one of the foremost young execurives of the indusrrial revolurion. transformed rhe hope of rhe ei,chteenrh cenrury in¡o the pragmaric practice of the nineteenth. Environment and character were interdependent; environment was both mental and physical while character should be moral, and so Owen sent his factory children to a new school. stopped their parents from drinking by lecturing rhem ar lengrh every evening, and built more sanirary habirarions for all.!07 The illustrations for his firsr rheorerical essays "on rhe principle of the formation of the human characrer' ' demonsrrared rhe ' 'application of the principle ¡o practice." The ugly, sgualid guaners of rhe working family, with husband ñghrin,e wife. child drinking gin, table collapsing. baby crying, were to be transformed into the book-lined salon of the harmonious society; musical instrumenrs. busrs of classical kind. and ornamental.fruirs would combine to genera(e familial love, muiûal ties. and respect for learnin-e in the very sirne individuals who had been set ar each other's throats by misery.ros Owen was convinced that "any general characrer" might be given to any community "by the application of proper means": these means were architectural and educational.ros By 1820. the architectural solution was clear. Bentham, his one rime panner in New Lanark educational schemes, had designed the Panopti. con; Owen proposed, in his rurn, the Parallelo_eram.tro In the former. the name, and the shape, referred to its active principle; in the laner. the name referred to its shape alone. The shift is significant as the space defined by parallelogram is both paradigmatic and acrive in irs own right. No longer did the operarions of rhe inhabirants depend on rhe fear

of observation, of ¡oral control and visual inspectability, for the space itself was now the redeeming agent. By excluding streets, alleyways. and counyards, it would naturally exclude rhe vices displayed in such environmen¡s: by emulating the form of the monasric precinct and the college coun. it united the vinues of morality and learning and. by

The Scenes of the

35. Roben Owen, View of a Harmonious Commu-

niry, 1832. Key: "A design of a square building, for the accommodarion of a Society of one rhousand

persons, combining on rhe principle of common propeny, joint labor, and united expenditure. The rrea of ground occupied by the buildings, promenades, and gardens of the esmblishment would be abour thiny-three acres: lhat of the enclosed quadran_gle, twenty-¡wo acres: nearly three times as iarge as Russell Square. h is calculated to afford rhe inmates ¡he advantages at once of a sociery and retirement, of town and of a counry residènce: l. Gymnasiums or covered places for exercise, attached to the schools and inñrmary.

2. Conservatory, in the midst of gardens, botanically arranged.

3. Baths, warm and cold, of which there a¡e four for the males and four for the females.

4. Dining halls, with kirchens benearh them.

5. Angle buildings, occupied by the schools for infants, children, and yourhs and the In6rmary; on the ground floors are conversation rooms for adults.

6. Library, detached reading rooms. bookbindery, printing ofûce.

7. Ball room and music rooms.

8. Theatre for lectures, exhibitions, discussions. \ffith laboratory, small librar,v.

9. Museum, with library of description and reference, rooms for preparing specimens.

10. The brewhouses, bakehouses, washhouses. laundries, arranged round rhe bases of the rowers.

I l. The refectories for ¡he infanrs and children are on each side of the vestibules of the dining halls.

12. The illuminators of rhe establishmenr, clock towers, and observatories. from the elevated summits of which all the smoke and vitiated air of the

Street 6l

buildings is discharged inro rhe atmosphere.

13. Sui¡es of adult sitting rooms and chambers.

14. Suites of chambers rhat may easily and quickly be made of any dimensions required; dormirories for ¡he unmarried and children.

15. Esplanades one hundred feer wide, about twelve feet above narural surface.

16. Paved footparh.

17. The arcade and its renace, giving both a covered and an open communication with every part of the

building.

18. Subway, leading to ¡he kirchen, a.long which meat, vegetables. coals are conveyed to the stores and dus¡ and refuse brought out."

[Roben Owen and Roben Dale Owen, eds.. Iåe Cr¡su, 1832-33 (New York: Greenwood Reprinr Corp., 1968), vol. ii, no. 5, Sarurday, February 9, 18331

62

Vidler

No. 9. \'or.. ì'I

f

.'l

s

Å'rtiR I).t Y.

sf.:P'friIItlER lr,

I ^¡-D

N.{,TION.IL OO-OPERá,TIVE TßADES, U);]ON .\.\*D EQUITÁ,BLE LÅBOUR XXCHANGE GÁZET.TE. 36

#i 36. Roben Owen. Iåe Old Moral l.l/orld and the New Moral World: the frontispiece ¡o the C,,¡sis, September 1833, lOwen, Cris¡i, vol III., no. 2, Saturday, September 18331

ll,

37. Roben Owen, Plan of Colony, 1841. Key:

a Self Supporting Home

A. Dwelling houses B. Colonnade C. Public buildings D. Schools E. Playgrounds and gymnasiums

F.

G.

H. K.

L.

Refectories Towers Baths Conservatory A¡bors Terrace,

IRobert Owen,l Development of the Principles and P|ans on which to establish Self-Supporting Home Colonies (London. l84l)l

¡¡1

I

\E I

I ltr i,:r I I "'.

The Scenes of the

was turned'. it oroviding a cenler toward which the entire community 5ài"r.iit.¿ the very image of harmony and unity for the new social

*o.io. fot the street. har6inger of every social ill, was substituted the ;l;il;ra ihe meditative wal[s of rhe past reinvoked for the secular

of the tlture: '-äunning enrirely around rhe inrerior of rhe square, ar a short distance trom tf,-e houses, will be a spacious cloister; by means of which ourposes

0...'''oybehadtoanyaPanmentinthewholeofthise.rtensive rvill

withoút going tiom undercover; and which "iu"ildings for sheltered exercise in very hot or rvet present opponunities ulsõ wea¡her-¡lt ttre oventy authoritarian order of Bentham had been replaced by a domestic order of apparent equality and union' Yet the controlling ,ou",r.., of-materialìit paternaìism were not so easily dispensed rvith: can ,À" .onl*unTiy gained itì shape. specifically so that "the children playing parents" eye ot'their undeithe educared ü" U.,,.r trainód-and and undergoing "tbrmation of character" in the centrally in it. "oun were to be lighted by fiacea scnoots. Twent! yeãrs later these courts. [i!tr U.o"ont rhroughoút ihe night to ensure good behavior and t'acilitate rhè continuous process of industry.

Indeed. rhis hrsr industrial new town. a model for the new factory vitiages of the next fifty yeus. was described by its author as a machine .'a *i.itin" it truly is. that will simplity and.facilitate' in irs-own right: in a remarkible manner, all the operations of human life"'rr2 As the invention of machines increased thè power of labor, so lhe invention of ,it" pu.ff"fogram machine would multiply the. phys^ical and mental po*än of thã whole society. But again the transition from Bentham is tritical: from mechanistic galleries-to harmonious cloisters, from the center occupied by the inJpector to that occupied by education and recrearion, fndicarès o rouår"nt toward the reciprocal obligations of reacher and pupil that was to inform the peculiar development ot English sociaiism at its various levels for the next century' The village' onõe the site of natural yeoman virtue, was to be reconstituted in the guise of a rational tonuit"ry, bringing all classes together in peaceful reconciliation. t r3 The street eliminared, or at least transformed into a courl: the title page of the Crisis ( I 832- 1834) drew the picture graphically '- Above was

r..g.

of the old immoral world, below that of the New Moral World. itre ol¿ comprised an unpaved street. dogs and cocks fighting' a beggar on crutches,'ñanked by ttre puUtic House on one side and the

ihe- shape

I-uìrãiic Àsytum on the other: iis destination was the gallows-tree' In.the new world, the street was no ¡¡9¡9; irs space was paved over; it-iad t'oun¡ains, carefully tended shrubs. children playing,.adults strolling' and the clean lines of rational te¡races, arcaded on the ground floor' tiaming the view. Even the sky had lightened:

Steet

63

The artist has intended to represent the irrational and the rational u.rong*.n,r of society. In the tbrmer we see the cumbrous buildings'

inconienient and crowded. of the otd system: in the latter, the regular structures, scientifrcally disposed, of the new system'rr{

The power of the myth suggested the basic form

lfiã, m

power

of

of a medieval past. rvhile it might have of the cloister, was not so great as to over-

enlightened science. Rarional instruction and

pf."".O ordËr rvould serve the best interests of progressl science and iechnology, "the enormous Powers of chemistry and mechanism"' *outa eñäúte mankind to "þtogt ss towards the highest degree.of ,.nn.t.n,, physical and menial lhi.h tht human mind can rationally rri imaeine ""ñ'ilit or desire."

ror " selt'-supPorting home .colonies"' published developeà-the plans forParallelogram in their rost aniculated form:rt6 it is significant that' in the same year that saw of the i-ft" r*""¿ edition of Pugin's õonrotts' at the height -medieval wedded to the remained Owen reuiuaf in style and in etñical PurPose, paradigmatic ideal of the monastery only iniotar as it represented the and ,pu." o¡ community. The rest. with modem services' chimneys'great The par excellence' machine Énlightenment *ut * Ë;;;"i, of.four'story dwellings and ;õ;;;. ;"; 1,650 rè;t long, was.tbrmecl colleges "for the scientific and withlchools comers at the closed

;;ñ;úion

r"u.n v.rrlt iater. Owen

iòrtution of superior character." At the midpoint of each side

were

.oo,nr, libraries. museums, laboratories, artists s¡udios, and "rr"rúfy þ;*t" íralls, while projecting into the square were the four huge topped by iefecrories wirh thei¡ iircit.n sñroke stacks rising to 240 feet,

astronomicalobservatoriesandpowerfulfloodlights-toilluminatethe were gymnasla' squzue at night.rt? In the green space of the courtyarcl ran uåtns, titctrin gardens, ãnd conservatories' The grand cloister walls for its from pulled away parallelogram, the ;;;;d the insidã of roof of aniculation, each enry *äy marked by irs covered extension: the from the apanrhe cloisrer was flar. at seõond-story level. wirh access on rnãn,t, ¡ot rvalking in fine weather' Outside the square' looking out

thethree-thousand-acreestatetwasa..nobletefface,''ahundredfeet

from the ground on the-firsþlloor level of the dwellings' ;i"", èarefully eiáborated by owen's architect' would' accordinn rã iL aurhor, "rèalize more substantial and pe¡manent happiness iüin-rt*-u".n promised in the 'New Jerusalem!"'r18

*ioåll"L"J"p 'äti;

Buckingham and the Colonnades of Morality' 1849 good effects if placed in As a model house or lodging may lose half irs viiating influences: and of streerþtli þoltutions an un¡vholesome lnrirro, the benefits o¡ o 'nõaù steet might derive a manifest aug' if foniied iy the general arrangements of a model town.tts

^äiror¡o"

64

Vidler

As member of Parliament for Shefñeld, with a mission to reform the poor by reforming their drinking habis, James Silk Buckingham introduced a bill empowering local aurhoriries to establish iecreational facilities for the public; walks, baths, playgrounds, halls, theares, libraries, museums, and an galleries would, he stated, act naturally ..to draw off by innocent pleasurable recrearion and instrucrion all whô can be weaned from habirs of drinking."r2o As a direct result of his chairmanship of the Selec¡ Comminee ro inquire into the Causes of Drunkenness (1833), the reetotaler and ardenr reformer was convinced thar onlv a change in the cuhural life of the poor would lead to the regeneration of their social life. The insanitary conditions of the rowns, the stare of working class- housing and health. might well be contriburing causes, but reform of these by themselves would have no real effeõt on the habia of the cirizens. Parks and playgrounds should be opened. foot paths rçstablished, public spons, _games. and amusementi should be organized, in order that the "mechanic who wanders fonh on a holiday to breathe the fresh ai¡ ofthe counrry" should be able ro ..find a spot of green on which ro rest his feet, or to see his children run about and gather flowers." Those who were condemned to take their exercise on foot must be provided with adequare facilities; families musr be encouraged to visit public houses of culture rather than public houses of vice; the habirual panerns of the respectable middle class must be exrended to the- masses. Buckin-gham's plan was greeted with laughter, abuse, and defeat as at best "visionary and ¿6ru!6."trt

development, arising

from architecrural and municipal

defects

alone.,' t13 To remedy rhese defects Buckingham proposed the formation of a Model Town Associarion, for the purpose of building an entirely new town, "ro combine within itself every advantage of beauty, securiry, healthfulness, and convenience, that the larest discoveries in archirecture and science can confer upon it. " r2'r Its name would be Victoria, signifying both Queen and Victory: it would çonrain every improvement

in siting, plan. drainage, ventilarion, supply of li-sht, warer, and in

architecture. A mile square, it would conrain no more than 10,000 inhabitants. The enrire gamut of ninereenth-century utopianism was brought to bear on the solurion, once and for all, of society's problems.

No beer. no prostirution, no swearing, no brawling, no child labor; these were the rules of the association, rules thar encouraged the family in the regular pursuits of work, recreation. and inst¡uction.

But, with all the regula¡ions of the new society, the most imponart single instrumen¡ of reform was the plan ircelf, the very type of .iorder, symmetry, space and healrhfulness" achieved with "the largest supply of air and light, the most perfect system of drainage, for the comfon-ãnd convenience of all classes." The prime requirement, not unexpecredly, was for "ready accessibility ro all pans of the rown. under conrinuous

shelter from sun and rain when necessary." Buckingham.had read Fourier, met Considerant, and absorbed this mosr imponant inven¡ion of social architecrure into his scheme, not as a simple accommodarion of Thineen years later, on the eve of the revolutions of lg4g, he pedestrian movement through the town, but as the oveniding idea and concluded thar the diverse afflic¡ions of mankind required a systematic physical structure of the plan. Victoria was ro be a veri¡able city of answer for their solurion: a complere model ¡own that combined in irs arcades: "furnished with covered galleries, for shelter from the rain, social organization, architectural plan, and insriturional strucrures all the wind, dust and sun, whenever it is desired to use them for this purpose; remedies for rhe narional evils of rhe midcentury. Society was to be as to enable the residents to walk from any part of it to every ottrer, remodeled along enrirely different lines, according to a plan of associa- perfectly free from exposure to any wearher.'; t25 The purpose of these tion, and housed in a remodeled environment that would sustain and continuous arcades was, like the galleries of Fourier, to permit uninterstructure its new forms, "A 'Model Society,' with its model farms, rupted social intercourse prevented in cities by the intervenrion of bad model pastures, model mines. model manufactures, model town, model weather. In this model town the arcades would be literally continuous. schools, model workshops, model kitchens, model libraries, halls and encircling each of the concenrric rows of houses and workshops, and places of recreation, enjoyment and instruction." t22 cutting into the cenrer of the city along the diagonals of rhe square. The The a¡chitecrural model had supplanted, or better, subsumed, the plan was much like a series of Parallelograms placed one inside the social reform; if architecrural chan-se wrought social change then why other, with their accompanying cloisters separated by "a large inrermixcould notsociety itself be designed, built, and function like a perfect ture of grass lawn, garden ground and flowers," in which green spaces building? Everywhere Buckingham saw evidence of the profound effect stood the various public buildings of the town. of environment on health, welfare, and morality. There was no town in The arcades were carefully graduared in form and architecrural style the country thar was adequately drained, or in which the dwellings were to correspond to their specific place in the hierarchy of the town's adequately ventilared this had been well established by the par_ functions; every variety of passage, gallery, cloisrer, and arcade in the liamentary Commissions including Buckingham's own and con- repenory of the midcentury social architecr was employed and carefully sequently, "Premarure deaths ar all a-ges daily take place, -and the very detailed.¡26 The outermost ran-ge of buildings, row houses for the workrace itself becomes srunted and degenerated, from imperfect growth anä ing classes, had a _garden on one side, and on the inner front, facing onto

The Scenes

38. James Silk Buckingham,Planof Victona. 1849: "Plan of a Model Town for an Associated Temperance Community of about 10,000 inhabitan¡s.

A. Outer square of I,000 houses and gardens, 20 feet frontage, 100 feet deep.

B. Second square Covered arcade for workshops, 100 feet wide.

560 houses and gardens. 28 feet c. Third square irontage, 130 feet deep.

D, Founh square Covered arcade for retail bazaars, 100 feet wide.

E. Fifth square 296 houses and gardens. 38 feet frontage, 160 t'eet deep.

F. Sixth square Covered arcade tbr winter promenades. 100 feec wide.

G, Seventlf'squa¡'e 120 houses and gardens,.54 feet frontage, 200 feet deep.

H. Cen¡ral square 24 mansions and gardens, 80 feet frontage, 260 feet deep.

Five churches orplaces ofpublic worship, 200

$__

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

I.

J. K.

feet by 130.

Library below and Gallery of the Fine Ans and Antiquities above.

University below and Museum of Narural His-

tory above.

Kk. Hall for public meetings below and concen room above.

12 dining halls below and drawing rooms above. 100 feet by 65.

M. 12 public baths below and reading rooms above, l0O feet by 65.

N. 8 infan¡ schools, gymnasium below, school above, 100 feet by 65.

O. 4 boys' schools for 5 to l0 years of age, same division and size.

P. 4 Girls' schools for 5 to l0 years of age as above.

R. 4 Boys'schools for l0 ro l5 years of age -same. s. 4 Gi¡ls'schools for l0 to 15 years of age -same.

T. 8 avenues, l0O feet wide in the cen¡er, 20 tèet colonnade each side.

U. 24 streers 100 feer wide in thecenrerand 20 feet colonnade.

V. 24 open grass lawns for dining halls, barhs. schools, 150 feet wide.

W. Inner Grass Lawns for Public Edifices, Churches. etc., 300 feer wide.

X. 8 fountains, 100 feet diameter, below and 50 feet jet.

L.

-

-.-......--.-,:l

Y.

Inner sguare or forum wirh ponicoes and public ot'6ces, 700 feet square.

Central tower for eleccic light, clock, and gallery, 3@ feet high.

N.B. All large Manufacturies using Steam Engines would be removed a¡ leasr ha¡f a mile beyond the Town, as well as Abba¡oirs or Slaughtering Houses.

Canle Ma¡kets, Reservoirs of Sewerage for Manurc, the Public Cemetery, Hospiral, Boranic Garden.

Cricket Ground, and on the land to be anached to the Town for Agricultural and Honicultural pur. poses, Sites would be reserved for the building of Suburban Villas, by such residents as might desire it." [J. S. Buckingham, National Evíls and Practical Remedies (London, 1849)l

Z.

of the

Steet

65

66

Vidler

tî-€j:d3=:#:¡erÞ-*

.

'&\

."-C¡¡'ì ....8¡E

'€{

39. J. S. Buckingham. Perspccrive view of Victoria, I 849. I Buckingham, N ationat Et'i ls]

The Scenes of the

the ñrst concentric roadway, there ran a "colonnade of the light Go¡hic order." twenty feet wide and one story high. Its flat roof allowed access tiom the second floor of the houses, forming a promenade in warm weather and below a covered arcade for wet days' The next or second rvas itself a complete arcade structure modeled, in ring of buildings Buckingham's words. on the Burlington or Lowther arcades in London: it ',vas to be some twenty feet wide, glazed and lit t'rom above' running between single-story workshops, which themselves had ffat roofs used rs open walks on ei¡her side of the arcade Proper. Then, moving toward rhe center of the town. there was another open green sPace tbr the major dining halls, public baths, int'ant schools, reading public buildings The third square of houses' for middle-class rooms, and gymnasiums. occupants and theretbre larger than the outer dwellings, had an arcade on irs inner tiont of "the Gothic" order (as opposed to the "light" Corhic employed tbr the working classes), again with its open prom' enade roof: The tbunh row was composed ofshops. "a second covered gallery or Arcade, forming the Bazaar, for the Stores or..Shops of all

kinds'-in which the various anicles made in and aroúnd the Town . . , are disposed for exhibition."t2T This gallery, like the first,

would be glazed over, and the shop roofs would be lìat for promenades on both sides. The rows of dwellings for the professional classes in the next square would have a colonnade, but this time of the Ionic order.

The grandest arcade of all, the sixth row of buildings, was a covered gallery 100 tèet wide that served as the major public promenade of the town,

to be adorned as time and improved wealth may admit as the porticoes of the Romans and the Agora of the Greeks, with pictures and statuary and on every evening to have a Band, formed of the musicians of the town, to be open as a Public Promenade to all classes sheltering them tiom rain, snow or sun, and enabling lhe youngest and most delicate to take walking exercise for health and pleasure at all hours, and on every day in the year.r!8 Thus was the ponico ol Ledoux. and the gallery street of Fourier, put to use as the central emblem of Victorian municipal Progress, with the municipal band serenading the municipal population among municipal flowers and statues of municipal wonhies. Within this arcade were rows of housing for the rich citizens, decorated with colonnades of the most highly decorated Corinthian order. and. to complete this scheme of graded architectural omament,¡2e the Grand Inner Square of the town was fronted by a magnificent a¡cade of the Composite order; each of the colonnades "growing more lotìy and more elegant as they advance through the several -eradations of the Go¡hic. the Doric, the lonic, the Corinthian. and the Composite Orden of architecture. " In the center of the whole town would rise a huge octagonal tower, like Fourier's Tower of Order, or Owen's Chimneys, three hundred feet high and surmounted .

Street

67

by an electric light for lighting the torvn, a clock. and bells.

Presented in description. in plan. and finally in bird's-eye vierv, the moclel Town ot Victoria assembled in this way the architectonic elements of the ronìantic social utopia oi the previous half century' but in a totally classical. almost mechanistic thshion. Closer perhaps to Nlorelly's communitarian city of the "Code of Nature" than to Fourier's Phalanstery, Buckingham's invention was marked by his belief in the ñnal powers of Enlightenment reason, made operative through the combined et'fects of education and environment to over' come the problems of industrial society. His was the pragmatic reason of the ironmaster and parliamentary retbrmer rather than the idealistic reason of rhe communiiarian utopist: his city was to be ñreproof. built of iron throughout. and crimeproof. rvith literally no place for criminal or immoral activity: courts and blind alleys' or From the entire absence of all "vynds. culs-de-sac. there would be no secret and obscure haunts tbr the retirement of the ñlthy and the immoral from the public eye, and for the indulgence of that morose defiance of public decency which such secret haunts generate in their inhabitants.r'|0 The very sites of crime and immorality would be eradicated tÌom the city; no secret haunts ergo no secret practices. If the circulation of pedestrians were encourtged throughout the town. ei¡her under the àrcades or colonnades, or on the raised promenades themselves. joined by "light triumphal arches" bridging across the major avenues' then all

the public spaces rvould be under continual public surveillance.

Bur if this seems like an eclectic and somewhat utopian plan. based on past dreams, it is nevenheless tn¡e that Victoria exercised a strong holà on the imagination of the reformers of the next half century, from Titus Salt to Ebenezer Howard.r3r lts critical role in the tbrmulation of Victorian urban ideals and the practice of reform is a result not so much of its eclectic character but more panicularly of its na¡ure as model. a systematically conceived and synthetically designed structure for the sustenance of morality. Once built according to speciñcation it would act to restore a balance to the disturbed social order through its architec' tural order, all classes would find their rightful place once more. and civic organization would regularly imitate its physical counterpan.

Buckingham had translated into urban terms the Precepts of Bentham; nothing would prevent the construction of the full-scale model. once the

scale þrototype had been designed. Buckingham was supremely confident of the effects of building such a town: It is constantly contended that mankind are not to be improved-by

mere mechanital anangements. and that their reformalion must nrst begin within. But there is surely no reason why both should no-t be caùed into oPeration. A person who is well fed, well clad, cheerfully because agreeably occupied, living in a clean house, in an open and

68

Vidler

well ventilared rown with many objects of archirectural beaury, would at least be more likely to be accessible to moral sentimenrs, generous

The great towns, and Paris above all, are thus sad spectacles to see' especially for those who have any idea of order and harmony, for whoever thinks of the social anarchy thar this shapeless mass depicts in three dimensions with a hideous fidelity.136 Ten years later Engels was also to characrerize the problem of "rhe great towns" by reference to their physical condition; the unigue contribution of Considerant and his utopian socialisr peers (rogether wirh innumerable medical and social observers, novelists, and professionals) rvas to firmly esrablish the pathology of the city in the cenrer of rhe discourse of the social problem.

In the last years of the Restoration and the frrst years of the July Monarchy, the special nature of this discourse was formed according to an analogy with medical diagnosis: or rather, was couched precisely in the rerms of the medical discourse ro the extent that the city as a physical organism, its inhabiranrs as a social organism, and their dual problematic as sickness, disease, or death were perceived as living and

feelings and religious and devout convictions and conducr, thãn in the

teeming hives of iniquiry, wirh which most of our large ciries and

towns abound.l3z From this it was a short step ro the idea that reform of conditions alone would act to reform morals and, despairin_e of an immediare change in human nature. the pragmaric materialisrs of the second half of the century worked with fervor to detail and ro construct the well-planned, well-drained, well-ventilated, well-serviced environment that ðould be perfectly realized, if nor in the old ciries and indusrrial slums, ar least in the model community of health and welfare.

The Pathology of Urban Form ConsièIbranr and the Alleys of Infection, 1834

All

these windows, all these doors, are so man), mouths begging to breathe: and above all this you can see, when the wind is still, a Ieaden atmosphere, heavy, blue-grey, composed of all the ftthy exhalations of the great sewer, This is the atmosphere that paris breathes and beneath which it suffocates. Paris is an immense workshop of putreþcùon, where misery, plague and illness work in concert, where air and sun hardly penetrate.rss

As early as 1783, Mercier had described the "comrpred atmosphere" trapped within the hi-eh and narrow street walls of the poor quarters; he had conrrasred these "infected exhalations" to the pure airof the countryside -denied to the city dweller by vinue of the cadaverous odors of the cemeteries and the lack of sunlighr and venrilarion.ts{ But, for Mercier, the progressive hope of rhe Enlightenmenr, rhe hope that charged the very optimism of the medical gaze irself. in the schools and clinics of the rurn of the century, still remained attached ro the dream of a therapeurically reconstructed city. V/riting some fifty years later, and two years afrer the cholera had claimed its eighteen and a half thousand victims, Victor Considerant was prepared to see the conjuncture of poveny, illness, epidemic, and environment as the symplomatic srruciure of an entire social order. While Victor Hu-eo climbed rhe rowers of Nôrre Dame to reinvoke the picture of an organic, medieval paris, Considerant found in

of Paris. char-ged with its "impure parricles" and

the bird's-eye view (a new form of description, stimutated by

the

balloon and phorography alike) a disrurbing specracle that intimarely reflected its social srare.t3s "Architecture writãs history" he claimed, and the book of Paris, with its disorderly chaotic and inianirary srreets, was no more than the story of a comrpt and dying civilizarion:

,

interdependent systems: How ugly Paris seems after an absence, as one suffocates

in

these

dark, narrow and humid corridors rhat one would rather call the streets of Paris. One thinks one is in a subterranean !own. the atmosphere is so heavy, the darkness so deep. And thousands ofmen live, move, press together in rhese liquid shadows, Iike repriles in a marsh.

r3?

The air, the light, the streer, its inhabitants

contributed to this - allmoved frightful impression; and rhe entire ciry seemed wirh a single

purpose and animared wirh a single natural law

rhat of putrefaction, - the narrow was concenrrared in and condensed space of the srreet: it was at once space of manifestation.and of cause,'its cjutward' appearance, its very physical experience, simply revealing and confirming the condirion of sickness thar it created out of its very nature. Whether commenrators spoke of the mud, the awful drains and their noxious exhalarions, the rubbish, rhe dust, the poverry, beg-eary and crime, the maladies, the epidemics, the political manifesrations, the chaotic archirecture, the dark and close walls, the smoke. the tragic scenes of death and misery, the comic scenes of picturesque thievery, the mysterious scenes of obscure depravity, they were attempting to capture the tangible essence, the living presence of a human tragedy rvhose separate pans had not yet been separated out for clinical analysis. Just as the air perceptibly canied its diseases and enrered every realm of the environment, penetrating each individual, so did the social infection stem from the conrinuous operarions of a consuming and cannibalistic social order. Considerant posed the questions: "Did Cod make Paris, or did man? Did God make cholera, or did man?" If the effect rvas thus, then the cause was human in its origins.

In the face of such general disease, the single measures advocated by

suffocation, and death.

All

The Scenes of the

t ; -'3

Sreet

69

--¿t

'..F;,i'"*tt*

:-å.!i,

40. Bírd's-eye Víew of Paris in the time of Louis

X//I,' Victor Hugo describes such a view of a simple' neatly laid out vision of medieval Paris in ly'ó¡r¿ l), Book iii.. "Paris a vol d'oiseau." Indolphe Joanne. Paris lllustré (Paris: Hacheue. t879), p. 2ll

Dame de P¿r¡s (183

41. Bird' s-eve Víew of Paris in I 852 : a view of the city at the beginning of the Second Empire, such.as

Coîsiderant describes in his Considérations sociales sur l'architectonique of 1834. lEdmond Texier' Tableau de Paris (Paris, 1852-53), in ¡wo vols" vol. I, frontispiecel

70

Vidler

the planners seemed fruitless; a streer from the Louvre to the Basrille would indeed be fine, but the hundred others, '.in which the inhabirants are rele-gated like pariahs, in which the physiognomies are livid and cadaverous," remained untouched.r3s No piecemeal embellishment would serve to cure rhe organism, nor would a few judicious curs of rhe surgeon's knife remove the cancer. The enrire city was infected and must be rebuilt or replaced by another form of settlement. For Considerant, of course, the Phalanstery was the ready answer; for other Fourierists, Iike the engineer Peneymond and architect César Daly, reconstruction was srill a possibility.t3e Peneymond published a nerv plan for Paris, derailing with precision rhe rype of inrervenrion to be made common practice by Haussmann under the Second Empire, while Daly investigated the possible forms of new social housing. perhaps the most si-snificant contriburion of these roman¡ic socialisrs, however, resided not in their solutions but in their cririque that so graphically Iinked the descriprion of social conditions wirh their underlying causes, usiri! the environment as rhe frame of depiction: The _createst number of the streets of this marvellous paris are mere trenches, dirty and always humid with infected water. Nanowly pressed between two rows of high houses, the sun never descends into them. and visits only the top of the chimneys that dominate them.

A pale and sickly crowd moves rhrough them ceaselessly, foot in the gutter, nose in infecrion, and rhe eye is struck at each corner by rhe most repulsive filth.r'¡o Such were the srreers of this ciry of burgeoning commerce, of bourgeois hegemony, of civilized culture; and if the srreets of mid-eighteenthcentury Paris had been incompatible with Enlightenment, rhese were surely, as the author of this description claimed, "incompatible with the Republic." Thus the politics of the street were directly read from irs aspect in a way that was to inform the forms of public revolt for the nexr century or more. The identity of a poveny with a special realm had this double effect: while concretizing the morives of revolr about a visible cause, it also found rhe revolt idenrifying itself with a space ro be defended. however miserable and diny.

The lines between the sick, the poor, the political, and the criminal were not as clear in the world of pre-'48 Paris as they were to become in the Second Empire. The dan_serous classes and the working classes were largely seen as one, as Chevalier has demonsrrated, and together they possessed, or at least inhabited, this realm of paris that consriruted the dark, the choleric, the beneath that mysterious underworld so eter- Fascinating, nally fascinating ro the bourgeois. as rhe physiognomies of the romantic, picturesque novels and/euillitons depicted ii, but also feared. An increasing population, its inherent propensity to crime and süsceptibility to plague, its porential for political and perhaps revolutionary activity inherired from the bread riots of an earliei age, was

concentrated in the narrow, infected and, diny streets of the center and east of the capital. Eu-gene Sue's "Mysteries of paris" was wrinên about this population of new "barbarians."

This localization of revolt, of public manifesra¡ion. had, of course. been present in the first Revolu¡ion, where rhe Faubourgs gained an identity for themselves, and even erected remporary barricadei; bur nor until 1830 were the lines drawn so clearly in space thar represenred the boundaries of class. Increasingly. and in ever more violent forms, the domain of the street, defined by the barricade, took on the character of appropriated utopia. Perceptively, Hugo saw rhe barricades of June 1832 as natural extensions of the epidemic of the month before: the political conrinuarion of a biological crisis, which in irself demonsrrared the real conditions of social life with geographical precision. Long before 1848, and as a result of the successive manifesrarions of 1830 and 1832, the rationale behind certain projects for urban renewal had become clear. As Marx wrore in 1844, mysteries were more comfonable when confined to literary romance than to the urban precincts <lf ever-present criminality.

The lai¡s of criminals are so great a mystery, not only for Parisians in -eeneral, but even for the Parisian police themselves thar even at this very moment they cut clea¡ and wide streets in the Ciré to make these haunts accessible to the police.tar Engels and. the Precincts of Poverry, 1844 The very turmoil of the streets has somethittg repulsive, something against which human nature rebels.taz

Linle Nell, visiting Birmingham for the first time rvith her gandfather, felt "amidst the crowd. a solirude which has no parallel."t't3 Successive revolutions in France had made of the crowd in Paris an essentially political and communal phenomenon; "rhe magnetism of enthusiastic crowds" was sensed by Hugo on rhe barricades of 1831. and Frederic, under,eoing his sentimental educarion, on those of 1848.r{{ The indusaial and commercial revolution in England, concentrating in the great towns the masses of middle and working classes needed to sustain its appetite for ever-expanding production and consumption, had, for contemporary observers, engendered an enrirely different type of experience, thar of complere aloneness in the company ofthousands. The incessantly moving throng, the lack ofrecognition of the individual in the multitude, the aniñciality of the scene, lit by gas and framed by the new commercial srreets, caused the sensitive visiror "to feel but an atom," and an atom, further, "in a mountain heap of misery. " trc

Like Little Nell, Engels, on his ñrst visit to London, was repulsed by

The Scenes of the Street

12. ,1 street in old Paris, engraved by Custave Doré. Less romantic than his later scenes of London súeets. this engraving was published by Joanne to illustrate the contrast wi(h Haussmann's avenues.

[Joanne. Paris Illustré, p. 139]

43. "The doctor

raises the covers and says to the people, 'Here is a victim of cholera"'; scene outside the Hôtel Dieu during the epidemic of 1832.

Louis Blanc. Victor Hugo, and Considerant agreed in linking the uprising of June 1832 with the effects of the epidemic in which some 18,500 had died. the poliiical result of the conditions of life. [Louis Blanc. Histoire des ciLr ans, t830-1840 (Pa¡is' t882), p. a97l

7t

'rro\*

#i""o

y'.

à¿¿

-8ò.¿c.

2- .ù¿ alb Í6á¿, ,J. ¿lr.4r*dttaû.

L d..J,.,,1¿p,4 ae^&.d@detriæeoclz r:JøàrEl.Id ,i. ,fi./íta.¿blûtu tî.,Votla u <t. & tt go

übd _ù*.

2c,9wø2aaù6l,ad /'o,9.AAgãb 7. n,qa.8,dg,,r¿ë ¿ f.to.

E ./.ult¿ lalaad¿

Strasse

0

'{, 4.è , t . @ø.

44. Friedrich

( rë d,

1 ¿c -¿ e

i

:

u^b,/úv, e & L b

p/an

Engels, of Manchester în 1g44.

Plare from the second German edition of his Co¡d¿t111 o! * e o!! n g C tass i n E n s tand (, 84

jilF;;ã:

.w ncn.Engels, Díe l-age der Arbeircnden Klaise in Lngtana (Srungan, l g92)l

45. Engels, the Otd Town of Manchester, lg44: "H9re the s¡reets, even the bener on",, ara narro*

and winding, æ Todd Street, Long ¡"f¡ifeur.l Wid, Grove, and Shude Hill, rte nousei ¿inf, ;lä, ä' -. tumble-down, and the consrucrion of t'h; ;iã;

sueets urrerly

honible." [Engels, Die l_age, p.49]

46. Engels, srreer in rhe newer quaners of the Old Town of Manchesten ..The space between À" t*o

steets is divided into more regular, usu"lly sÀu"re . . . [which] com¡nunicãre *i¡f¡ rf¡e síeeT Uy

couns

.Sl¡¿sse

,1 :r!!.!-. ' 4'h.1t@/r4..

"t @

&

u.e eiú

!.nI¿;/

46 means of. covered passages. If the torally planless construction is injurious to the heal¡h ofrire'workers

by preventing ven¡ilarion, ¡his me¡hod of shuning

them up in couns surrounded on all sides Uy U"iiãings is far more so. The air simply cannot Jscape.,,

[Engels, Die

,Sf¡¿s.se

lage, p. 56]

47. Engels, new conrractors' cortâges, Manchesrer, I84.1t "By this method of consruã¡ion. .ornp*.-' tively good vendlation can be obhine¿ for Oeìist row of cottages, and the third row ¡, no *o.s" oä than in rhe former method. The middle.*: ¡h;other hand, is ar leasr as badly venri¡ared as thehouses in rhe couns. and the bãck srre"t irai*uy, in ---

;;

the same

ñlthy, disgusting condition as rhey.'ip. 57j

[Engels, Die Lage,

47

The Scenes of the

Street

73

into the center ..The hundreds of rhousands of all classes lrom rhe middle' or upper'class quaners of the town right or his dwelling' his worker' with a rhe inhumanity of the scene: *üi,oui.u.r coming'into tòntoi beings rhey nor were lined continuously with shops und ranks crowding past each orher, are raaiaútroroughfares ttre sum.- int.r.st in- ueing and rhe same qualities and powers and with to ' 'coñ."at liom the eyes of the wealthy men ,, t.r6 Norwirhsranding, they crowded by. one another, wirh norh- Jr'fi.il; haopv? "ü;ctively of rhe pavemenr r5r It was with these streets of ";;;;?i;i;"ngstomachsandweaknervesihemiseryandgrimewhich in!.in common. each keep-ing the.right side or tneii wealrh.'' oi:it i!. .n .i .n tt people; streams-of concemed' principaily separare the opposing was Engers thar " *"s ro increase rhe individuar.s isoration, ,o ,.poro,. out each as wiiir its dweìlings'inegularly crammed together

rt"

.iñ;;;"

with

";;;i;

il;

to rurr", foäîJ;-o'piËÀ*t a ;i;;ry;"tttime "rià* it"îrd town, as self-development, purposeof forthe nor atom, built labyrinths of the monad, aLeibnizian oii,otionot pion, io th" d.iih; ñ;ä .*p..,,ioîär.pi,i;;ìå 'o,"-'".'ntly of the nerv town' streets Rousseau would have hoped, but as the and straight consuåption and pro- inìiritãor areas' to ihe couttt analvzed the forms of The social war, hidden rvithin the operations o.t ivttttã'tically recoøeo -ã was' in-hii words' "far tiom black unu, in üi1,äf ài tn" gï"o, E;ëü;;i;tentty ducrion in the emerging world of capital, so:ïiìË;i;.1:l revealed.'*î .*l*tcription the filth' ruin and uninhabitablecity openty dectared an¿ ó

of was even more enough to convey u t,ut iÃp"ition And rvhat was tn¡e ¡n the broad streers of commerce of cleanliness' ventilation' and cã'niiãttotions uu of o.nance iir. n.ir. .ãor-assigned to- the of this sinsle dis¡rict"' but so in rhe qa,,ow alleyways of poverty: in tt. tontt*ttion rttt of tn" r'ttiif''*ttitt' characterize tï'iî¿t* fu#il; sueet the óf condi¡ions was-the cont'usion of the rvorkins classes, .,The streers are generaily unpaved. terl"i, or his reading were frotbund' First' there its historically deter' conditiõn of the society ir shertered: inationality' irs by sewers or ,i.-àrJ1o*n, charãcterizeà animal.refuse.-rvithoui and to vegetabre with ñ'ed rough dii,ry, The visiror rvas losr. "He wanders from one court ,rulnanr poors insæad.,'rs rhey were ri""i1r,."r. countless corners' passes nothing but narrorv filthy nooks guuers, bur supplied *¡ttr-rout, ..bad. cónfuset ,.tnoàìt:uu¡loin!"'of rtre *å,tår, rurns knows not ill ven¡ilared, owing to rhe arter-a few minuies he has lost all clue' a¡rd i* iratifor ttreir ;;ã';ú;y;;ìit filth' whose r52 Eanh' of Hell a rvhole quaner; tt.y.oni.nnaieo rtre poor in o,po..

-tit-i,n"ii" turn"' It *as an underworld' gooa*eaitrer, market praces, "plan' functionoithe number. They served as drying grounds rn immediate were an unhealthiness and of the ourcasr p.oor. oii].rrn.rr' garbage dumps, ,"*"rrl"ää''or",n.-u".y ãwe[ing still in the old town' there were the even narrower, Ë;,--k'ñ;J ltroðr." sttãnhv, were slreers these from led tnat The clleys and cours in straight lines and according to a ieast at built houses' of ,ídd;;: E;g;L g.tftu.q ;;;; ;*t hõuse rvas built according to every more filthy, worse venrilated, dark, and.crime ;;il'È-;;ãroø, an¿ ;i;;-';B;ii, in ¡rre formercase, streets in London, in Dubrin, and Glasgow, ."¿ courr is so built' without reference to the

liä'idåä"tiilnJ;; :oi;.","Ër;'.".i"r*" Edinburgh: the conditions of the rvorking .ro*", adjoining ones"'r53 were symptomaric siri¡a¡ion srreers ""ilä"d of the same..The the rheir streets were everywhere oí"quut squalor' was.thus formed' Engels hesiruuv¡å,n, furnistreo anå *ere'typical Manchester of Those lor. entire of their ventiiatiòn' tn" industrial epoch had allowed such Tfiä.ili ril';;;t"r ,",.ã,o useletthetbrwor¿ no look Engers with a detailed opponunity to construct high rents to those rvho had nowhere else to ,inr, ,o be o"f iir-.*iion."nr' r, study pay the could through rvho it revoluiion take must industrial effects of crgature some anatysii'ói:pion.r,.i,.r, "tt" i'tåì" ** so bad buithat werèPoor as he rvas ro state, toward rhe end õr nis the old quaners' though' and badly con better' f*;;Ñ;g for i,-dard r".ìrm " .These tlons' manner in which the need of a shelrer is satisfied the nerver ireets furnish bt¡¡s¡ çe¡d[ " then rhe srreer tä""¿ --il;. ,"i*" with;pe.rhaps rows streets stand' of groups or houses of rhe manner in rvhich all other necessities *. .ruppii.á, new rown.::singte sociot not even grass grown rvas rikewise a vivid symprom, a comprete p.trmr"ly'oIrn" and rhere like little-villases on the naked' r't"t. p.ris which remain unpaved' lanes' the disease.r{e Just as tne áä.tårs oi in *"t-tt'"i"rt "ihibireJ'äî;"otn¿iii"" "iìi"ìior äiu¡r;¡.';it' The mud lvas gone' The common patienrs in the pubric thearers of rhe Revol"ir"ïl ,ã"it. s-treets communiry or life ciw pîïåt" mis"ry.tro äî "ù't"rur"*" "r squa¡e' couns bv the iranchester pubricry exhibired their conrent oi ãe*¡o¿ of building *u' tá tuoound small' uiuallv ,yp"iägy'ã".ãiã!åg disrinct a had sreet by covered Manchester main 19 ¡191t The srreers of üuiiãi"gr, f.rrnish-ing communicution to the use. Engels distinguished first those of the centr-aliommerciaidistricr, p"rr"g.-r. These couns had been compared bv liberal reformers to a ..abandoned by dwe'ers and lonely an¿ ¿esertä È: ;É;¡a-rl:-l.iT :'ïìffi;" ;"únrãJ;¿;; improuing'uenrilation and heaith; in fact' withiheiiconcenrrarion was even main thoroughtäres cuuing through rhis.district, rvi¡h no actual means of throügh ven¡ilation',this method town' The the old of planlesl construction" of trafficandbrilriantshoþs,activeuntiilate*iiË't,li-t*!"y.o*,ul "totally rhe ìI"-regularly-',laid our ruo.r" itun to inrermediare girdle of working-class o*"nings, of "baci<'to back" plan' adopted bv conractors .srreersofthemiddrecrassesand,furtherou,,on,iïurãËwi,ärroroun¿ the in better ."ono,nir" in land ana uuitoing maierials' wère hardty f;;Ër-rri. pL, ¿uilv ";;;;';'",*, the city, the upper-class villas. Ii was possibr.

74

Vidler

48. Gustave Doré. Bishopsgare Srreet, London:

you can hardly shut rhe srreer door for rhem. In rhe "another working da¡r has fairly opened: and mighty poores¡ of London distric¡s the men, women and and mulri-form is the acriviry. " Blanchard Jerrold's children appear. on enrering, to have abandoned all text to Doré's London appreciates the city and i$ hope. There is a desperare. ferocious levity in rhe inhabitants. rich and poor, as a þicturesque scene air: and the thin, wan, woebegone faces laugh and rather than as an economic or social entity. IDoré, jeer at you as you pass by. " [Doré. to ndon, p. I 20] London, p. tl5l 50. Gustave Dorê.London street scene, l8?2: "On 49. Gustave Doré, ll entworth Stre er, l,l/hitechapel : our way to the Ciry on rhe ride of Labour. we light "It is the striking and affecring feaure of London upon places in which rhe <iay is never rired. . . . especially, where in rhe lanes and alleys rhe houses Rents spread with rags, swarming wi¡h ¡he children arc so full ofchildren rhat, !o use a wit;s illustration, of mothers for ever greasing the walls with their

shoulders; where there is an angry hopelessness and ca¡elessness painted upon the face ofevery man and

woman." fGustave Doré and Blanchard Jerrold.

London; a pilgrimage (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), p. ll6l Doré. Over London b¡- rail: beneath the railway viaducts, rhe backyards of the slum houses are pressed rogerher in filrh and shadow.

5 I . Gustave

[Dorê, I-ondon.

-

p. l2l)

채::ir책:*:,r,i,f;rj

Thc Scenes of the

Street

75

76

Vídler

resultin-s condirions provided, especially for the middle of the three and rhe life that sunounded rows of houses. Funher, these new developments were built for a the mourh of consumption. ir conflated in a monsrrously active maw, maximum period of fony years. often less, ãnd deteriorated quickly "The social state of acity," he wrote in 1g57, ..depends directly on after construction. its moral srate," and the moral state in turn depends,ìo. yer ,n"ár.uThe critical archeology. of dweltin_e that En-eels provided, rogether lated. extent, "on the ph7,s¡¿al stare of that ciryi on the fooå, warer, air rvith the social condirions he described. thus coãstituìe rhe firit tyit"rand lodging of its inhabitanrs."tss Their.rife, exisring on a'leuet *ittr aric.attack on the Enlightenment vision of progress, couched ín pr.- the.ir su.rroundings, was unable to rise above the ph--vsical and moral cisely the Enli,ghtenmenr's orvn terms. The pla-nress chaos, the diny, filth. The instirutions so beloved of reformers twisrin-g streers, have been encountered before, from Rousseau on*aá; - tott"bet.rorm.tori"s, schools, hospitals, asylums were now seen merely..the but it rvas always understood that the imposition of a rational ptan, ttre symptoms of the disease." The causes could only be roucired by development of a uniform mode of housing, would naruralfy sf,"fã tf,. imp_roving physical condirions for the entire working class mores of rhe nerv inhabiranrs. Engers oispoiéo of rhis myth uí¿ tu,nrJ ii Kingsley, while echoin-g the reform-throu_eh-recoñstruction message ri_eht about, placing the blame foi condirions squarely on the economics of the earlier utopians, neverrheress recogniJed that it is the system ãf

of the. indusrrial sysrem rhar creared them. înesé conditions were, nevenhelessÍvaluable analyrical rools thar precisely characterized thé nature of social life, the results. of the system of capítal; in the end they revealed the ineffectiviry of the enviionmenr by'irseif to p.oàu.ã å ransformation in the social order. . one after the other, bur with political concrusions less evidentry and

less precisely srared than in Engels, the writers of the midcentury óatteá out the reality of the industrial ideal: one by one they traversed the same la^ndscape of misery and in their o*n *ayj indicated the forms and ends

of reform. Elizabeth Gaskell, opening Mary Banon with the graphic contras¡ of town and country, finds in the streets of Manches-tei the

causes and the effecrs of the great division berween rich and poor.!õs The picture of the "weil-fi-iled, welr-ri-ehred shops" side by side with

the.dim _eloomy cellars of rhe Banonõ' world, the ..rt.gi-t,-nlr-ty moisrure" of the workin-g-class streets oozing into their ioornr', and the clean, well-serviced drawing roomiof the employers; "ãilu, suci conrras¡s were the lirerary translations of the statistics maisheled'in her namesake'sManufacturing population of England, a work used to such effect by Engels.ts6 .-.MoI" akin to Engels in moral fervor and political activity was Charles Kin-esley' The sening of Ahon Locke's cónversion and ihe inferno of his revelation were the foul, chilly, fo-egy streets of London where the gas lamps flared and flickered, wild and ghastly. ..Greasy parchments, odours, blood and sewer warer crawled-from-under doóri and out oi spouts and reeked down the guners amid offal."r5? Above, ..han_eing like cliffs," were rhe houses,- with their teeming road of riie, piìeã-ui "into rhe diny night" along the streets,-those ..nurro*, bra*i-choking ¡n-q.to¡renrs of filth and poverty and sin. " Such were the scenes of Hell, with their arrendanr devirs, the pawn broker's shop and the gin patace, "eating up men and women.and bairns, body and

soul."

Ki-ngst'ey naá

remarked that indus¡rial capitalism was a form of mass cannibalism here the srreet itself becamé the devourer, the image of the meat market

property' land values, and vested interests that has made. and cbntinues to make, the rebuilding of cities an impossibility. But, idealist at heart, he prophesied that it was this very tondition that wourd cause rhé building of "better things than cities"; prophetica[y for the later development of Manist disurbanization, ana perhaps éven following the messa-se of the communist Manifesro of r84g, hè proclaimed the-need lor "A complere inrerdependence of city and of ôountry, a complere fusion of rheir different modes of life, anâ a combinarion of the adïantages of both such as no country in the wortd has ever seen'"rse Dwellin,ss would no longer be crowded into "ill built rows of undrained cottages''' bur rvould be combined in Fourieristic fashion in common blocks of building set in the hean of the country with rail lines connec¡ilq,!"T ro_the workshops in the ciries. In theie remaining cities, ..the old foul alleys. w_ill be- gradually depopulared and repiãced by the warehouses and workshòþs of commeice."

Thus was the pathology of the street conceived as a prelude to its .. disappearance: ¡o abolish the foul air, foul warer, foul lodging, and

overcrowded dwellings that made a life of decency impossibie las to abolish their seat and cause, the srreet. This messãge wæ clear in the writings of radical socialist and Marxist alike for the next cenrury: what separared them was whar divided (in the first place) En-eels from-Kings_ ley. The former insisted that cities were caþital; thaicapiral *., ih. s-vstem of exploitadon; rhat cities artificially separated rhè urban from the rural proletariat; and rherefore they shóuld-be disrributed into the counrry. The lar¡er held that ir was the living conditions in the ciries that were evil a¡d that living in the country was healthier; therefore the ciries should be reserved for work alone. In both, the central problem of the nineteenth cenrury, the unbearable rift between the country and the city, was to be healed again by the reestablishmenr of mankind within nature, not as Fourier and Owen would have had it, in autonomous and selfsupponing agrarian communities, but in a continuous interspersion of agriculture and industry.

The Scenes of the

The City of Lost Illusions Balzac and the Arcades of Commerce, 1837 Vast and solid galleries, very well venrilated and planned wirh art, have replaced those narro'¡v, insanitary, muddy crossroads where, without order or taste, the daily provisions for 200 ,000 families were heaped up, Paris has become a manufacturing, town, and the market place for all the mantdactures of France.tBo

Street

77

opened onto the two galleries whose atmosphere gave them a mephitic air, and whose roof allowed little light 10 pass through the

always diny panes.162 These center shops. by reason of the double stream of passersby, gained not more than six an incredibly high value despite their minute size

feet wide. Outside, towa¡d the gardens, the walls-were plastered with peeling and falling stucco, covered with the "fantastic writings" or gratfiti of the populace, piled high with garbage and disca¡ded refuse, No urban structure so clearly epitomized the unequal dialectic be' and soiled with excrement: a "noisesome and disgusting approach" that rween the utopian dream and the material reality of the ñrst half of the might ward otï those of a delicate and refined nature. But, despite their nineteenth century as the Ptrisian arcade. From the Restoration the ot'fensive aspect. the filth and mud of their floors, continually wet by the leaking roofs, arcades were built increasingly of glass and iron. and thereby signified This sinister mass of mire, these glass panes encrusted with rain and rhe apparent riumph of the new means of production in consort with the dusr, these flat-roofed huts covered outside by rags, the filth of the emerging world of consumption. A utopian might dream of a future exterior walls, this assemblage of things like a gypsy camP or the made transparent with glass or fireproof with iron or socially harmonibarracks of a fair. or the temporary constn¡ctions with which they ous with the gallery street; social reality concenrated the products of surround monuments yet to be built in Paris, this grimacing physiogindusrialism, the woven and printed goods of bourgeois households and nomy went admirably with the different trades that swa¡med benea¡h ment¡lities, side by side with their consumers -- these again pushing this lewd hangar.ra past their pariahs. The a¡cades were the haunts of thieves. vagabonds, Even as the scrence of physiognomy provided the most fashionable' and rapacious commercial interests, jostling humanity, biza¡re physiogtruly the microcosms of social and and perhaps the most characteristic, mode of perception of the age (the nomy, frivolity, and misery had not reserved the galleries for physiognomies of Paris were published and dissected in a multitude of economic conditions. If Considerant would have cenainly seen them as an example of the popular tracts, guide books, and novels) so the Caleries de Bois acted as utopia, he his the faces of commerce, of luxury, of poveny, characteristic a¡chitecture of his epoch (even as he had seen the barracks the setting tbr them all politics, money, and com.rption, of pornography of of respectibility, product thè arcades prison).

In their binh a of speculation, and the nevenheless haunted the images of nineteenth-century progress; a and depravity, of exoticism. and of criminality. They were the home of double-sided, mirror image that posited potential ideality in the very the Stock Exchange for twenty years, the center of speculation and stock dealing; they furnished a home to the prindng trade and the cloth and space of the real.16r But these arcades did not come into being as fully fledged type-forms tishion uades; finally, joining the two great theaters of Paris, they were of the new marketplace overnight. It was their process of formation that themselves show rooms tbr humanity. As the whole space was open, at once crystallized and retiacted the tensions between class and class, with the shops along the center set up like the booths of a fair, the enti¡e scene could be taken in at a glance, from one end to the other. Ladies of between che mode of production and the mode of construction, between, in fact, society and its culture, which had been forced by the indusrial fashion could promenade. actors might pose, literary fops parade, and, and political revolution. First there were the vauxhalls and ponicoes of "from all quaners of Paris a prostitute would come ø do the Palace." the ancien rqime; then the great Circus of the Palais Royale and its Indeed, its very name, "the Palace," signified the "temPle of prostituaccompanying galleries; then. lollowing the burning of the circus, the tion." Prostitutes in this period were the flâneurs of a later. These appropriation by the people of Paris of the wooden galleries that crossed women drew such a considerable crowd to the Galeries de Bois in the the gardens themselves. These were the Caleries de Bois, standing from evening that one was compelled to walk at a snail's pace, as in a the late 1780s until their replacement by the Galerie d'Orleans over procession or masked ball. This slowness, which troubled no one, allowed close examination.16{ This scene, exhibiting a collection of all fony years later. Balzac described them as they were in 1820: They were barracks, or to be more exact, huts made out of planks, the types oi the street in a public room for the purposes of mutual small, badly roofed, badly lighted from the court and from the garden display, was ma¡ked by its contrasts, the aesthetic criteria par excelby the casements called windows, but which resembled the diniest lenèe of romantic social ideology: it was both "horrible and gay," openings of the inns outside the barriers. A triple range of shops well-dressed mingled with raggedly poor, dark clothing set off white tbrmed two galleries about twelve feet high. Shops sited in the middle flesh "producing the most magnificent oppositions."

78

Vidler

The Scenes of the

52. Paris, the quarter of the Palais Roya/' tiom Maire's P/an, 1808. Between the gardens of the Palace and the old boulevards was lhe theater dis' trict. with the old Opera. the Théâre Fe¡'deau. the Théâre ltaliens. ¡he Variétés: next to this last was the Passage des Panoramas. and the first Panoramas rhemselves on the boulevard Montmartre.

53. The Gallery d'Orlea¡s, Palais Royat. 1830; view from the gardens. "The most striking of the

galleries is that to (he south, called the Galerie d'Orleans, from its having been erected by the presenr king in I 830. It has the appearance of an oriental gailery-of glass. the sides being entirely occupied by rhe windows of the shops and the intermediary panels being tronted with mirrors." [Galignani's i{etv Paris Guide (Paris, 1839), p. lgll 54. Interior of the gallery of rlrc Palais Royal (Caierie d'Orleans): drawn by A. Pugin (4. w' Pugin's father) for his Par¡s et sas enuirons (Paris, t83t). "Ttre best ¡ime for seeing the garden and arcades is in ¡he evening when they are brilliantly illuminated with gas. and when a continual tide of loungers fills them in every pan' . . ' There a¡e m"ny p"tsons who pass not only days but years in

ceaseléssly sauntering through it. It is the perpetual residence of all that is idle and of the little r¿¡¡iers of the capital. Improper characters of ¡he other sex have of lá¡e ¡'errs been excluded and a strict guatd-is kept up." [ôafignani. New Paris Guide, p.

lgll

Steet

79

80

Vidler

55, Plan and section of a Diorama, London. designed bv A. Pugin (rhe elder) and J. Morgan. 1823.

56. Interior view of a Diorama scene, depicting St Paul-outside-rhe-walls. Rome. after a 単re. [Texier,

Tableau, vol.

II, p. 2971

The Scenes of the

rooms' their shops and cafés semipublic exits; their centers were public ttt" priiate aoanments of the rooms, and thev *"'" oi;;ì;iãä'ïv ,rr".iLy referreà to them in their middte ctasses. In r832 "'üiiäi"u""oiå inveniion,of industrial luxury' most typical form: as """;;h;;;;;;t complexes of punåtìåä';u,,"g",;;t1 guousrr entire slass coveæd tu'urt such speculations ' ' ' for' ñouses whose p,opti"'o'i'äí" "oñuinå¿in miniarure"'t67 ìnältã o *o¿¿' as such an arcade is u "ity, ffiil ttU"fi ttt" entire Galeries de Bois of architect the In 1830, a sort loftv' "cold' it as the Galerie d'orleans; Ë"ï;;ä;;tb;s tit" unanimous regret felt at n"*"";i:l;ã-;;ntiont without ereenhouse all Paris stracts' "so much so that ihe demolition or ttre otäïoãäen wooden planks with Ft came rhere till the tæt ;"#;;';iù"!.ql he built""68 The regret rvhich the architect to"åä'ittä't"rnit -õnil" and the buitding of a s5uc-t¡r-r¡ ol{ an sienifred more than th" ñil;;i technioues of greenhouse

romance-' i tyt,.ty,frrstandPanoramas ¡ard Montmame at the tl:^b.?:l1:ocacec were built ì. îhe rhni led to them "rr ;;! *r';'"'1' tî::T::,'iå'""1 i$:,ll *Inå, Ïü i.lffi iii ,h"t.lli^:::il"T

i;

ä;il

ö

palais: sisniñcanrty,,

bird,s-eye was oresenred in bird's'eve

ir'" ^"""",,,"d "ì,y real' in a circle and ', [?irå'J,i:ïJiËËäíi.ä",. ,n" itself: to view 'Þainted t':',i"tfiffiil:: "tnJ*i''ttì"ïi'rti"gii iiã*u'"*¿ l5 :::Ï:::":i:l above' lrurrr qvvrvr .' illurmnateo illurifinated from in the illusion. lost was spaceand time ;iäî;ñ" ."n,"t; all sense of ' The D¿unter L,trYrs du'Þs.ii¡ "_-*iif" iËöäd""i¿'¿"ì'"0-t'i'-do:1,',:,"-:lyllÍi''".i:i[i:?i",iåilä: the i.uture invenror of photog: - ttri riumPh of the raphy, Daguerre, *'Ëåj:il'tå"-fi**:"3:i"::"fi:ì:iÏiiñ'i:ifi l ;,' * i 8äö' t "l":-r:',.:TI5 ranslucen¡" the :l;"tlT::" behind ï0" :i: iliJ',i"i,="Ï:ffi "ltlts¡tii9 of narure uy int o.ruiin!.n""ïtq "-U"s *9 co.tllt" crtyscaPes wrtrr rd'urwvvrrJioiiri,y r;r .'nvâses. ,.otu"ingîiii'"op"-' canvases, t.plT]Lg to the city 'u-itn-rundicape ':.':Ï:i"Ti; iiti assocratlo romantic of for the * ing all the aPParatus indistinguishably merged dweller' An and iãtut" ftu¿ finally w-hether indeed thev v"s¡s wrt*,:. , 1 ;;;;àïi";;;"uri"'ir'" näìrv'å-isp,ie¿ to the galleries' the íri nessing te,e pu'nting'-rdà 1¡s p"'tf"tt to'notement p"Jor" until the revolution of .fi Dioramas n"r¿ tnJ'i"iugi"åiiã"'îi-ittt i*po'tånc" as the theater of social t:: t848, when tt"

ä:

*iï;

'""rî'ity"iäg"ì""¿-itt

Street 8l

p1'^:i'-"lt:1lii"oÏ''1;'Ît

arcade and diorama were interiort $/as seen as a ciry rn mrnrap,iúîrc ih9 lrc+e ciry..to the entire world' Between rure, then rt" oioiäi'"-iãå.J,trii the bourgeoi:'T':1Th' 1830 and 1848, Itiätå'pïiî"iiouii-pt'iripp"'

oe.tn" nJ*. ho*eu.r; *iti' tnå'å"täuition practice' an already emergthe into construction Ëintd' Greenhouses rvere for the 'pi"t"'"itåt*ercial in puuti"iå't'ioiìùã'*tt ins separation bulrure or

of societv' nottii'ä*;Å;¡;it4; anificial culture from a cotnmon u"ing "riin.iut .divided but a society ,r'ut *ut'ìilol*inÈty .:$9 :! !:.tå'#l=*ål: curure. rutetgrdrti'i. difference

ârcades' tne scen€

"' """ J;;äi;sslî

stan¿uo¿ized units.

9f

tl" t19:::

bourgèois '? Ë;UUJ"'': .";ä: r"""-i; *älr :ä:t"'ilii':t'li,* own "'*iiuttv Napoleon's ircoia found is real h;¿"i;,Ë-;ãl i"q.:f.louis Tåîäîi:îï.;:y:.:il:,ç,r:"."îi:"i'#,,*'*'J:tïl:,i.',iï ' theinterior¿"""ripåãifi;ä;;;'i""''""'þ:l-:"::î*Î::t:llÍ:,,1: who set uf snop in the huts of nïffi'rffåiilil"in;:;;ii'å"" :::#':üiri:;ii:f:i'ï*äîiütHmr.:r:iî"i,i;ï:.'ff ',:å:j rer might provide what soctal.

"ï"åì" àeliver

ìiti";

populating

decor

by

utopia är"åt"i to äuiitt his individual dreams' his of his own in'J¡ãi ;1id :"tth universal of industry -t!:t-,::'""" emergini the ,.proou."o ioì him by

the possibliti

conveniently

*t'ätl.r"roonoingly,

period'

;Ë;;ü-g"ué,i",,,nöiooF:m:*f¡iîï"$?;J,ll,liiËil;

f ruxurv rade and it"äå ;;;" ; ;;" ";l1ç-lt^ller of all ills' At this rï'ffi:' J:. ;;ï;ilüät ment. and æ havrng was threatened by the powertul "' ooint the fragile glazing"oiìn!-u'""¿õi

åî':

this it is not surprising that it was during lprising of the barricades' improved lines' that the nJ* än *to-tuitt -and when the Dioramæ interior' public streei and orivate arcade. as the exact to"i"itùt of were built in the also received it, typi"ot'äîilîitìã""Ño* $e.-a.r.cadeswith entrances and new materials, iron and

cñiiätä;ili"

üuirãìngt'

Ëou'ie¡ s

o

t

en

tenain-

82

Vidler

Hugo and the Bamicades of Revolutiott, 1832 The eye which lnd viewed this mass of shadow from a height had perhaps glitttpsed here and there, ar dffirent poinrs, indistincr glirnnters rhrox,ing inro relief broken and strange lines, the profles of strange constnrclions, something like lights coming and going in the ruins; there it was that the barricades s¡ood.t6s

Victor Hugo had mounted the towers of Nôtre Dame to describe Paris

proletarian character as they defined an area ofrevolt roughly a third of thar ofParis. Paradoxically enough, it was as a result ofa conège-the that the barricades ofJune. the physical funeral ofGeneral Lamarque - built. On the same day (June 5) the red appropriation of the street. were flag was borne throu-sh the streets by a mysterious horseman dressed in black.

r73

in less than an hour Hugo The banicades were erected quickly nores; twenty-five rose out of the earth- in the quaner of Les Halles alone; after 1848 Baudelaire was to refer to those "magic cobblestones that rise up to form fonresses." They were pan of the process that

in irs medieval glory; in Les Misérables he again took to the heights to charac¡erize the city in the throes of the insurrecrion of 1832. this time transformed a riot into an insurrection: in the form of an owl. and at night.rto It wa.s, in contrast to the The insunection. brusquely, had built the barricades with one hand and with the other seized almost all the ,euard posts. ln less than three resplendent and almost magical vision of the founeenth century, a "gloomy spectacle"; the old guaner of the markets, the streets of Saint hours like a train of powder set alight, the insurgents had invaded and Denis and Saint Manin, where the insurgents had established their occupied . . . a third of Paris.rT{ redoubt, seemed like a city within a city, "an enornous dark hoìe The space that the banicades formed was the space of combat and hollowedtut of the cenrer of Paris." No iights shone in windows that ambush; they were an attempt ¡o make of an already impenetrable might attract frre. no one stirred in the stree¡s: "nothing but terror, grief, stupor in the houses, in the streets a kind of sacred honor." The only signs of the revolt we¡e "strange constructions" and around them a few the banicades.rTt The entire area was surrounded -glimmers of light by a vinual wall -of sabers and bayonets, turning it into a monstrous at once a shelter and a potential tomb for the invisible cavern - its inhabitants. From the haunts of crime, from the sick combatants,

center of working-class misery, the polidcal revolt had risen as im natural expression and confirmation, and the banicades had finally drawn the precise physical line that circumscribed this realm of poveny, crime. and plague. The laboring classes and the dangerous classes, the sick and the poor had appropriated the space of their subjection and traced irs -eeo-eraphy, as on a map, with buildin-gs of their own made from the very fabric of their streets.

The barricade was not a characteristic structure of the '89 Revolution;

in the first year at least, the crowd was intent on appropriating a nerv Paris for itself, entering previously forbidden realms, following the streets almost at random as assemblies rurned into riots, riots into revolts. Paris was being opened up, not closed; even the parades of celebration and order were in some sense the ritual sanc¡ions of a ciry made one for all its citizens. Only in 1827, some two cenruries after their temporary appearance during the Fronde, did barricades block the public ways of Paris. The name came from the word barríque ("cask" or "banel") and, in the celebration of the downfall of Villèle, they were also built of paving stones rom from the street itself.tz In July 1830. they were erected again in the Faubourgs Saint Antoine and Saint Marcel, blocking the way from the Hotel de Ville to the Place de la Bastille. Two years later, in June 1832. they finally took on a distinct

quaner an even more impenetrable labyrinth known only to the defend' ers: "The nanow. unequal, sinuous streets, full of corners and turns, we¡e admirably chosen; the surroundings of les Halles in panicular, a ne¡work of streets more entangled than a forest."r75 V/ithin the space closed off by the banicades, the street took on the air of communal propeny, an open-air room adopted by the community as its own; cabarets were rurned into guard posts, cafés into political and strategic headquarters.r?6 But, whereas the July Revolution of 1830 had seen bourgeoisie and people fighdng together, creating an almost festive armospheæ a¡ound and on top ofthe barricades, the June insunection of 1837 was serious and somber, with the lines as clearly drawn as were the structures themselves. The banicade as theater had been replaced by the barricÍide as fonress. This pattem was to be repeated again only sixteen years later.

Indeed, the building of a banicade was a serious business, and its constructors became skillful as well as swift. First iron bars were wrenched from street railings, then the street paving was levered up; the base of the banicade was formed by an overrumed can or carriage, its contents (preferably cæks) placed beneath the piles of paving stones.

Other banels were purloined and set beside the rest, while the whole barrique was buttressed by more stones and topped by beams torn from nearby houses. The resulting rampan was taller than a man. Passing vehicles were added to the original pile from time to time: "Rien n'est tel que la main populaire pour bâtir tout ce qui se bâtit en demolissant, " obsèrved Hugo.rtt The height of the banier was such that the defenders might hide behind it, fire over it, or climb onto it by means of rough steþs formed of paving stones inside; its aspect from ou¡side was rough and unscalable. A red flag, or sometimes a red bonnet, capped the

The Scenes of the

:dilåi-i-$...

$i''ff;'iñ, KS;S

LE GENDE

é fi I

aauuøu Aø"u"tt,

:

Cinik

"¡lilitari6

lurw.dtt

57. PIan of Paris, during the three day's of July, /830.' showing rhe emplacements of barricades, and the lines of civil and military fire. [Blanc, Ilistoira'

P.761

Street

83

The Scenes of the

A barricade, July 1830, from an engraving-by itt" ia¿¡""r anist Phiiippe Auguste Jeanron (1807ïàrit fot Blanc's His¡ojre de dix-ans (184ô' Jean' 58.

ron,

a

pordevoted painter of working-class.scenes'

ravs the defenðers of the barricade in less ideallstlc Leading u ñ"nn.t than thal of Delacroix ia Liberry ,ni iropt" of the same year (1831)' lBlanc' f/is' ¡oire, p,851 combat in the rue 1830 root's' windows' Saint Antoine; lhe entire sÚeet .iä giouna is taken over-in the street ñghting ot

59 .

The Revolution

of

the õorking-class quaners.

-

-

IBlanc, flis¡¿rira' p' 'lól

the faubourg 60. Victor Hugo. the barricade in

tor the .ç)'¡nt-en¡oine,- 1848: engraved by Benert part )' '-Jean Misérables' ofles edition iitutttut.O to a pet'îîrj"îi.J' Hugo .o*p*td this barricadeobjecs of ã"iér all the disparate ot'tn' quuner it defended'

¡i,j;ï;,. ."ã! [äßä;;ï;;;'it iH";;:¿r Miiérabtes, P' 8l

the faubou.rg du 61. Victor Hugo. the barricade in "it was

barricade as architecture' symme-l' oáiu't,"4. clamped. imbrica¡ed' rectilinear' p' t3l

i.-r¡).'la,ts,ìhe

L.r;;äil;:-f':;

¡Hugo'

Les

'visérabtes'

Street

85

86

Vidler

whole edifice: "The srreer and the barricade remained plunged in darkness, and one saw only the red flag formidably lit by an enormous shaded lantern. " The banicade completed, the long wait for the counter-

AII the military

science learned

by the

socialisrs

in the Ecole

Polytechnique was pur to use in these srrucrures.

-ei_santic En,eels gave a military account of rhe fighting and the straregies of the attack be-gan.

Garde Mobile. The fonress of Saint Antoine was indeed the last to fall.

It was. ofcourse. as the centerofaltack and defense that the barricade the techniques of Vauban being employed on behalf of the workers. Ir acted as the pivotal insrrumenr of social knowledge and individual was built in the form of an an_gle pointing inward, to provide a wider confrontation; face to face in the narrow srreet, divided only by a front ofdefensive cross fire and to present a rveaker face to Cavaignac's temporary wall of debris, the men and women of the revolt and tbe cannons. The cross walls ofthe houses had been opened up, connectin-s troops of authority were for a brief instant forced ro recognize each the rows with each orher and affording mobility ro rhe defenders; other, even to speak and argue, before consciously firin-e. A ..war The bridges and quays along the canal as well as rhe srreers running rvithin four walls," where rhe city wall had been replacedwithin the parallel to ir were also strongly fonified. In shon the two faubourgs city by its popular type, was a domestic affair, a civil war in a civic resembled a veritable fonress, in which the rroops had to wage a space. t78 bloody barrle for every inch of _eround.ts If the banicades of July 1830 were epitomized by Delacroix' Liberry, From hastily erected barriers of casks to the ovenurned carriages and leading the People, and those ofJune 1832 by the appearance of the red paving stones of communal revolt to the fonresses of working-class flag, those of 1848, both in February and in June, were characreristically defeat, the barricade had, like rhe arcade, found irs type form, and, like differtnt in their rurn. ¡7e First. they were bigger and more professionally the arcade, the form was thar of a building, built: Hugo and de Togueville attest ¡o rhe precision of their building.

A strange wall reaching the second floor of the facades, a kind of Schooled in '27, in '30. and in '39, Auguste Blanqui, the ardent treaty of union between the houses on the righr with the houses on the defender of barricades through ro '71, went so far as rodimension the left as if the srreet had turned back on itself with its highesr wall to thickness of each one ro be built in the abortive revolt of 1839;rso by close itself off suddenly. This wall had been built wirh paving stones.

1848 masons and carpenters were using all the arts of their trade: It was ri_eht, correct, cold, perpendicular, levelled with the square.

"These banicades," recalled de Toqueville, ..were skillfully constraightened with the line, aligned wirh the plumb.te structed by a small numberof men who worked industriously, like _eood It was, in fact, architecture; its entablature was parallel to..irs base, its workmen who wanred to do their job expeditiously and well." The openings were regularly spaced, and togerher with the srreet it enclosed public, he added, watched them passively, neither helping nor disap- it formed a uniñed srruc¡ure of almost pennanent defense. To Hugo the proving.tst banicade at the faubourg du Temple, was an awesome building. a Of course, this was de Tocqueville during February; the barricades of "sepulchre," built by a geomerer or a specrer. The second characrerisric June were feverishly built through a single night and day, cutting paris of the banicades of 1848 was thar they were (not all, but many).built by in half, dividin_c working class from bourgeoisie the one in despair at men who directed. their desiens from the outset. the loss of even tbe roken National Workshops,- the orher in fear of a finally red revolution. The renirory of the workers was sharply separated from that of rhe bour-ueoisie by the initial banicades of tt¡e pone The Triumph of Urbanism: Saint Denis and the Cité: the crirical line was rhe boulevard Saint- Haussmann and the Boulevards of Empire, 1853-1867 Manin. Hugo described this banicade in detail: The barricade Sainr Anroine was monstrous; it was three floors high The Emperor was a¡aious to show me a map of paris, on which one and seven hundred feet wide. It blocked from one corner to the oth-er saw traced by Himself, in blue, in red, in yeltow and in green, the vast mouth of the faubourg, that is ¡o say, three streets; hollowed according to ihei, degiee of urgenq,, the diffeíem new routes ltot tte out, slashed, indented, hacked, crenellated with an immense fissure, proposeã ø have unáertaken.ús shom up with piles which were themselves basrions, pushing up points here and there. strongly- leaning back against thè two great Louis Napoleon, incarcerated in Ham prison, had dreamed Saintpromontories of the house-s of the faubourg, it surged up like a Simoniandrêams;thatof anewandcomplËtelyrebuiltParis,accordin-e cyclopean uprising at the foot of the redoubtable place which had ro Duveyrier and Enfantin, Peneymonâ and Daly, was perhaps thË s€en the 14 of July' Nineteen barricades were ranged back in the foremost task of rhe new Imperial ie,eime. London, where he haá been depth of the streets behind this sheltering barricade.is2 impressed by the rows, squares, and-crescent of Georgian civiliry, was

The Scenes of rhe

Street

no longer ro reign supreme as rhe urbane capital of Europe. Napoleonic ideas demanded a paris in line with ttre präÀiie of Enlìghtenå;",: long deferred.¡s6 The conceptual schemei of laugier

g7

movemen¡, a defense of order, a home for the alien crowds of the new urban landscape: rhe very. epirome of sociai i¡ie as well as its impìi"o critique, it precipitated ihe'contradioiãns-oì-ns cenrury in real life according to rhe substance of its dreams.

First in line for the accomplis.hmenr of any plan of public works was taken in hand by Haussmann, was to be rhe rhe preparation o[ an a..urorL plan ot rhe .,,yiirourrrion;,, oocument by which dreams were deposited within dñ;;;; the very trean áf took to the skies on hieh scaffolds; "-erear íoø.n rur,r. hîgh.i,iron reality; .a rearity rhat c.orresponded ro the triumphanr ror.t., o¡ .on,the iili.^u.. highest houses" f¡óm.whence ttrey õura merce, indusrry, and scien^ce in the powerful hands according to rhe of a rrult he;;m;;ic merhods.of trianguration by means oi the mosr pertècr bourgeoisie. Between lg53 and f Sæ pre.ision-insrrulwtrenresponding i" if.," p?.rl"rË, menrs., the angles tbrmed by rhe sides of each' of tn.'irlon!i.;'ä;ì;;of rhis same bourgeoisie, Ba¡on Haussmonn ,io, dismissed) the Em- yined on the spot.by the-exrension peror and his executive agent, the pretect of of tn...n¡.ol shatìs of these the Seine, pu, inrã o",i* temporary consrrucrions.l'r88 From such a rrianguta¡ion rhe- penr-up ideals of an entire cenrury. wai ;;.p;;;ã the firs¡ derailed survev of-rhe city, a basis fo. rtrelnsr*renrat¡åoriãn ã?

Louis, Napoleon's plan of transfôñari;;. Mö ,h.H!^"iå:ñ""îii'ñ:"'.,!i:.:î:i:::lü,äb"i,$:;1ft,åI."i..îsJå""i; peopte, he observed, would srill remember these srrange rnor,r; .á.i.o,,i*i was.finally unable ro undersrand rhe oppósitioni¡hl; o"pì"iJ ü. t.il";ä;;;';; tightrope rvalker Madame Sacqui cðmrnunicotln! with such manifesr improvements; if Voltaire, he wrore rhe pliltb;r';i ,..ouiã in 1g90, each't8s To determine a nerv network of comm-unicotion enjoy rhe spectacle offered by the paris ofouro*n iot purir, ü Oays, seeing aiihìi o(her words, an abstract netrvork oi pr.cise wishes surpassed, he would,nor undersrand leåmerry was traced ar a wtry in ptãce of ,;ñ;;; the Adminisrra¡ion rhar rearized rhem so gro,íoty,'trle pa¡si'ails. -¡iË level tar above the srreers: in Hauismann.i- t.r,n, ..to give a real existence ¡o rhe plan" no rnor. noi llss than uñngin! iÀi, sons, rhe heirs of his fine.spirit, have criricized ir, artacked i,, i.,i.r.ã imaginary intersection of-meanr lines, rhis horizonially pertecr plan,'d;=w;'i; it.r'18? How could it be thar the enfigt¡ten;e.t vision, on..,.oiir.ã, eanh, as traces through the existing ciry. could be artacked from any point of -viewi rtàurmonn rhus reveared The -eeometer and the planner trã¿ uéen favored wirh himself as the last such hej¡'of philosophic iå.tfogy; . the bird,s-eve or ar leasr as a view hitherto reserved forihe novelist un¿ ,oon tà u" pro.totype of the planner, who, sð¡ooled il;Ë;i,ä;;¡ìi; in the meðiranisms of reason photographer; Nadar, ascending in a balloon,'*u, ,o record the city and order, faced with rhe intransigence of so.ììt life, remains t;;;;ä indelibly from above so that th-e humbleii clìiren at human irrarionalirv. migl,t share in this experience of Paris as a.whore. Fo'owing Haussmann'-s In this sense the Éaussmannizarion of pais may *o* r.t. ,i!ùi be seen as both the also vierv, on ground level, along tt. iilfriiiàes end of urbanisn: and its beginning. Carrying traced out by the the ieóhniqu.s of .iiànoiiri planner, monumenr atier monumént. rhe isolated symbols analysis and the formal insirumeñts oi rtr. of civico-r. iin régime, ,, ;"fr;bi;;;; j' ; at pride: .The y I trre to*ersj-n;'d' b-eä by the First Empire and irs insritutions, -tJ their logical ., ::j]:."i|, .y_imperi oì;* exrreme, errecr ar. rne meering points of absolutery straight Haussmann joined rhem to. the power released srreers or sections of by the bürgeoning con- streets, ' ' sumer economies of speculative credit in a magniñcen, .,i".fi io ,.of Of course, rhe form of.the up disorder, and enshrine measured progress, ìn an aesthetic pact<age predicared by counrless plans Second Empire transformarions had been of embellishmeniLo amelioration from derived from Beaux-Ans academic rormuias realizea with all the exoerthe.revolutionary curs of bavid arter parre in ìiôito tise o.f engine-ering science. Ir was in rú ;iry tt e Saint_Simonian ;iÞ;tr:'ä;;ìi;ï;ï; the difference tay in-the ,".tãri*i'p.*i merging of Nap_oleon I's.paradigmaric insUtutions g.oui :,::":,:f ::11ym,ond;¡so of Ecole áá, slon, rne ngor and relentless derermination of the wieldeo Ans and Ecole potyrechnique efïecteJ,h;;;;;ìi;" df ti,. of. urba;ism, ;hì;Å' was launched as rhe hooe of the twentiertt'..niury, Tltr,umenl called riangulation. In a sense tt t otil,i" vision of an entire against revorution crry orought lnro line, as opposed to rhe piecemeal " and poveny alike. crearion of enclaves in districts, was only.possi-bìe atier ttis cinscious confla¡ion The new boulevard as the a_sent and form of merhod of this hope and this treary anc¡ expenence.

Technique and observation had been joined in the and technique wal perhaps rhe mosr urban product -.r.f;; of the !:j:::l :.

Enl ighrenmenr as insrrumenrs of pro_eress; ir,.irlon, n¡nereenrh cenrury, and irs final àpothàosis; r,ìútt in a tool of sociät, ,oroi. an¿ had waited on the develop."nt oi pÈ'orogiofl,y åno govemmental progress; a monumenr to canogàpny. the ideal of a city .; ;;iËì'h; If the geometricar survey predicäred r-tre'rorm of ttre rierv-ãävetop. site and provocation of its febrile a vista, a path of ments, the techniques of surlery provided "*nãri"Jii.; rhe instruments of realiza-

;; ."ã vðiirir., ãi David and the Commission àes Artistes, of the fiist Napoleoì: .*i ;i rhe rechnicians of the new industrial worrd were finaty i" u. ,!"iir.ã.

Louis Napoleon's map,

r

88

Vidle¡

62. Galignani's plan ofparis. 1g39. paris before Haussmann's transformation: the Bois de Boulosne to. the wesr re¡ains irs old srrai-eht a//ãr", ,f"

is s¡iil undevetoped-.

Sl1ry"l nave n-or opened up rhe fabric

ili;

the

gro,riîp-ri;ä

ofold paris. the citu not de-veloped ro rhe lim¡rs ser by the neí ¡onlncarions of the lg40s. n^as.s¡¡ll

The Scenes of the

Lf o¡trt¡. ¿ordcat .aataaut

-'

r

-t¿

63. Joanne's Plan of Paris' 1876. Paris after Haussmann's transforma¡ion. The Bois de Boulogne and the Buttes Chaumont have been rendered as English parks, the grand boulevards and avenues of thJÊrst iwo networks have been completed (including the Avenue de t'Opera), and the city has ad' vanced toward the fonifications.

Street

89

90

Vidler

The Scenes ol the

drawn-out agony of the patient' rion. Atier rhe prolonged pathology, the and *o:; ,o"üt ãtìiiered oi irs illnesses' its cancers' the bodv oi Paris,

:;:.i.ti;t"il;'ä¿ : :iå"':

ilï ï;J

rhe tenain

råt -'¿¡'triiv t-t't å'í;';' ;.t.

;;

t"ttl act of surqery' "cutting" and ì; ies"i u' it''' operat io n : w he re

*0. pon,.u'"ily oUttt"tt¿

a "disembowelling" had to be

iå.¡"î-u. ieconsrirured and tìorvs reinstated. Ëîriiäîä i;;å;;,r,* aguin by the pathologisrs' the The metaphor, ,u.r. ,.pJtìtJìgti" and in the

so lìrmlv embedded surgeons, ¡¡d sven uy ttttütìitiis' becomiig that from that time the pionnini analogies unc-onscious were contused and

;ï ;;ù;' the- action ilö"h;;;;J'it'. i.i*i'n" ;;;tt';¡ ot'the central quaners eventre¡nen¡ lhe of spoke iused. Thus Haussmann inaccessible to the tangled-streets ol the city, the cutting õ;-Jth; science"' "hygienic requ-irement' circulatior¡

il;ä;i;he

of vehicles.ói-Á n"*

endorv old and new quaners fiercing of srreets' rvai to rvith all .tt.'llnnil t"tìure and'flowers" in a wQrd' was the to Haussmann'

alike rvith "sPaces,

health."i;l='i;;;*;;;;;åì"s The Ïorror.of the old streets oi the ;rî;;;ïbJ*,iu'e.ot ttre emlttoi' ''piled uo' sordid' insanitary a"nJ ior all; the

thar dìspenses

citv must be exorctseo

the "honible ";;; ;;";nv ot ïr.ilrnåss"' ha6itations. as much c;;;';f just as imporperhaps and sinks" must ue openeo-ufiã iigÈt and air'

ion,. ,o "pubtic cjrculation"'te3 and.therebY.ot^ll.,fil:,311 But the existence of ttitio""t oi poverty'

óó Jn ontónt to rhe digniry of the nation war on declared tó public order' Even as Haussmann ;iãi¿-p',t¡t, io he declared war on their inhabitants: that the worm'eaten facade of des Tenturiers

above all criminality,

;;ì;;;; ;;ñti il" öä The rue

*;;; ñ.h

;;';;;;;"*

rough'cast with of its bordering rtä""t'-in puntts.of .wood oroo itself up on that ;i;t,;;, i¡.J in "oinio'roäáo"n: iì coutd onlv therel'eo one

of the opposite house.

It was common

ft;il;;

t-popurotio'i, rìveà

knowledg;';"à';;;å"'n fear that

frlthy alleys and dead

."d=t;;;';;

these slums "The

hiãeouts of the majority of released

1852;

,o on-eri.ìo! u¡ousrrt y, il.Buildingworksart.he.placeducarrousel' orisoners.,,¡es whar was more troubling of the Louvre tnd porriuiiiry of losing. þower *itiüg "'i tnt completion ;* ä'" power by the rbrce or ,nË uåo-i.rd;; ar rhe.beginnins of rhe second Rue r"ir.rìLÌr orìn!

-t*¿.ns vol' I' p' 3a0l way. As H*;;;;ï;outd no,.. ,r,.î"ìËnrion in

EöË'

t-Tt;; i'--riøttoi'

tratvic Rivoti was a "spacious, direct, monumental ""i;;;;;ìl;' inrhe.city tellingly des ltalíens and 65.Thefacades of the Boulevards roure.,,This was..noinÇ;h;;;!ñ;lused.most extension in l85l the irregular the for showing loan ' iì;;,';"i;;, r.,isã. nonrt side, debate over rh"'d;;ùîf the the same

de

Council *o uaoo betbre Haussmann's appointment: those orsalubritv demand ;:-L':mi:t:':;i:3iäiJ"1 ff;!':i:i"u'""'' The inreresrs of public order, not less than districr-of i"ìl o. ¡tl fossible across this rhat a wide swathe 6i strateglc great the to added com' üorriloo"t. An intermediate line will be ..66.The at,, L-^.!^ aotunvenu¿¿lel'opéra, avenue de I'Opéra'1om' the new ^î,h¿ facade of the late in line of the boulevards'rvo resignation' held strong swaytng ;;,;ä;i;; H;urrtunn't the new Im;iüi;it after the coup d'etat such arguments, fr¡e i-atOi. n. regular cornice line of years Haussmann-some p' xliiil ltlustré' power over the assembly;'even l1t:i:"-T:.1 Paris 'i,-p;;;ti;;; in" "¿¡t"tnuowelling of old Paris' of the quaner ot rrots ñË;åt. tl;an"".

;;;;;;;;

i

Sreet 9l

92

Vidler

l+ll='lF.8*t -': l:-:'y::..:.'ã -

67. Ba¡on Haussmann. ¡he boulevard Saint Michel: the southern end of the grear noíh-sourh axis planned as the great crossin,q of Paris. The ñrst network of Haussmann, I 853- I 860. [Joanne, Parrs Illustr'í, p. 67)

68. Baron Haussmann, the avenue and place de l{agram: an avenue of the second nerwork, t8601863, developed as pan of the radiaring avenues from the replanned place de I'Etoile. The Arc de Triomphe is in the background. [Joanne, Paris lllus-

tré, p.691

69. Baron Haussmann, the boulevard Richard Lenoir, buil¡ over the Canal Saint Manin. through the hean of the working-class quaners,

I 86 I

- I 863.

7Q, Perspeoive view of the boulevard Richard

Lenoir, from Alphand's Promenades de Paris (1867-1873). The space of the new boulevard, cut through the densely impacred old quaners. The jux. taposition of scales was dramalic and - theofñnal monumental end to the baroque vision perspective, vis¡a, and order.

--

:

Ì;:@t-?

--:....,+¡':*

= =--

The Scenes of the

The prolorgand banicades" became a principal theme of his speeches' the Rue "uritiré srrarégique"; a had de Strasboùrg Boulevard ü" ,.dú not lend itself to the habitual tactic "i,n. orignm"nr rvith the ãi fo"tr insuneciions"l the covering of the Canal Saint Manin intransigent most the through cuìting thus Lenoir, Richard Éolfåuor¿ was dictated by the-"inter' ãùiÁ", of all, the Faubourg Saint Antoìne, ..in place of the derènse orfered by oro.r," subs-tituting

äñ;;ii;;iaigr,t ;;;i

fuuii" thecanâltoriots,anewaccessrouteinthehabitualcenteroftheir was the it ,nonir.rtotion." paris was nor only the home of the Parisian:

;õ;;;i;¡; vast and centralized Empire; its order rvas the first condition whole.te? of - - the order of the linking' for example' tttl int.r.sts of strategic communication - the city' allowing troops of the stations rogetherlnd to the center of the

were unrest iiarioneO outside ltre city to be recalled in times of civil - the than debate of rhetoric the in reasons o"rttoor.tot. convincing massive redevelopment ;;ä.tittc ;.onomic necãssities pointed by thecommerce'and-industry' of requirements the end, ;;r.çít. Ëut, in the were the dynamic agents of the rransformarion. hn,inó. and employmenr iiàuirrrnn anå l'ouis Napoleon, iike Sainr-Simon and his tbllowers, of progü"ri"u.o in communicarion and circularion as rhe watchwords was "a.

Paris activity, industrial and ress: tte center of commercial consumption. an immense workshop' an ¡rena. or ereat market -óir".t s*-', ---,',iõu for on¿ ipacious communicarion would be furnished boulevards and avenues' the widening of network'of a coherent only by resources of modern ;ä;: and their servicing with all the technical world' No longer the to and to i¡self opened bã had to city The i.ì.n.å. to the Hôtel Denis Saint rue ttro"f¿ it take fiiteen minutes to walk from years' expanding in fifty doubled had that population With a Ville. de la ,uuuru, rr¡ar demandèd access ro the cenrer, businesses that required was rendered etficient services' the entire infrastructure of old Paris hopelessly inadequate' to For all these reasons, and as many more as could be adduced a itself into to transform municipality reluctant increasingly an oersuade

å"d;;-;;;"i-"i

i"li"r

and commercial order' the networks of

Èurrrrn*n came into being in the short space of frfteen years'.The very was changed to word for urban reconstructíon, once "embe[ishment"' ..transformation." And the artifact that contained within it the solution course' to ait urUan problems, that united technique and form' was' of the new boulevard.

-'i;;

wide and up to two kilometers long' $;"; tome thirty meters and the circulation of the new the services H*tstänn conc.ntrated latest design of ."*'"*i.r city. Paved *ittr ne* nracadam, lit with thestroller' loiterer' pedestrian, to seParate planned c;;ligil,ió .oi"rutly rows of i.iiiiã t"*i.. u"N"i", and rushing 9ania.s9, planted withpiping for

,r"u. ro-"n.ur" shade in summer, proiid"d wiih uàderground

Street

93

94

Vidler

,$ ' r , ¡iii.: ,

t.:

þi+'.

The Scenes

rrin water, sewage, and gas, cleaned with the aid of scientifically designed gutters, faced by the uniform height of the residences and stores of thenouveau bourgeoisie, and carefully sited to point toward a monument or vista as the object of civic pride or aesthetic pleasure, the boulevard of Haussmann was in effect the epitome and the condenser of Second Empire daily life: the modern anifact par excellence.

Its profiles and sections were calculated with a.precision that had not been ãttempted since Piene Patte had invented the Enlightenment avenue. Its plans were treated like buildings and is spaces tike the outdoor rooms ot'-a city that knew no secrets in its burgeoning prosperity' In a gas lit and policed: very real sense the street had become an interior lights created an and where buildings domain in a a the crowd felt safety anificial sky at night. Its equipment was standardized and typiñed tiom the bench to the lamp, the kiosk to the prssoir, the railing to the that even as the trace of the tree suard. the Davement to the drain - so roure-uräted t itith.no parceled-out city so did the objects of its use remind the citizen of one, uniformly goveined Paris.:00 The bench in the Faubóurg Saint Antoine was the same as that in the Champs'Etvsées' All pariJ was serviced. cleaned, and aestherically embellished rvith the same techniques: all Paris was opened up to air, sun. and -green.on the one hand and uniform administration on the other. The sense ol the city districs had as an entity was never so strong; villages had congealed communicated with each other before, but the understanding of the city, t'rom east to west, nonh to south, was now a part of the daily experience of every inhabitant of every quarter and not the special privilege of the poetic imagination of the aérostier.

Thus were the three great networks of Haussmann conceived and implemented; thus the great administrator dissociated himself from poiiti"s, from the disputes of special interests, to set himself up as the hrst "disinterested" planner, the rational technician, the benign seryant of a benign administration, the acconunodator of modernism, the subaltem to economic and commercial progress.

In dre end, however, the boulevard, technical instrument that it rvas, also insened its form and space into a fabric that had, save for the possible exceptions of the Champ de Mars or the ancien boulevards, never received such cuning, opening, and rupture. The boulevard rvas' ñnally, an aesthetic entity and recognized as such by its designer¡.-Tle "giving satisfaction to the anistic instincts" of the inhabitants of Paris was, according to Haussmann, one of the primary aims of the Emperon By beautiful perspectives, by the disengaging of ancient monuments and the isolation of new ones; by the opening of planted avenues. vast promenades, parks and public gardens, filling the eyes with a luxury of greenery and flowers without parallel.!0l Herein a¡e the aesthetic canons of Haussmann himself inherited from the academic principles of late baroque and neoclassic, mediated by the

7L'12.73. Paris undergro¿¡nd, 1852-1867. The great sewers of Paris were a fascination to the public

the Second Empire. and an object of Haussmann's redevelopment. as pan of the sanita' tion projects of drainage and water supply de' manded by the rapidly expanding capital' Na<lar. the photographer and balloonist. wrote on "Paris un' àerground and Paris from the air," tbr ¡he Parts Guùte of I 867. rhe opening of the Great Exposition.

[Joanne, Paris Illustré' pp. 909' 913. and Texier. iableau, vol. II. p. 235. respectivelyl

ói

7-t. The redesignedBors de Boulogne, by Alphand.

I 853- I 858, The imperial answer to London's Hyde Park. with the doubte lake approximating the Ser' pentine. Uoanne. Paris lllustré, p. 186l

of

the

Street

95

96

Vidler

exi_gencies of modem marerials and construction techniques, and styled according to the eclectic tastes of the bourgeois consumption of an. îhe first principle of boulevard planning *^s,-of course. corre"t alignment: indeed, Haussmann claimed rhat rhe Emperor had reproachediim for "sacrificing roo much in rhe maner of alignmens," óf ..sea¡ching roo

much for poinrs of view ro justify the diréction of public ,ou¡.r.':zo: The preoccupation of the triangulator had been rhe joining of points by lines, the sighting from temporary rower ro remporary ower; the preoccupation of the planner was the objective in view for a fitting end Io every boulevard. Boulevards were, in keeping with their monuminral status, far frorn being lines to infinity; ar each end rvas the proper culmination of the axis: "In effect I have never ordered the racingof any way whatsoever . . , rvithout conceming myself rvith the poinl of view that one could give ro it. " 203 The disappointment of the Boulevard de Strasbourg, the line of which was set before Haussmann's administration, was that its axis missed by a very small dimension the culminating point de vue of the dome of the Sorbonne; insread he was forced to direct the consrrucrion of rhe Tribunal of Commerce to the Ile de Ia Ciré so that its river facade ended the Boulevard and in dome remained on axis: "this new monumenr furnished me wirh the objective thar I needed for the perspecrive of the Boulevard de Strasbourg." The monument had taken the place of the geometer's rower as the permanent wirness to the mathematical cons¡rucrion of reality.

In this way was the vision of Laugier, the city as a foresr with rhe avenues as the paths cut throu_gh it by professional foresrers or garden designers, installed in Paris in monumental form. And even as the network of paths rrian_eulated the walks through irs otherwise inhospiraþle quaners, so the foresr i¡self, the Bois de Boulogne and rhe-Bois de Vincennes,-was tamed and carefully redesigned to look like picíuresgue nature for the Sunday pronienades of the rising middle classes. In this inversion of the relation between savage and tamed nan¡re, the ciry was invested with the arrributes of wildemess, ordered and defended by its routes with their impregnable and uniform walls the sancruaries - their earlier func-of reason and li-eht; the gardens were transformed from tion æ hunting forests, their srraight allées eradicated in favor of peaceful and meandering parhs around serpenrine pools. The very garba_ee tips of the ciry were brought under cultivation in this way. In this sense the boulevards of Haussmann can be seen as monumental hunting routes; it is significant that Zola's novel of Haussmann was called Iåe Quarry.

75, Victor Bal¡ard. the Central Markers, interior, 1857-¡858. The iron and glass interiors of what Emile Zola called the "s¡omach of paris": the arcade monumen¡alized as a building in i¡self.

The Scenes of the

The Ciry Consumed Zola and the Spoils of the Street, I87l

It was the ripe and prodigiousfruit ofan epoch. The street invaded the aparment with its rumbling of carriages, its jostling of strangers, its lícense of language.2oa

Zola, like Saint-Simon. had personified the city of Paris in the earlier volumes of -the Rougeon-Macquart as a woman: sometimes fällen, sometimes a whore, often wounded and crying in the night, yet always full of heart for those needing comfort, an all-embracing and ultimately redeeming vision of golden fecundity and final perfection. He sarv rhe Paris of Haussmann, however, disemboweled and bleeding, as the prey of speculation, the victim of all-consuming greed.!05 Saccard,''the anti-hero of La Curée, at once speculator and ciry hall functionary, spoke the double language of the planner and the hunter: assembled in his new residence, a miraculous reþlica of the nèrv Louvre set in the Parc du Monçeau, rvere all the characters of rhe new Paris.

The Municipal Councillor, a "lean and importanr person" ("the transtbrmation of Paris will be the glory of the reign, to plough up Paris is to make it productive"); a contractor, newly rich and lately a bricklayer, not wanting to seem a traitor to his former class ("the alterations of Paris have given a living to the workman"); the provincial prefect, living most of the year in the capital, concerned with "the anistic side of the question" ("the new thoroughfares are majestic in rheir beauty"); the old baron, property owner ("as a landlord, whenever I have a flat done up and painted, I raise the rent"); a second contractor ("you see everything is fine so long æ you make money by it"); all of them seeking ways in which to appropriate to their own fiscal ends rhe forms and functions of a city in the process of becoming modem.:06 Saccard himself, the host of all, like a vulture hovering over rhe emerging city of capital in Zola's image, "swept down on Paris and simply took possession of the city." He knew how to predict the increase in property values following the plan of improvements. how "when throwing a boulevard across the belly of a quaner you juggle with six storied houses amidst the unanimous applause of your dupes. " The districa of the ciry seemed no more to him than potential gold to be melted down for the enrichment of those who heat and stir rhe monar.

As he stood overlooking the city he spoke in the very words of Haussmann, but words invested by Zola with all the realiry of the metaphors of the Transformation: From the Boulevard du Temple to the Barrière du Trône, that's one cutting; then on this side another from the Madeleine to the Plaine . Monceau; and a third cuning this way, anorher that way, a cuning here, one funher on, cuttings on every side, Paris slæhed with saber cuts, its veins opened . . .2oz

Street

97

Saccard's very hand seemed like a saber "a living knife, those i¡on fingers mercilessly slicing" as it hovered over the city, an unsuspecting prey. The speculator's hand had become rhe agent of urban surgery; "withour effon it tore asunder rhe entrails of rhe enormous ciry."

Saccard saw himself as rhe agent of imperial inreresr ("the admirable strategic routes which will place the fons at the hean of the old quarters") and of economic speculation ("in making the monev dance

..

,

giving the laboring classes no rime to think"). Under

the

speculator's greed Zola saw rhe map of Louis Napoleon as cracing the fall of the ciry in blood, in red slashes thar cur even deeper than Saccard's hand.

If the city was to be consumed by capital so in turn it became all consuming of its inhabitants: caught in the fever following the hunt or trapped in the unfamiliar space of the boulevard, languishing in an unrecognizable milieu filled wirh aliens, the citizens participared in rhe agony of their wounded home. The life of rhe new street was rapacious and the invasion of the house was its nan¡ral consequence; rhe inrerior of bourgeois privacy, so much a pan of the July Monarchy that Walter Benjamin could write of Louis-Philíppe or the Interior as interdependent realms, was in the Second Empire subjected to the enrÉe of the brash and newly

rich, the self-made man, the bricklayer

turned

contnìctor, rubbing shoulders with their panners of necessity, the older middle class and a failing aristocracy.

For Saccard's wife and her illicit lover, on the other hand, the life of the streets provided a welcome anonymity where their secret affairs might merge unnoticed. They relished "the grey bands of wide interminable pavement," the "stamping, swarming crowds" where they might be lost in the melée.208 The boulevard, a uniformly familiar real¡n tluoughout the ciry, became in a very real sense the lobby of their house.

Signifrcantly, the camera, as well as the painting, recorded the life and forms of the street

¿¡s

seen from above, f¡om the apanment that borh

witnessed and participated in the society below.20s The monumentalization of the public realm had united facade wirh facade, public life and private, in a common space that no longer remained attached solely to the level of movement but was defined venically by the uniform comices and the perspective views. The lovers do not have to descend to street level to partake of its life; with the apartment window open they are at once within the public realrn and voyeurs of it. The nighr life of the boulevard, passing through irs own transformarions of activity from the evening to the early moming, acts as the background to their private life, sets the tone of every moment, and characterizes the relations of two lovers even as it defines the srares of the crowd, the forms of pleasure, and the daily life of individuals.

At ten in the evening, the night had barely commenced; Paris was yet

awakening, "prolonging the ardenr day." Seen from above the dark rows of trees separared the whireness of the sidewalk from the shadou. of the roadway, lit fleetin-ely by the lamps of passing caniages. The kiosks of newsvendors and the lamps of cafés threw bands of li.ghr across the pavement. The gaze ofthe àparrurent dwellercould span frðm one end of the boulevard to rhe other, along the enrire perspecrive, into the noisy confused depths of the avenue. full of the black swarm of pedestrians, where the li,ehr became mere sparks. And the endless procession, a crowd strangely mixed and always alike, passed by, with tiring regulariry in the midst of the bri-sht colours and patches of darkness, in the fairylike confusion and the thousand leaping flames that swept like waves from rhe shops.3ro The endless crowd, all individuality lost in the eternal procession of movement, all physio-enomies mer-sed in the identity of the mass, was given unity by the space of uniformiry; its faces were as many as the gas lights that illuminared rhem for ffeeting moments, The literature of the last Second Empire and the Third Republic, the literarure of the transformed Paris, that is, remarked endlessly on the glimpse of the face in the crowd, the face seen once and forever lost. the infinite masses in movemenr alon_e the modem ways; the noise and the rumble where sounds are indistinguishable. "The deafening noise that rose on high, a clamour, a prolonged monotonous rumbling like an organ note accompanying an endless procession of little mechanical dolls."2rl Engels had characterized the crowd in the London streers of 1844 as monads, disparare individuals following the rule of anarchic impulse. Now the crowd had anained its own identiry, irs own physiognomy. It was still a backdrop ro the life of individuals, but individuals constrained to grow ever more heroic in order to srar¡d ouL.against rhe mass. Even when ni-eht triumphed and the boulevard empded into vacancy, the inhabitants, knors oftheatergoers rerurning late, prostitutes and their clients, still seemed unlike individuals; they remained "-shostly puppets," mechanical parts of the whole to the end. No maner how strident tÌ¡e cries of nostalgia, the perception of Haussmann as he planned for the alienated masses of the new city had been accura¡e. Þens- he haë, etaimed. ofîending Communard anti nrché¡l¿,gue alikg. was no longer the exclusive domain of the Þericien The masses of 76,77 .The Grand stair and entance foyer of the Opéra, by Cha¡les Gamier, l86l-1874. Not completed until the Third Republic, Garnier's building nevenheless epiromized the high bourgeois aspirations of the Second Empire; is vast, eclectically decorated, semipublic interiors were the latenineteenth-cenrury substitute for the arcades of Louis Philippe. lJoanne, Paris lllusté, pp. 472,

475)

-õf-?ansian sociery, absolutely dep_fife¡!_e[ municipal sentimenr."

ffiSãftt;1h-e';;eo;cutãriõn

with the face in rhe crowd, the physiognomy of the city, the types of inhabitant, was the favorite pasrime of thefâneur, in the Paris of ZoIa, all faces were losr and indistinguishable. Even more saddening ro the specialists in the

bohème and ¡he dandy was the eradicarion of the specifically Parisian

All

is leveled, all is effaced, therypes have disappeared. the cha¡ac-

The Scenes of the

peoples in this giganticters have been dulled. and in this concen of camps out' the Parisian bom of rvorld whole the rvhere .îå"onr.roi ènclosed by-theglimmers ot rhe soil cramped betrveen ì*o si¿e*.atts'

;¡iffi

le-n=:-*;€îõ,;æm¿it-sa-irÏIpõGnranffi

l

tn

i;ili'ffiJiFi'r

The poiititaLni'ro rcur was forced alone upon hostile opened up anã his movements traced by myriads'of quaners srreets: his In his

rïit rãp.t*p,ible.

more ot a fiâneur himself. mirror imagg ôf it' tte was closer.to the than to thË'sans cutone' The blackår w.ith the "otiolgio euguste-Biaiqui mingted as^conspicuously the tamenting Goncoun' de ìãii'"."¿ttti. eotno-n¿

intormers. .he bec¡me

;;r.';d

alienation. but as the paraaoxicat

;;ä;!;;;;;t croed figure oi ::,i:-å ïätdii. "l tt" i :ttT::' iåit ùi.rr through the disappearance of environment: or perspectrve'. incidents without rurns' witÈôut bouievards ;* ;;;;;. feeling like the world ot imolacable in their ,,roighi'iinttt no longer

;;; Ä;;;;;

:r3

roì or the t'uture .'' and o[ Baudelaire's Exposition In l8ó7, the year "f';;Ü;i;"""1 The great iron and brick wðrld. to the rutt unu.it.O Paris nerv ùe death. of Ledoux' ideal ciry of a ;;iü; "¡ rhe exhibirián emuiared the plan it in the new technology and i.*"ñ";";i".y .-ri.t, tons"t'oting of the new consu¡ner products-typic,al ;Ï";'i, *itt ,rt" universe of Louis Nãpoleon' with his dreams of ¡ourt..n-vtttl ,o*. ;;;i;ìy.'lo pragmatic with !oini-'sitoni- splendor. índ Haussmann' the Paris of Balzaceffrciency into the i,ìg.nuit.u, had transtbrmed

ili;::il

t,iäài" g iäï.i;ä

Babv

;;J';;ilhi"g

Paris of Zola. threatened and In this nerv city those who had known the old felt in the losing-himself of out art an .fi"n,-Sãuãefaire. who had created Paris is no "Old rvritten: had dandy' its as trimseii gaining .rÑO on¿ alas' than the heart of.a more (the form of u .i,y .'t un-nti more quickly' through.'' while passing meretv "a man i"ìi'iiLË ;;;;ìj.;"'' ó"n.ou. a marked demonstrated ì'rl"'pãi¡t Guide in trre year oi the exhibition line straight The citv' a lost past spirit-of desire ¡o recapture tot.'olth. the as was seen Rivóli de had replaced tt. pi.ru.el',-,!'.íi"t; irtt Rue author proOne cold' and wide' long, *orld svmbol of the new ;i;ñä;"'ã";i áeatt, or -the strËet: "The street no longer exists in boulevard and advent

Paris. and the street once dead it is the reign of the of the grand aneries."¿rs new boulevard If there was a sinsle image that best cha¡acterized the the desen' For was that of it Empire, Ë;.;;d tü" *¡".ti¡ ,p"i"'iî,tt"

'11

Street

99

100

Vidler

festival in front of the Hotel de Ville. They appropriated the edifice and in occupation declared the city theirs once more. The Proclamation and most of the brief life of the Commune was a festive affair, with the combined memory of the days of 1789, 1830. and 1848 and a renewed hope that this time, united, the mistakes and defeats of those former days would not be repeated.

With all the fervor of Enlightenment therapeutic vision, the men of 1796 had claimed the image of the asylum as their own to define the state and the space of their new republic. Extending the metaphor from the desert of the avenue."

For those who still retained their political hope, despite the repression isolated and healing retreal to the entire realm of Paris. they had cried. of criticism and party activity, the options were few: some longed fora "the moment has come to found the Republic of Equals, this great retum to the secure haunts ofthe old Paris, those "peaceable obstructed asylum open to all men."2:2 It was left to the reformers and the quaners where the bohemians of the faubourg Saint Antoine took institutionalizers of the next fifty yea¡s to turn the concept of the asylum refuge,' 'etz the cul-de-sacs of intrigue and subversive life. Others called into the mechanism of control and the instrument of isolation. In the for the complete reconstn¡ction of what had already been transformed. spring of I 87 I , the whole of Paris was again proclaimed an ' 'asylum of Progdhon, in his last work, proposed the rebuilding of all the towns and equality" from the inside, but, pitifully for its inmates who were largel¡' villfges of France, "and firìt in line the Paris ofi4. Haussmann."3rs unconscious of their true condition of isolation, it was also seen from Tnla for his part saw and recorded the whole transformation as a the ouside as a very real .asylum of another and more sinister kind. Its grotesquedanse macabre; one year before the Commune he pronounced walls were confirmed first by tl¡e Prussian and then by the Versaillese its death: "autrefois le cameval passait en calèche sur les boulevards; armies, and is real defenses were never really in the hands of those who thought they were defending. From Versailles, the city was seen as a aujourd'hui le carneval est mon."21s center of infection, a plague-ridden nest of political contagion to be encircled and isolated like any prison, workhouse, or insane refuge' The Commune and the Tlæater of Combat, I87l Within, protected from this vision of their real state, the inhabilants celebrated their emancipation: "Everybody could enter freely; the The working man's Paris, in the act of its heroic self holocaust streets swarned with people, the cafés were noisy . . . the people were involved Ín its fames buíldings and monuments. llthile tearing to without anger because without ¡"ar.'tz:3 It was a day of peace and pieces the living body of the prolerariat, its rulers must no longer joyous festivity, and two hundred thousand mæsed before the Hôtel de expect to return rriumphantly into the intact architecture of their Ville and back into the Boulevard de Sebætopol while the ney represen' abodes,22o tatives read the Proclamation to the music of ùe old revolution.

In keeping with such an open revolution, the barricades of its incep' The construction of the new quarter of Les Halles cut in half the population of this densely inhabited district in less than six years; the tion, those of March 18, were temporary affairs, six feet high at most. population of the old working-class quaner of the Faubourg Saint- and made almost entirely of pavées.22{ And in a continuing spi¡it of Honoré fell by a third in the same period. At the same time a vast and fearlessness the Communards were little concemed with the erection of desolate shanty town arose on the outskirts of the ciry to the nonh and a more peÍnanent line of defense. Of course decrees were issued calling nonh-east, increasing in size to some 140,000 by the end of for the building of "a second enclosure behind the foniñcations," and a Haussmann's ministry.22¡ The first truly working-class district had been chief of barricades, Napoléon Gaillard, was appointed to construct and formed, not by any conscious act of paternalist planning, nor by the oversee this work, as well as the creation of three "closed redoubts" or spontaneous effons of the poor rhemselves, but solely as a result of the citadels on the Bunes Montmanre, the Trocadéro, and the Panthéon'335 Haussmannization of Paris, æ Engels was to tenn the great work. But Père Gaillard, the radical shoemaker, was more taken with his Without hospitals, schools, or public fountains, the workers lived as resplendent uniform and the picnrre of himself as the great defender than they could outside the walls, while their former.city was opened up on with the practical operations of a coordinated scheme for the protection behalf of their masters. On Tuesday, March 18, 1871, in victorious of the municipalities. He invested all his time a¡d some eighty thousand columns led by red banners, the workers ma¡ched back into the center of frar¡cs in the building of an adminedly formidable barricade across the the city from the north and north-east and celebrated their reentry by a Rue de Rivoli on the corner of the Place de la Concorde and the

Zola, despite the clamor and incessant movement of its crowds, it rvas the space of his final alienation: "The avenue seemed unending. Hundreds of leagues ended in nothingness; the end of the road eluded him.

The lanrcrns, lined up regularly spaced, with their shon yellow flames, were the only life in this desert of death. "2¡6 The visitor to this strange and mechanical world, empty of familiar jostling, where the walls of ùe street no longer pressed together against the sky, felt totally alone even in the center of a rushing crowd: "in the midst of a great silence and in

The Scenes of the

79

U niversal Exposition, central pavilion, 1867. The opening of Louis'Napoleon's new Paris saw the merchandise of the world assembled in an iron. glass. and brick version of Ledoux' ideal city of the Enlightenment. [Sigtäed Giedion. Space, Tíme and Architecrure; the grovth of a new tradï n'oz (Cambridge. Mass.: lfarvard Universiry Press'

i 8. The

lgal), p. l96l 19.The IJniversal Exposition, 1867' plan. Each of rhe in¡erior sreets is named atier a counary; the whole forms a modet town of ¡he ans and sciences in a rue summary of the world at the end of the tirst industrial age.

Street l0l

102

Vidler

80.The construction ol a barricade, l8 March 1871. The barricades of the Commune were the tokens of a city that celebrated its liberation wi¡h a sense of invulnerability. They were, for the most pan. no more than six or seven feet high and evenly

ùuilt out of sandbags or paving stones. [Jules Clarette. Histoire de la Rëvolution de 1870-71 (Pa¡is, t872), p. 58ll

8l.The barricade ofthe place de la Concorde; the defensive works of Père Gaillard. The only really iubstantial redoubts of the Commune, their lines of defense included ditches that exposed the under' ground sewers of rhe sreets. [Clarette. His¡oire de la R,ôvolution, p. 645J 82. Thc takíng of a barricade by the Versaillese troops,' Clarette. who abhoned the Commune and its anifacts, takes pleasure in depicting the defenders routed, and ¡he fragile barricade dispersed. lClarette, Histoire tte la Révotution, p. ó8 l]

The Scenes of the

he was to- be-seen Tuileries gardens. Just before the days o! Yoy' the Place, the huge áir.t ,r,o, divided the barricade from

to divert pedestrians while his photograph utt""tiv too late' a shocked member of when ìi*ãt b";;;;k"n.*' soent all his money Cïtnåun" angrily complained that ôaillard had

"""ãi"ãuËi"re åËäË,h;ñarionat-cuaã

;;; ,t

could make

" the tbr

purchase "r ";ii:Jrm;;:'i'ì"d;;-t-t-d .that'one So confident barricades out of dung -¿ìun¿; but with ratpickers!"t¿7 of 1orke5; *";;;;-C;,r-i,,"" õr puUii" Sãfety in the.ùnp.regnabilitv to-betieve those who told detþnded Paris. howev"i, titu' they irefened After all' the barricade was a tempor;;;i,y Ñii-ing *ittt banicades' *", t otà-ry u"ntting the open streets of a fratemal

;; ;;r"i"* oi :ilffi;. ï;;"å;i,';.*oírro in two ot tttt""

ardor that, !38

', built, "-îåyonA

and-engineers would work wirh such

days' theie formidable works

will

be

of this, the Commune hardly identified with the discourse

etfect' edifices migttt monu'ment$tfrat tra¿ Ue"n useO againsi it with such in the service of a appropriated and ,ótüãàné according be utilized build'iself in community tttå *ouio^ tgã¡n more eouable ,tut"' uuinãuli reconstructton ùe for üiã'ilùããFimperial Paris' No plans were made was to be lived and the utopia ;îttr; ;try; iå ,¡" ntti-t"uolition: most not designed and walled in' Finally' and perhaps "*r*i"n"å¿. ,i" oi iro", of unpreparedness, was the terrirorial sense

;;ïffi;;i"ii

;Édded ìn ihe working p!14": .1^Ï"-:t-:l: ï^;ä;:;il;;rv generaof preceding revolutions' carried through several

-¿^t"*o.i"t a quarter barricaded' a realm il;;,;;;,ñose^of a quoäer taken over, the-death.

If each arrondisse' to ;;i.;J;;i uy aaity lii" uná defended by ownership and fed passion tit" o*n-soif*itit ia ment fought ¡o, of equally assemblagean p"¡i griab le:. *ut inrry impre ä;ñi ti,',h"" miniature of the larger impenetrable cornmunes' eacn a répliðation in even as this in n¡rn, was propcised as the model

Commune,

of

a

France. decentralized --A".ãtUi"gfy, 2l' when the Versaillese finally entered Paris on May a few were Rivoli de tiue the of those ,h; ;i; ã"î"";es beyon¿ gates' The tr"ìf-"ontt."*¿ uani'caães at the Bineau and Asnières proclamations: Central Committee issued to his ouaner' It is now a war of banicades, everyone 'barricadesl. the Tó ' ' ' Let Paris bristle Let good citizens ;;;l still hurl with barricad"t tt¿ r.ã¡"ttL¿ tn"t" improvised ra¡nparts also of but deñance' of pride" of at her enemies ter cl-oi-*ui,

i"i

Þ"¡s with'her barricadei is inexpugnable

!

230

returned to their "ì"',"ty; as Lissagaray demonstrated, hundreds of men Thus, the u""ica¿e ittemselves in until,the last' waiting for

of 83. Paris burned, after the Communel the sight

to the P;; i" 6¿¡¡s3 was the ñnal demonsration "barbaritv" of ;;il;i'i,; [berJapologists of the the en' úË ð;;;"".¿5. with shocked fascination of the

ä."ìi"l-...àt¿

each of the sacred monuments

5".onã Empire in ruins' Many of the scenes^resem-

;;;;;t, there õ ot nneen arose ble those of-Haussmann's own demolitions il.it positions' Nevenheless' the barricade-s #;; ;;;*h;l; Ia Révolution' de Histoire . in not b.tbt [Clarene. if art' ;;;; *ìi¡-íncre¿iule speed ona ftotif.tuted across-Paris' ln this p.69tl ;h;"pt;;;Ñ ãiiu.ti.ui-dgttiing, ttre population was instructed and

Street

103

104

Vidler

84. Plan of Paris. wirh the indicarion of ¡he monuments bumed and the quaners bombarded, 1871. The ñnal reckoning. Few cared ¡o note rha¡ the.greatest area of destruction was clearly centered

in the eastern working-class guarters (the scene of the last defense) and along rhe Champs-Elysées (the route

of Versaillese advance). [Clarene, p. 708.

Histoire de la Révolution, p. 7081

The Scenes of the

practised. Barricades again rose out of the earth like magic - on the Faubourg St. Honoré, the Rue de Suresne, the Boulevard Haussmann, rhroughout the nin¡h and thineenth arrondissemenls. A panicularly imposing stn¡cture was erected to protect the Hôtel de Ville at the corner of the Rue Saint Denis: "Fifty workmen did the mason work, while swarrns of children brought wheelbarrows full of earth from the square.

This work, several yards deep, six yards high, with tbsses. embrasures

was finished in a few hours."¿3r This great wall, as large as Père Gaillard's four-week project, was, however, the only barricade of May to equal those of previous years; the rest were made of paving stones. martresses thrown t'rom windows, street gratings, perhaps with a cannon behind, and topped by the red flag. "Behind these shreds oframpans"

wrote Lissagaray, "thiny men held regiments in check."3æ The basicade building continued throughout the day and the night of women, children. and passersby.

May; everyone was put to work tireless in-filling sacks full of The rvomen of Les Halles were especially eanh and carrying wicker baskets; the barricade of the Place Blanche was, as found by the surprised reporter Maroteau, "pert'ectly consrructed and defended by a batallion of women, about 120."!33 This was the "night of the barricades," and its memory was to haunt those who escaped; its fabrication was the prelude to the massacre of twentyfive thousand. Lissagaray described a scene strangely evocative of Hugo's some forty years betbre: The streets and boulevards, with the exception of the invaded quarters, had been lit as usual. At the entrance of the Faubourg Montmartre the light ceased abruptly, giving it the appearance of an enorrnous black hole. This obscurity was guarded by Federal sentinels . . . Beyond this only a menacing silence.!3{ Some six hundred barricades were constn¡cted in the six days before the fall of the Commune, most without thought for any strategy of defense or covering fire. The flanking movements of the Venaillese troops easily countered Communa¡ds expecting only assault from the front, while each quarter, turned in on itself so to speak, refused to move to the aid of its neighbor. As a last resort. retreating into the nonh and east, the defenden began to fire the buildings that harbored snipers or provided cover for the troops. The fires that had staned from the falling Versaillese shells were continued by the Commune. More than anything, it was this ultimate vandalism that shocked and provoked the forces of order: Paris seemed one sheet of flame, a macabre symbol of the devilish reign let loose within. To the Communards it was a fitting end to the monuments of monarchical power and a noble way to die.

Marx compared the vandalism of the Commune to that of its predecessor Haussmann, the "razing of historic Paris to make way for the Paris of the sight-seer"; in time of war such "incendiarism" should be seen as

good tactics:

Street

105

The Commune used fire strictly as a means of defense. They used it to stop up to the Versailles troops those long straight avenues which Haussmann had expressly opened to anillery fire; they used it to cover their retreat, in the same way as the Versaillese. in their advance, used their shells which destroyed at least as many buildings.:3s

Against the fire power of the invader, advancing along the percées, which proved their use as cannon ranges, the embryo barricades were ñnally useless. Blanqui, who had criticized their building in '.18, was nevertheless vindicated in his belief that the Parisian behind the barricade would fight with incredible tenacity. The last barricade of May to fall was in the Rue Ramponeau, defended by a single soldier tbr over a quaner of an hour.!38 The triumph of the Versaillese was the signal for the massacre of the inmates of the rebellious ciry, a ciry declared a prison by Thiers and an æylum by its residents. The Fígaro was clear in its imagery of slaughter, Never has such an oppomrniry presented iaelf for curing Paris of the moral gangrene that has been consuming it for the past twenty years.

Today clemency equals lunacy. V/hat is a republican? A savage beast. We must track down those who are hiding like wild animals.!3?

The hunting allées of Haussmann having served this purpose of purifica' tion, the urban space was reappropriated for its righdul owners by the rebuilding of every destroyed building in the same style. There was to be no visible or living memory of the time when the nation's capital had briefly become its largest correctional institution in riot.

Wiûr the defeat of the Communa¡ds and the regaining of the ciry by the forces of order, the last remnants of urban utoPianism and communitarian idealism were dispelled. The radical critique of the city now urned, no longer toward the aim of its final reconstruction as the righdul home of a liberated community, but to its final destruction as the embinering symbol and symptom of the forms of advanced capitalism.

Socialism directed ia emerging political consciousness to the orgarìization of its parties and the Second International and its critical energies to understanding the operations of economics and planning. Engels was as skeprical of Proudhon and his solution to the housing question as he was of Haussmann and the general mode of intervention he represented. The Parisian Haussmann, "breaking long, straight and broad streets through the closely built workers' quarters" had succeeded in his strarcgic and his economic in¡ent "to turn the ciry into a pure luxury city. " Such was also the practice -in other cities; it had, indeed, according to Engels' "now become general, quite apan from whether this is done from considerations of public health, for beautifying the town, or owing to the demand for big, centrally situated business Premises, or owing to

traffic requiremens, such as the laying down of railways,

streets'

106

Vidler

etc."238 Whatever the reasons in specific towns, the effect. areued Engels, was evervwhere the same; rñ;' r"""d;i.]"1'iËïiäf,-ìï::

f

bourgeoisie

gambling-dens, surrounded Uy ã1,

disappear

ro thó accompanime"; ì""ü self_praise from the ' ' ' but they appear ag¡n"iimme¿iàiery somewhere else and

:.tåî,i,*ïiiff i:9"'*lär,uo,f;;.;;;äË"e"Ê;"rË';ht,;;;ä;

In the aftermarh of the Commune, the ideal ciry of socialism was gradually resrored

to the

countryiìãå *ii"-'t î"¿, from Rousseau ro Babeuf, Fourier to proudhon, oJ;;; däil;". The ca' was for the abolition of the antithesis.u"tíeen io*;;;;;",ry, for the aborition of the-divisio" ài *äi¿'ìiäìnrougtras a precondition the division of labor. "The frst great division o¡l"b;;;ï *rit" eng"rs in lgg5, ..the separation of rown and .country, ;;á";";d ;,,i.J ;;ññi""î thousands of years of oegraoiio;-;ì"Ë;ople of the towns ¡o subjecrion to each one's.-in¿¡vi¿u.l-*¿i,;' tì condition immenserv exaçrbated by the devetopment

"r 'n_ir".*ää"ä'"'ääïïof the "ru"å¡"¿*ii iheu, provisions of l8á8,;;;;;"d"prå * essentiat prereq_

disurbanizarion, orimirively^

Communist Manifàsrc uisire of balanced social ìeraion!";iaññåiåi; and incidentaily the utopi ans were vindica¡eo tn tneì i lnìii.i'pi"rniris

The abolition of the separati"" bdr";;ì;;,iäo .oun,.y is therefore not utopian, even in so far as.it pr"rufpoË, ùe most equal distribu_ tion possible of larse scae.indusiry;J, ,h" ihol, .orn,ry. . is rn¡e tl¡at in the h-u-ee roõns civil¡za¡ionia-s uåq"""i¡"0 us a heritage to rid ourselves of which wi, rake nru.¡ ti.n. .iã-täuure. Bur this heritaee must and will be eot rid of howeve.p;o;;J th;;;;äñ;äï

The most radicaì of a, suctr .;,ilbai.iistns, that of Wi,iam Morris, described with roving ..the *;;ü;itî¡ng of brick and "ù

üi:iö:ii

f,l."?1;rr *¡

;': i:î:lï m;H ff ffîr

cenÌury found difficultv in recognizitrg ,r,äì¡¿ *ban places in rhe new landscape' Thé teemins metropãris rrã¿ u"*l*aded by orchards and lawns, woods and foreíts; the rows ;f b"dñ;ìi, been superseded bv singie .ñ;;t-;ñ;¿t"ä¿ and ugly houses had *,atci¡, each set in spreading gardens" onli u r"* oî ti,J'oiå'äoiur"nrs had remained, witness to the brural oreievorutionañ.;; T;;äets of commerce and the unhealthy slums irad ã"är"*"'*ith -sreenery, regain3r".i ing their primirive srate as9""" rracks, p.ú;"t;'il lånes, winding through an England of rustic harmony anä cl¡iloúkåìnno""n"". Indusrry misht sti ll perform

the

un

wanted,

iärË; lliräüäiñä';îiiËhi,

ää the.populadon to.eng.a-ee.in pui*it, ll^!l!-ftand"l"* of an and crafr, of embellishing, marryingî"i¿ *ã

iiilr:

r,"rn

i",¡".ãuy

"rgäi" England was once a country of clearings arnongsr the woods and wastes, with a few towns interspersed, wiictr were fonresses for the

,"",fl3i"u;;*i::*i,i!{"r"'r:.*î'?å,i,ffi :*',"r:i,";äi,i,i;

¡ff*.ry'poveny stricken farm, pillaged.by the masters of the workshops.'It ís now a garden, where nothing is wasred and nothing ,p.ii, i',h"" n.""rrury dwellings, i, :!:9r, Td workshops scane,ãd rp'_ã'aá*n tf," country, ail trim and neat and pretty. 2{3

ii

Morris, who had felt the despair of the Com¡nune _ sung wistfully in his -'.pitgrims of Hope" _¡d *nì-r,"¿'r.rä¡e¿ *itñ Ëäi ä Trafat-sar Squarg on Broody s unaay,'lei'iìr'r'Jri r"rorutely against a' the forms of life that denaured man an¿ ãi"i¿-"a his life in labor.2s Despite its inevitablv medieval ,"r-i,"lr.rl'Ne_, ¡ro^ Nowhere remained the clearesiand mosr ,,u.",n"n, of the larenineteenth.cenrurv postrevolr,ion.ry "n";;p;;;r;g ãiåãÅ;'ä'ãàu_

where the great divid-es of mechanical civili"ation inhuma¡r isorarion and fragmentation bound up in a *o.l¿ oinãLäiunity. In tÌ¡is worrd.

Culn¡re was no more.dividéd $;di;'tiäîtirougt t and the act,,, to it, we¡e maae one ágain, Ld, a result

i;ä;,

;e

f.,

::k!.llas yï l.uj _,the pernaps precondition ciry disaplearea.

successive revorurions have. demonstra*a,

face of the intractable

,u"r,in" oiir,"

_

", Sucirïïtoiia, '*'utioì".ain

ñ";;i,i:

'

or

ãs a dream in the

Notes

ìi;ïiîi,irri,;qin

rrary'in 3. :\ndrea Palladio. th€ year oi pa'a¿io i'¿eair,. rsso. rhe u.1"" ì" the

iilL.ïì"r""',^-"*"",", scenery

üJ¡ifï"rrii!',[:;.!ü irü;l*çiüï4ii*'i:r';;Hli".T[låTJ *î'fr'lþi'ü',,,","'tl:¿ifr*l*iril**ü l9ó8). ïlËi"#.';;;:,iìtåiåiËi:

,,";,:i'J::J?1':l¿:

" Drain ar the conducnce l*äliiÈå:';"¡zu¡L:"$l'lU¿11;'l*¡",ç

*io1t3i]d;å??.ç*,,::r..Arvarenessorrhecirvìn.the iä-iäiir .¡ìv, se! out on

iä:ï?í"ií:,i.;åï;x:i

tTlrùj.+;,urä*n*ffi*'* r""iJifiiÏ,[:i"fl,Ëis'"ff"::tlhÏJ' 'ru

Tfiil.,üÎì"#å3i'iriiltîl:tt""tt*J'¿¡:1,

,'r,:1",',1,;*lËil:lli::fi::.:::ï:i::ff Ëjîitr'-:*ïtüL','ï'.r;¡r{i*r¡* $iä¡iîi:t";fff;lgt¡"'ilii'i$ËTi."ål'* ei*" ;fi.üË; "¡;;"''a'¡i"n anit iî,ljli":-f.,:'*?;?t";;;;;eiäl',1ä],ìr'ài "*:ä:iüjT',,,,r*,'rff?,füi["^:;;,:;':;,rr1 (,i1?v3fiiî!11:JgËffiiì,[:"=f;::';.;.

Arec (Lonrron: ':; ;;' h'XSi¡ rufi;lli';f'[f:TJF:il"i''*f; nyi*.. \Lvrrvvr¡'."'(he town Leoni editiôn edired by i*.pï Ñv*wç¡r ü'iîaî.óni'.r"ing tËe-heighr of'houses in pTos. ' 'ltrch'tecture' P':v>' surrïïläi|ãiiä Tir¡nri. r9ó5).

and

7, Ibid.. o.

24. Laugier,

162.

Essai

ó:itiäi:ii. rz:-.17r,.,*::,jl'iJr,iolr,""åì,?îi0"1'r'; 1¿:iB'å:B:ii8.

"Of the PriàciPle WaYs :r. Iuia.. þ. :t:' otadorning,n. nî"iåi."öto,.-t.'äìi,Ëìí. ¡ri,n.t.

itJïî,loi$ü,:ffiffiigiji1..iiit',t".:rffi new iir.case ui ñre." Patte's proposals tor iüJ'i,ri'.ûirons

ltethods

Arsan. lî: hlåi]i: urïf."u'!'Architecure' p' 22?' Ël'.','å-.I[:i*li:f;üt:.Aln.l.,!i!î!'i"i,"::-'5i¡i; quoted tn ¿¿ Ti.-i-,;,;;;i;;;,',1s1tu loi r25 Aúeus( 1784) R¿naissance cin..

1l illî ' ï iii: ""ii. as was resarded ,ìil!":::.r:',1:#:,{íJ:ç{'"å;Ji vôqeur, ilË-é 1753 rhis depanure 33, kþ'æ',1*''-:l'ni¿f',çii .iîi!3f"r * 'liî,:l'iylrn or ihe roads Íairj

our.

in

plare

sì;i",'üîi* ;r

65.

Rome: in

i:îi#ron*!;=iE:s;y.,'s$ffi dl"ilidåïxi;ru:Ji:îfl'#l"*i'ïi'iüii iízrlî ii"äiiit -Morelly's

Ëö .; 'ilii.in ;;!;' F{1b¡üÍ¿iili":f'#il li t,ä,f""}|i',!fi'i'ti,'i'li;' $l+i*¡5*l;'tii*'3e'1ru¿ åiÌf"{ät'}ti;"?::¿::'{,'#ffi,ii'":"' '*ü:vi''iv B^;,''ar1'ffi'¡i;;ru:,ï:,,:" ilkïe,iftü'ii¡i!#:äiiff'{ hiitorY of .+iii*¡t-l'tm: ::üffii'r'*yffi":ï',H:åi1ål:î'#'¡f:îäî"..ii il,il¡i#:iütrtr*ilöfi*¡liî*.iîfirtSü -litiy;!i",*.'l;"ing.""tn:t fiä:ìä*:i:ilåå."::::;::;;;;;;;, iËåî.lt:T.iå'"'lï,,""Rïïitä**:$l' ;'rffiñ;,ï;ñ ',,*inir,#:l¡-tt disamcd. ùJåff;-.Ë';;;;ü1e., in 12.

oublished

'",)!,

Cor'l¿

who marr tleicription wa's attscked bv Grimm

¡

intbeoer"rciiteö¡åfîäinìitöiå"*'

Fauuou's

th<

15. The

,hemse,ves be

ond moral Progress' In d

e"er.v

"

it,li.l¡,tq*äË+FfrkËr*,rf:ffåff,i] ot iÅ'" riehrened p¡nce. no*eier.-were the

-lrüiii,pü;iî"""'i}ïi'i*iï};Ë.,,'''ï

aasitíudc ñnally imuueiwìt¡ u truó t*t" prince Zeinzemin who mincurousry caused

Q"¿X;çîå1;:;elä¿'ttri¿'ä; ¿e ses L¿is (Þaris. l?55)'

*:;;;"

'-*,]rm;'ançois

B,onder. cours d'Archi,euure'

|

lg.

îr'îï"åitiii'i'i:å:

!!,s;'å,#i¿îi,v;å

François-Noél Babeut" called "G¡acchus"

(

;:lll$dç;.',l.ìL$',lläf""å'::xiåll"í"X?iü'''.1å:

*ËtlF.*"t$"";i**ådryti'^':#*,i,

esii¡ì

#r{s '

it,uifi

'-iìlÏiå"c-p"ne' Jionumens érigés à la gloire de Lo;-- äti',i"*írh"uiElnç''¡*iif ;;clàrit-v' eæe of service jiåit"ì'"õtii '; i" 1774 he sub Xfz (Paris' 1765)' was de ..ro"J& ^'¡à.-iüià., êïaprer Xvrtr. "Des Emberrissemen¡s tr,e nÏ:t,ol,nllil*k.:l..::,lHî'i**i.ö1iïìäiiiJ

-tir¡ztns for.reason: it

iouf¡'iif¡ffi;¡liti-{lf*ir.l";ffi

1760- ;ä;;;;;.-;tk"

v rhe armospirere coirupt and charged

t08

Vidler

i¡inérai¡es parisiens des fêres révolutionnaircs.,' Annales

E.J.C., (Sep¡ember-Oc¡ober 19?l), n. 5, pp. gg9_9tó;

rhis is by far the mosr incisive accounr of thi iesrivals a¡d their rou¡es rhrough the ciry. Madame Ozouf rnces these passages through mericulous research and analvzes the spcci6c symbolic meaning of the places of resr.'rhe oarricular processiona.l parrerns, and ihe archi¡ecru¡al rháoru of the whole.

47. See Richa¡d Cobb, Tåe police and rhe peoole: French Popular Protest, 1789-t820 û.¡ndon: Oxîord

Universiry Press. 1970)..especially pan t, ..The patrem oi popular prorest, I 795-I8I5." ..Revolurionary Crowds". in .. 48._Georges Lefebvre.

New Perspectives on the French Revoluiior. ed. Jeffru Kaplow (New York, t965), pp. 173-190.

49. Jean François Sobry,'Dtscours sur le Cérémonial (Paris. an XIIL I 805). p. i. Sobrv ( I ?43- | 920). althouph desrined by his parenrs ro be an a¡chirect. remained all liis life a bureaucraric func¡ionary of one kind or ùorher. Hi; best work. De I'Architeaure, was published in l7?6 and revised as rhe more celebrated poeiigue des Ans of iglb.

He rumed from strcng monarchical ró suonc revolutionarv views, moving from a posirion as justice óf the Deace i; Lyons (!f94) ro Commissioner oî police for rhe lorh arondisse-mena, Paris, 1800. This posirion simolv conñrmed him as one of rhe strongly cons'erva¡ive rheoiðii cians of design (¡ogerher perhapi\iirh Bernard povet md Cha¡les Francois viel) of ihe E¡irpirc. In rhe case oíSobrv. the po¡¡tical implications of aróhi¡ectuc are made vehi explicit. His lasr wrirings werc addrcssed ro the Dolice o'f his precinct. exhoning rhem ro physical exercise as a guar-antee of rheir health and prepárcdness.

50. Ibid., p. 5.

5l.lbid., p.24.

..Sevenrh promenade,.' _,53. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rêveries du Promeneur so/lmir¿ (Paris, 1778). o. 1,16.

The "promenade," later ro become rhe fastrionãUle occup¡aion of fôneurs, was favorire pasrime of Dre-Romanric poets and literar.v figures. Inevitably accompänied by dayofeams or rcverte, tl was a means of reexDcriencins the primirive force of na¡u¡e. long denied ro ciiilized mä.

53. J..J. Rousseau,Confesiions, Book IX. o.375.

54. J,J- Rousseau, I-a.ñouvetle HéJo¡se (paàs, lZ59). _í1, J.-J. Rousseau, Iî,mile, ou de t'éducation (pans, t762). _tq. J.J. Rousseau, Le Contrat .goclal (Amsterdam, 1762); translared as Thc Social Contract, bv Mau¡icj Crans¡on (Harmondswonh: Pen.euin Books. l9ég). D. 3g. ..M.V.,'i'paris, _-57. Babeuls reply ro a lenel signed 1796, in Buonarroti's Histon of Babeuf s Corcoiracv for E-qualiy., rri¡ns. J. B. O'Ërieî (Lonäon. tg5Ol,-?ri,m Conspiraûon_po.ur I'-é-.g!!ité dite àe Babeul, Uy Þlritippe Buonanori (Paris, I 828).

58. Nicolas Edme Resrif de la Breronne (t?34-tg06), popularly known as rhe.'Rousseau du ruisseau..,orRouiseau of rhe gurrer, a semimystic. moral¡sric. and furu¡isric wnter, who conúasted the .'monde deorave., of the cirv with rhe English landscape ga¡den, wh;e ..rhe eanh itseif is ¡illed ro fulfill rhe nob¡¿sr end of man" (La Fanille Vertue.use, Paris, 1767). In Le paysan perver¡i, les dangers de la vìllc (1775), he proposid a cot¡l¡nuna¡ solurion to city life in the imagc of a parernalisric serrlemen! of

twenqv.five families wi¡h a common refec¡orv. Cf.. ..Une ferme collec¡ive, Sh¡uls du Bourg d'Oudun c-omoose de la famille Rt*, vivant en commun,- in Retif de la'Breronne.

La Vie le-ngn Pèrc (Pañs: édirions GamierFrères, l9?0),

pp.242-249.

59. Cf. Johannes Lângner. "Ledoux und die Fabriques: vorausse¡zungen der Revolution-architektur im L¿nd;9fr9!sganen," Zeitschrif fur Kunst geschichte, XXyl

(

l9ó3).

60. Builr for his parron. rhe general, ooer and olavwright, Anne.PieÍe,'Mamuis de fuonresoúiou.

61. The barrières. or toileares, of Paris, commissioned

by t}e Farmers-General to improve rhe co¡lectionãf-ciiv revenues and bui.lt between 1784 and 1789. Theír

monumen¡al forms, combined with the wall thar enclosed the boundary of rhe city, made rhem a Ergel for the inirial demonstra¡ions of revólutionary fervor (l-l July 1789).

Th-is ciry, idealized as an outgroMh óf rhe'Salt --.62.

Works of A¡c-et.Senans, builr by Gdoux in Franche.

Comté bcrween 1773 and 1779. was ñnally describcd in Ledoux' great,4rchitecture consirierée soui le rapport de I'an, des moeurs e! de la lépislation of 1804.

63. Cf. Osvald Sircn, Desen de RetzJ Architectural Review, 106, no. 135 (rr-ovember 1949). ó4. Claude.Nicolas Ledoux. l'Archítecture consíderée sous.le rappon de I'an, des moeurs, e! de ta lágklation

"Ë

(Paris, l8Oa). volume I. 65. Ibid.. p. 2. ó6. lbid., p. 102.

67. The idea ùar a¡chirecrure mighr in some way work toward hunan progress b1r ic very eiample, was prôposed by crirical uropians like Morclly as eariy æ 1755. but ir was some time before professional archltects themselves realized ¡he full implicarions of sensarionalis¡ philosoohv on their work. Painring was perhaps rhe ñrsr of rhe an! ¡ó receive general atten¡ion in rerms of its oossible effecs on the observeç Dide¡or. in his criricisms öf rhe Sarons from 1759, admired picrures thar would, by lheir cha¡acrer and subject maner, "ins¡ruct us. co¡rect us and encourape us toward vinue." Ledoux similarly wrore. ..if he ii enlighrened, rhe anisr engenders puiifyins morcs bv examples that have an effecion rhe inass-of-the Deool¿." ó8. François Marie Cha¡les Fovie¡,Trailè de' I'Associà. tion d,omestique-agricole, ÍJ (Paris, 1882). chaorer 4. ó9. Fourier. Léner ro his morher. Rouen. ianuarv 8. l?90; quoted in Cha¡les Pellerin. C/¡arle¡ Fourier. sá vie et sa théo¡ie (Paris, 1843). o. 175.

70. Fou¡ier used rhe worä "iourbillon." or vonex. ro describe the special and incessanrly moving world of rhe passions in communiry; he ñnally àdopred ihe more Dosirive and less mysdcal rirte of "phalansrère" or home df rhe phatanx

in

1816.

71. Cf. rhe painrine by Meunier. ..1æ ciroue de palais.

Royal," illusriared in Dãssi¡u Parisiens duyyIIIe siècle (Paris: Musée Carnavale¡. t97l). p. 34. This circus w¿s consruc¡ed by rhe duc d'Orleans ìn 1786 to reolace rhe O¡Éra in rhc :ue Sainr-Honoré bumed down in i7gl.

72. Fourier. Théorie des Quatre Mouvements et des

Générales ?l:t:nln I (18a6). p. l17.

(Pa¡is, I 808), in Oeuvres Comp!ères,

73. Publication des Manuscrits de Charles Fouricr, !

(Paris. l85l), p. 86: rext wrinen be¡wecn 1803 and lg0g.

74. Ibid.. p.87.

75. Lener of Fourier ¡o Just Mui¡on. lg¡9. Archives Na¡ionales. l0AS, 25. .. 76. Vicror Consideranr. Considérations Sociales sur I'Architectonigue (Pa¡is. 1834), p. 63.

77. Ibid.

Rofand Banhes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (puís, -78.

197 I ). p. I l8: "The great preoccuparion of tiris orsãnir. tron ts communication. lVith what ca¡e and insìsrence Fourier describes rhe cöve¡ed hea¡ed and venrilared qal. leries. rhe sand floored runnels. and passases raisedon co-lumns by.which the palaces or man'ors oi neighboring

"

tribes should comrnunicare !

79. Jean-Baptisre Godin, a friend

of

Consideranr and

follower of Fourier, whose Familistère, built after lg59 for rhe workers of his s¡ove-founding planr at Cuise ìn

Nonheasrem France. became rhe pa¡aäiimaric realizarion of Associarion for ¡he nexr half cerirury; Èen¡-¡u¡es Bo¡ô. a Saint.Simonian engineer whose Aeiodômes, oroiecrs of l8ó5 anricipared in rema¡kable deail rhe immeúblàs-villos of L¡ Corbusier after 1922.

80. Walrer Benjami¡, Charles Baudelaire: a Lvric poet in rhe Era of High Capiølism, rrans. Harry Zohn i|-ondon: New Lefr Books. 1973). p. ll?, ..Foúrier or rhe AÍ. cades.

"

Jerem-y Benrham. Panopticon posrscript (l?91). in )Vorks, ed. J. Bowring (Londôn, 1843). vol. IV.. o. gó. .._E^zr. !en$aq, Pqnopticon, or the lnspection'House (1791), in works, ly. o. 39.

83. Samuel Bentham, a naval engineer. was workinp in the Ukaine for Prince Potemkin. building model da.iiics

...81,

and indusrrial esrab¡ishmenrs.

84. A ge_neral problem faced by the managers of indus. ry u,as. of course. ¡he change in work habi¡s and rime schedules from. rural or guild piecework to indusrial producrion according ro clocktime.

85. Bentham. lVork, o. 40.

8ó. Ibid.. p. 80.

87. lbid., p.81.

88. ln a subsequenr rvork, Ou¡lme of a Work entitled Managenent I mproved," Benìham summa¡ized

" Pauper

the prìncþles upon rvhich rhe Panopticon should be de. signed. These included healrh, 'comfon. industn,. moraliry, and discip¡ine. For the perfecrion of rhe laner, disciplinc. "¡here should be Universal tansDarency and simultaneous inspecøbiliry at all rimes," Works,'ylll. p. 375. Accord¡ngly rhe building was ro bc buil¡ en¡irely lrom iron and glass: "the edifice being circula¡lv oolve. onal." wrore Bcnrham. "glass was the sole mareiial'ðf which.the boundary all round was composed, wirh rhe e.xceprio-n-of the aggregare of rhe iron ba¡i and leadings,.' llorl<s, Xl, p. 105. Bcnrham menrioned the sreat roründa of Ranelagh House and conremporary gaiden cooser. varo-ries as rhe prorotypes

89. Bentham.

for Panopticon. -

|lorki, IY, o.43.'

90. Bcnrham. Introduction' to thc Pilnciples of Morals arul Lcgislation (London. 1789), tVork, I, p. 1,12.

91. For rhe philosophy of confinemeni cf. ivfichel Foucault. Histoire de Folie à I'age classique (Pa¡is: Gal. limard. 1972). The work ofRobin Evans (see'.Ben¡ham's Panopricon." Architectural Association Quanerty [Lon. don. Augusr l97lJ) has signiñcan¡ly added ro our under-

The Scenes of the

of Bentham's philosophy ot'architecturc. ¡s also rhc rccónt srudy b!, Ilichcl Foucault. Sun'eiller et punir (Prris: Gi¡ll¡ma;d.'19?5).

92, Hcnri, Comte dc Saint-Simon. I'Organisateur, in Oeuvres de Sain¡-Sitnon, vols. l9-2?, p. 51.

91. For thc lit'¿ of Saint-Simon and a concise summary of his rvorks. see Frank llanuel. Ll¡¿ rV¿rv )Vorld of Henri Satnt Sì¡non (Nôtre-Dame. l9ó3).

94. Formed in 1794 as thc Ecole des Travaux Publics, standing

consri¡utcd as thc Ecole Polytechnique in 1795. this school bccame the single most imponant ccnter tor the tcchnical insructitln of civil ¡nd nrilitary engincers as rvcll as ar(he empire ¡nd undcr thc Restoralion chitccrs

in

Ifonuchy.

oi

and rlcvelupment of the idóologue out the philosophe see George Lichtheim, The Concept oJ

95. For the origin

Ideobg¡' <nul other Essars lNerv York. l9ó7). The term

i<itokxgie rvas takcn tnrm À. Destutt de Tracy's Eltiments ,l'ldéologie (1801-15) which a(lemp(cd to in:rugurate c

science ot'ideas tbllorving Lr¡cke ¡nd Condillac.

96, C|. Hençi Cotnte d¿ Saint-Sitnon, Selected lVritings' c<iired by F. !f . H. llarkham (Oxlbrd. 1952): "Letters ¡n¡m i.¡n inhabitant oi Geneva" wri(ten in 1803, ou¡lines a quasi-Bacqnian community oi scientists. based on a New-

toniun religioo.

97. S¡in¡-Simon, Oeuvres, p, 51.

98. tbid.

99. Ibi<l., p. 52.

100. Oeuvrcs de Saiu-Sitnon et (l'Enfanrin, VII (Prris.

1866), p. I 19. Published by Charles Lcmonnier in June of 1831. rhe manit'esto called on P¡risians to lorego violence in rlvor of the Sain¡-Simonian program: "lhe blood has run in Pa¡is! The troops have camped in its streets," In

their periodical. Le Globe, of April 1832. (he Sain¡-

Simonians called for the cuning of the street liom the Lt¡uvre (o thc Bastille as a drst stcp against choler¡. which had swept the pJorer quaíers early in thc year: "This vast cut rhrough the most unhealthy qucners. ahe narrowest srects. (he worst built houses in P¡¡is. has been projected t'or x long rime, . . . This magniñcent sreet. parallel to the Seine. rvill provide an outlet tbr the active circulation of these quaners. an outl¿t which bècomes more necessary cvery rlay; it rvill shed light ond air. passing t shon disrance from that Rue de la Monellerie, rvhich provided cholcra irs ñrsr and most numerous victims." l0l. Louis Blanc, quotcd in Louis Hautecoetß,Hístoire <te l'.4rchitecture Classique en France.

102. Charles Duvclrrier. "The ñerv City, or Paris of the Saint-Sim<¡nians," in Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d'Enfan-

r¡¡, vol. VIII. pp.65-93.

103. lbid.. p.67. l0.r. Ibid.. p. 85.

105. lbid.. p.88.

106. Roben Owen.¡l rV¿rv Viev ofSociery and Report to the County of Lanar*, edited rvith an introduction by V. A.

C.

Ga¡rell (Ha¡montlswonh: Penguin Books.

1970).

p. 219.

107. For a concise reatment of thc educationul. social. snd economic ¡hought of Owcn. 6 rvell as a t'ull "industrial archeology" ol Nerv Lanark with measured drawings

ù¡'the buildings, see Rober¡ Oven, aspects of his lile and work. ed. John Butt (New York: Humanities Prcss. l97l),

espcciclly chapters 2. 3. and 8.

108, Cf. Roben Orven, Essa-rs on the Formation of Hunrun Cløracter, 1834 edition. containing trvo woodcu(s illusuating the etfects ol good and bad circumstances: reprinted in Frank Podmore. Rob¿rt Oven, a biography, I (London. 1906), facing page l12.

109. Robert Orven. 6ssa¡s on the Formatíott ol'Hanan Character, in Gatrell. rl ,Verv fzierv. p. l0l, I 10. The "village of cooperttion" rvas lirsa described bv Orven in his "Reoon to the Comminee tbr rhe Relicf of ttie Manufscturins Pbor" in \la¡ch. I8t7. and detailed in Reporr to the Ci¡unm ol Nev Lanark, 1820. Like the Panopricon. this ¡ypè torm ¡br s village community of some lifteen hundred inhabiranc rvas rleyeloped in response ao ¡he problem of povefv 3nd the atiministration ot' rhe Poor Lrws lbllowing thÈ drastic changes of the indusrial ævolution, lll. Roben Owen. .f¿f Supporting Hom¿ Colonies (London. l8al), p.39.

I 12. Owen. Report to the Counry of Lanark, p.253, ll3. Owen, like many of his contemporaries. sha¡ed a sense of loss for a past age of simpliciry, reciprocal obliga. tion between master and worker. and organic stasis. For Coléridse and Pusin in Danicular. ùis vision ofa mediev¡l golden'age becaìne a'paradigmatic form by which to èriricize iãdusrrial anarchy. Owen ¡¡bsorbed much of his drecm of the past into his plans tbr the futu¡e: in his Obsemadons upon thc efect oi the .ltanulac¡uring S:"stem' he characterized ¡he social stntcrure of this mythical state. one tha¡ bears rcsemblances to his own version of paternalistic capitalism: "The louer orders experienced not only o consitienble degree of comrbn, but they had a.lso fre{uent opponunities õf enjoying healthy. ratiõnal spons and amusemens . . . (hei¡ sen'ices rvere willingly Performed: and mutual good offices bound the panies b), the strongest ties of human na¡ure to consider each other as friends in somewhat different situâtions." (The Liþ of Roben Owen, Supplementary Appendix [London. 18581 pp.

-- 38-'rl).

Ll4. The Crísis, and Natíonal Cooperative Trade's lJnìon and Equinble Exchange Ga¿ene, vol.3. no. I (September 7, 1833), frontispiece and explanation.

It5. Ibid., p. i.

I 16. Roben Owen, Self Supponing Home Colonies.

I17. "From near their summia will be redected ût nigh¡. by powerful appari¡(us, the new Koniaphostic light. *ñictr witi brillianrly illuminare the rvhole square." Ibid..

p.

- 39.

recognizing the utopian natu¡e of Owen's I 18. Engels, -nevenhelõss peiceived proposals. t ireir curious qual it¡r of

iecñnical feasibility: "and in his deñni(e plan for the fu' ture. rhe rechnical working out ot'details is managed with ground plan' fronl and side such prac¡ical knowledge tha¡ the Owen merhod and bird's eve views ajl included - is from ahe pracrica¡ of social retbrm once accep¡ed. (here poinr of view lit¡le ¡o be said agarnst lhe ac¡ual arange' inent of deta¡Is. " IEngels. Socrailsm' Utopian and Scien' r,rc (London. 1892). in Engels: Selecred Wriûngs' ed' Ú. O. Henderson (Penguin Books, l9ó7). p. 196.1 I 19. James

Silk Buckingham. Nationol Evils and Prac'

úcal Remedies, with the Plan ol a .Vodel fow¿ (London.

1849), p. 24. Buckingham is quoring a text by the Rever-

Street

109

end Boone of Paddington to suppon his own scheme for a Model Town.

120. Cf. R. E. Turner. ./¿rn¿s Sílk Buckingham, a social

biographv (New York, l93a). pp. 293-309.

t?1. tbid.. p. 307, quoting ftom The British

and

Foreign Medical Review, | (1836), p. 304. a journal thtt supponed Buckingham's projects for temperånce relbrm.

123. Buckingham,National Evils, p. 132.

123. Ibid.. p. ll0.

12.t. Ibid.. p. l4l: foradescription of theantecedents ¡o (his plan and the involvemen¡ of Buckingham wi¡h John Minrer Morgan and William Cooper. the Protes¡an¡ retormèrs. see. iv. H. C. Armyaage. Heauens Beloç, utopian experimenrs in England, 1560-1960 (London. l96l), pp.

209-223.

125. Ibid.,

p,

150.

I36. Ibid., pp. 184-193.

117. tbid.. p. l8?.

123. Ibid.. p. 188.

129. The idea of "graduated om¡ment." diminishing acconling to the litness of its locâtion in the town. was

derived fiom Fourier who had proposed it in his lr¿iri d¿ l'¡lssociation, Note 68. in relation to his plans for a town rhar rvould rct ùs transitional envi¡onmen¡ between "Civilisation and Harmony." Buckingham dnws heavily on Fourier throughout his plan for Victoria, probably from his reading ol Cítés Ouvrières, ¡ selection of Fourier's wrirings on town planning published by the Ecole Fourieriste in 1849.

130. Buckingham, National Evils, p. 193. l3 t . Titus Sàlt. cloth manuthcturer and mayor of Bradford (1848). esablished a new works town at Sdtairc lbr some 4,356 inhabitans. Opened in 1853' it was modeled on Trafford's model village in Disraeli'sS."-åil; like Buckingham, Salt was obsessed with tempcrance re¡brmism. and the entrance to his town was surmounted wi¡h t huge sign that read. "Abandon all beer, ye lha¡ enter herc." It was said of him that "no feudal lord could have opcned his doors tnd offered his resources to the retainers of genera' tions in the way he provided for those tha¡ labored under

¡

his direction," The town had wide, straight sreets. with

some 792 dwellings, all in the Renaissance style, as the style of reason and order. The glæs galleries of Buckingham weæ put to use in ùe great weaving shed. the loñgest room in the world a. lhe time, which produced sorñe ñve thousand miles ofcloth each year. Model towns ofthis kind werc rapidly adopted by patemaiistic indusrial

employers, like Cadbury (at Bourneville in 1878) and Lever (at Pon Sunlight in I887). Other utopists and social philosophers proposed improvemens to the Buckingham inodel. including Roben Pembenon. the educaaíona¡ist, whose Happy Colonv was published in 1854, based on Ledoux' plan tbr the ldeal Cit¡r of Chaux, but this time in iron and glass, and B. w. Richa¡dson, the doc¡or and follower of Edwin Chadwick. whose lllSara was ñrst orooosed in 1876. Ebenezcr Howard. the dean of all the 'moàel-rown enthusias¡s and the mos¡ successt'ul in Prac' tice. made use ofall thesc proposals, but especially that of Buckingham, i¡ his Tomõrrov, a peaceful paú to real

reþrn of

1898.

132. Buckingham, Nationol Evils, p. 2?1.

Vic¡or 133, tonsidemn¡, Co¡tsidérailons Sociales sur

I

l0

Vídler a

I'Archirectonique (1834), second edition (Paris' 1848)' o. 42. ' 134. Sebas¡ien Metcier.Tableaux de Para (1783). vol. l. quo¡ed in l¡uis Chevalier. Classes Laborieuses et Claises Danzere¡rs¿s (Paris' 1958)' p. 168. t35. Cf.,-Victor Hugo. Nórr¿ Dame de Pa¡ti (Paris. l83l). book ilI. ii, "Pãris à vol d'oiseau." The peculiar asoect of ¡he birds-eye view. allowing a view of the totality ofa olan. was first êxploited consciously in the ideal'city

ærsdectives of Ledoui. bu¡ had been a favori¡e technique äf ianocraohers since the Renaissance. The abilit¡r to

¡ctuallv

-asðend

and verify the view hypothesized

b¡r

ærsoeótive technioue had õf course existed since lhe ñrsl

talléon fliehs ofrhe mid'1780s.

136. Co-nsideranr. Considérations Sociales, p. 39.

137. Vicomre de Launay, 1838. quoted in Chevalier.

Closses Laborieuscs, P. 175. t38. iidile de Parii,5 March 1833.

139. César Dalv. architect. Fou¡ierist. friend of Cofisideran¡ and Flora Tristan. published his Rávre Générale de I'Architecture er des Travaux Publics lrom i8¿O; it *"s undoubtedly the most inffuential archilectu¡al iournal of the Julv Monarchy and the Second Empire' ' 140. Lecounuiier, Paris incompatible avec la Répub' liaue (Pans.1848), quoted in Chevalier, C/¿sses

Laborieuses, o. 180, - i¿t. Kart Marx and F¡ederich Engels'The Hoß Fa¡nilv (1845). French tr¿nslation' La Sainle F¿mr'll¿ (Paris: Edirions Sociales. 1972\, Þ.72.

142. Frederich Engêls. Iåe Condition of the |Vorking C|ass in Eneland (1145\, English edilion, introduced by erió gouiui*r (London: Pañther Books. l9ó9)' p. 5?.

143. Charles Dickcns. Ift¿ Old Curiosin'Shop (London' 1840). chaDter.l4. lql. Culrave Flauben. Sentimental Education (1869\,

by Roben Baldrick (Har' mondswonh: Penquin Books. 1964), p. 292.

145. Dickens, Ôld Curiosit-\' S/Iop, chapter 45. lrló. Engels. Condition oÍ ihc lvo*inr Class, p' 57..

147. lbià.. o. 58.: "And still rhev crowd by one another as rhough thei had norhing in comrñon. nothing 10 do s'¡lh one ano-lher. ând rheir only agreement is the racit one that each keeD to his own side of the pavemen( so as not to delav the'oooosinc s¡¡eam of the ç¡çrvd. . . . The dissolu' rion'of ma'n'kind ìnto monads of which each one has a seDara¡e orinciDle and a separate purpose. the world of aròms is'here'ca¡ried ou¡ io its ritmost ex¡reme"' The crowd in the street is here seen as the fullesl expression of

rranslated and introduced

the social war. of "each agains¡ all." For a perceptiveanalvsis of Ensels's use of-the crowd as a metaphor of caoiial. and a-conrast with Baudelaire's observation of iñíJ ne", phenomenon in Paris, see walter Benjamin' Charles Beaudelaire' 148. Engels. Conditíon o! the )l/orking Class. p. 60.

la9. lbid.. p.99.

fnir

settion of the anicle was completcd bcfore the of€ngels' ManchesMarcu.s.'s study study.of ofstcven Steven Ma¡cus's publication blication of Workinp Cl¿ss York' 1974)' a mcthodo' Class (New York, ier and the Working "rcading of the citY. of a rcading" challensiñg loeicallv -151.'Ensels, 80: Working Class' Class, p. 80: ition of'the of-the )ttorkin{ eondition I .-'eiiãii,' ðãr:¿ "And the ñnest part of the arrangement is this. that the mcmbers of this money aristocracy can take the shonest iSO.

'-ii

rÕad throush the m¡ddle

of all the laboring disricts to their

iílË"j'äi ùi'rütãti.'"ìin.iu,

ever seeing thìt thev are in the

inidsr of the grim¡'misery that lurks to right and..lcft"- . ln this wav the iacades of bourgeois rcsPectabthty masx rhe rcalitv and deprivatit¡n of the sources of middle'class

here acts as both the metaphor of "nuitónment and the real conñ¡mation of mate' development "*¡i"ii.r ¡á condirions. Èngels's rcading of thc ciry is at-all points conccrned u'ith Þenetrating the appcarance lo dlscem tnerealitv and to usè the nalure of the mask ¡s a symptom ot the cåndition of exPioila¡ion.

152. lbid.. P. 8a.

153. Ibid.. p. 85.

154. lbid.. P. 8?.

"o"iitt.

lne

155. Elizabêrh Gaskell. M¿¡.r Barton' a tale of Manlife ( I 848). edited and introduced by Step'nen G¡ll iÈ"nauin'Books. 1970). For a thcmatic analysis of the àì, lËnunrn' conflic¡ in literature and in social life. see R;ïñ;d iviuiams. Thc Countr¡' and the Cit.t (London. chcsrer

9i3).

'-il6'. p.r"t I

Enpland -'i5i.

Gaskell. Iå¿ Manulocturing Populaüon of

.. . (1833).

Ctt.t"t

l-pcke, nilor and poet Kingsley.

-196l). 'llton "lr was a foul. chilly' p. I l7:

(l8iO), (Ne"' York.

ioqsv saturdav nieht. From the butchers' and greengro' ccis-'shoos thê ea¡ liehts flickered and fla¡ed. wild and ghastly. àver ha-ggard groups of slip shod.diny women Úaraainins for scraos of s(ale meat . ' . l'lsh snops ano

iruiììiorrt- tin.¿ rhe'edge of the Eeasy Pavement. sending uo odors as foul as rhe language of sellers and buyers' Blood and sewer Natcr craçled from undcr doors an<l out

õfipnutt.

and rceked dorvn ¡he gulters among

offal' ani-

mal'and veÊetable. in every s¡age ol Putrcractlon' rvhile abovel hanging like cliffs over the streels - lhose nanou , bra*ling ìoÈents of ñlth. and -poveny. and.¡i1t i-tr.'ñous.s wi¡h-their teeming load of life rvere piled up inro the dinsv, choking night." iSb. Ct¡aäes Kingsiey.-Sanilarl' and Social Lectures ,råÏrroì" tlon¿on.- t8éol. pp. tti? er seq. "Great Cities and their'inñuence for good and

evil."

lectu¡e delivered in

Bristol.1857.

159. lbid.. p. 189.

It50. Du¡'evl Mémorial d'un Parisicn (Paris.

l82l)'

ló1. Cf..'Walrer Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire' pp'

-57- r 60. ( i Oi. i'ionorc de Balzac. lrs ions P crdu es I 837- I 843)' (Paris: Garnier' I9ó6). ll. "Un Grand Homme de province à Paris." pp. 263 et seq.

163. Ibid., P. ?ó5. 't

164.

Ibid..'iielmut o. ló7.

and Alison Gernsheim, L' J' M' Dapuerre, the history of the Diorama and the Daguer'. ,À:r" fN"* iork: Dôver, t968). The panorama. invented ¡vän liish oonrai¡ Dainter. Roben Barker. \'as established ií p"ris uvÞierrc Prevost working for American inves¡ors ri,n"îäaÏriri-,'lÃiôìunã^ on Inà Boulevard Mon¡manre' iil ñi p-orarn". "A view of Pa¡is," was displayed in June --'ió6-1800.

Daeuen.'s 6rst diorama. in a building erected to his desicn ãt the corncr of ¡he Place de la Républigue and rhi Rueîe la Douane. opcned in July I 822 and represented "Canrerbury Cathedral" and the "va¡ley of Sanen' " Cf "

ios. S.l

Gernshcim. Dg, 14-17.

l6?. Froni än illusrrated guide to Paris. 1832. quoted in Beniamin, Charles Baudelairc' p. l5ó' 168. Balzac. Illusions Pcrdues' p.268. ló9. Victor Hugo. les Misérables (18ó2), (Paris: Gar' nier. 1963). vol. II. p. 353.

170. Ibid., "Paris-a vol de Hibou"'

l?1. lbid.. pp. 352-353.

ñiit banicades were built by the merchants ririiiâãi Þui ug.intr ih" t.tcenariei of Henry Itl on

172. The

.nå

Mav f2. 1588: builr õfbanels, paving blocks. andboards. theí were se¡ uD at everrr intersèc¡ion and encircled almost e"iru ouancr. bu¡inc rhe Fronde of Jul¡' ló48. Parlcment and ihi merchants agiin barricaded the lle de la Cité with Daving stones and banels to prevenl the escaPe of Anne. ieseniof Louis XtV. and her chief minister. Mazarin. iZ¡. Cf.. Georses Duveau. 1848: the making ola Rcvo' l¡rion (New YorÈ: Vintage Books, l9ó8), Pp. 16l-181.

"The Banicades."

174. Hugo. Les Misérables'

t?5. Ibid.

P.288.

l7ó. lbid.

177. Ibid.. p.328. ¡'La Guerre entre 178. lbid., Quatre Murs"' 179. For a discussion of the an depic¡ing the baricades and their successive transformations, see T' J. Clark's brilliant study, The Absolute Bourgeois, Artists and Poli'

in Fraice t848-185i, (London, 1973)' chapter l.

"The oictu¡e of the Barricade." úcs

ls0: cf.. Aucuste Blanoul.Textes Choisies' ed. V. P. Voleuine (Paris; I955). esdecially pp' 214-220 "Instrucrionì for an armed uprisin!." wrinen in 1868 as a critique of the tac¡ical enors of I 848. l8l . Alexis de Toquevílle ' Recollections, ed. Mayer and Ken (Nerv York: Dòubleday. 1970), p. 39.

182. Huso. Les Misérables' P. 4O9.

"Thi June Revolution". Nere 183. Freìerich Engels.

-nos' 3l and 32. July-l and Jul).3.

Rheinische Zeitung, 1848: in Ka¡l Marx and Frederich Engels. Ilre Revolution of 1848-49, oilicles lrcm the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (Ñew York: Intematidnal Publishe¡s, 19721' p'57.

184. Huro, Les Misérobles' P.412.

185. Mé-moires du Baron Haussnann (Paris' 1890). II. o. 53.

'186. The relation of Louis

Napoleon's

ldáes

Napoleoniennes to ¡he projec¡s of his reign is discussed in H.'N. Boon. Rêve et réalité dans l'oeuvre économique et sociale de Naqoleon /I/ (The Hague. 193ó).

187. Hausimann, Mémoir¿s, II' p' 533. ias. Ibid.. IIt, p. l3: he is clear ai to the significance of of surve¡r and levelling ol of"'triangulation. survey the ooerarions oper¿tions of'"trianqulation. planner: thè rationalra¡loniu Planner: of the inslrumens o¡ the citv" city" as the very tnslrumenE "Befoie concemingmysetf with lhe piercing of the nes r"¡ti" *avs. whosõ neíwork cons¡itulés the most singular 'oan of thé Transformation of our great ciry, should I not'

in effect.

soeak

of rhe ini¡ial study for this long

and

laborious wôrk and of the instn¡men¡s s'hich have served miiô unaenatce rhis projecr in is enúrery aad ils details: to derermine on the sDol the ¡inc of each avenue. boulevard or iõ ÙJoæn"d up and ¡o oversee the faithful execution of -- the whole?" OII. P. l.) i¡ó. a¡.: ArÀédé¿ de Noe. Croqurs Contemporains

i"."i

The Scenes of the

(Paris, n.d.), Pan 3. The canoon by de Noe (..Cham") of ltadame- Saqui. "the celebrated aerialist charged wirh mainraining communicarions among rhe su¡veiors." is illus¡rared ìn David H. Pinliney, ñapoleon IIi and the Rebuildíng of Paris (fuinceron, 1958). This is oerhaos rhe best geneia.l account of Haussmann's transf<jrma¡ion in English.

190. For a reconsûucfion and analysis of ¡he plan des Anisres (1793) see Gasaon Bardet. ffa¡is¿¿rce et Méconnaissorce de I'Urbanisme: Parrs (Paris. l95l). This olan was similarly preceded by an accurate criangulation oi'the ciry by Edmé Verniquet. berween 1774 an<I 1290. l9l. Haussmann, Memoires. III. o, 257.

192. Ibid., p. 28: a collecrion oi'arribu¡es rha¡ have become almos¡ synon)rmous wirh the Modern Movement since ¡he founding of C.I.A.M. in t928.

193. Ibid.. II. p. 257. l9:1. Ibid.. ll.I, p. 27. Cardinal Morlot. rhe Archbishoo of Paris ¡d a s(rong supponer of Haussmann. wal convinced of ¡he inrimare rela¡ion between the new works

and ùe.improvement of morality, "Your aposrolare,

he

wroae. comes ro rhe aid of mine. You indirccrly bu¡ su¡elv combar moral depravarion by raising rhe condiríons and thi habia ot'life of the laboring classes. In wide and straieht s-rrcels. inundared wirh light, rhey arc nor given rhe saire t'rcedom as in the nar¡ow. tonuous and da¡k st¡ee¡s.'.

(Mémoires, II, p. 257.)

195. Lanqueriu. Commission des Halles, Documents, no. 4., p. 17. "The lle de laCi¡é." hc wro¡e. was..wirhout possible conuadiction one of rhe mosa deprived of

clemcns of prosperiry.

"

196. Leon Faucher, rcponerofrhe bill emoowerine rhe ¡he 50-millioñ franc loan for the Rue de Rivoli extension (1851); quored in A. des Cilleuls, ádm¡¡¡s¡ra-

city to floar

tion Parisienne, vol. tr, p.

192.

197. Haussma¡rn, Memoires, m, p. 55, and II. o. 318: "The order of úis queen of citiei is onc of rÈe ñrst conditions of general security . . . lhe very sryle of irs public monumènc exci¡es atiention." (Metioiräs, ll. p.

203.)

198. Ibid., lf, p. t97.

199. The emperor, styled by Sa.int Beuve ..Sainr-Simon on horseback." favored ¡he new tar macadam surfaces for his horscs: Haussmann. admininq it inro rhe rides of rhe parks, prcferred smooth granirepãvì¿s. as, ofcou¡se, diá rhose who werc looking for barricade material. Gas lishring was inrroduced in l86l "cene ævolution radica]e'.

Haussmann ca.lled i¡. as he-designed many new kinds of public ñxtures for irs use. He úas more cri¡ical of the advcntof elec¡riciry, howeven wn¡iolhisMémoircs in rhe 1880s (rhe firsr In¡èrna¡ional Exoosi¡ón of Elcctriciw was held in Paris in l88l), he objected ro irs ..unoléasanr light" thal in irs exrrcme brisht¡iess hurs or ri¡es ¡ile siphr (Memoir¿s, III. p. 163). The specific rhvrhm of lichr ird shade so belovèd of rhose'who haúnred the-cas-lir boulevards was reinforced by ¡he oace of the lamolichter: c.f.. Benjamin. Charles Baidelaiìe, pp. 50-52.' 200. Cf., rhe mericulous plans ãrid sections of the boulevards and rheir typical fui:rituc in A. Alohand. L¿s Promenades de Pans (Paris, 1867-1873). 2 vol¡. Alohand of c_ou¡se was responsible for the major park plans oidered

by Haussmann.

201. Haussmann, Memoires. II, p. 271.

202. Ibid.. p. 523.

203. Ibid., III. p. 530.

204. Emilc Zola, La Çurée (Pans, l87l): Enslish edition, ranslated by A. T. De tfanos (New York. -íSZ+¡, p.

t24.

205. The grear projecr ot'rhe Rougeon-Macquan had been conceived as a clinical examinatiõn of osvcholooical cause and effect: how environment ñnally formed-and tr¡nstbrmed cha¡acter. The transtbrma¡ioo of Paris. rhe cìty .of Zola's m:/th and reaiirl/. was perhaps rhe mosr shocking and tundamenra.l ruorurc examined by rhe eoic. beside rhar of rhe counu-y 3nd the ciry. One by one'rhe novels scn¡rinized rhe chánge scaifrirry "irtra¡c¡des) lo "iión.-From Thérèse Raquin (rhe thiluæ o¡'rhe Le Ventre de Po¿s (the glurrony of rhe ci(y), Zola ponrayed rhe physical contexs and physiologiccl agens oi moral dec¡i. in rhe pret'ace to fåár¿Je Raquin he dednetl his obiecr as srudvine "the prolbund modificarions oforganisms under rhe fresi sure of environmena and circumsrances."

206. Zola. La.Curée. pp. l-5.

107. Ibid., pp.80-8t.

208. Ibid., p. 2O4: "the gray bands ofwide inrerminable pav€me-nß . . . amid tho stamping, srvarming crorvds which 6lled them li¡¡le bv linle rvirh ãn absolure ãnd enrire contenrmenr. with a r'eeling od pen'ecrion in rhe life of rhe sceets. Every boulevard became a lobby to rheir house. " 209. Cf., for example. Cl¡ude Monèr's Boulevard d¿s Capucines ( I 873) or Caillebone's srudies of rhe new urban landscape ofParis berrveen 1875 and 1877. Linda Nochlin. inRealism (Harmondswonh: Penguin Book. l97l) compares ¡hese "croppcd" views nken from above ¡o the developing an of phorography.

2lO. Zol^, La Curée, pp. 150-155: rhe Boulevard des Italiens.

2l

l. Ibid.. p.

154.

212. Paris Guide, ed. A. Lacroix (Paris, 1867), II. p.

929.

213. Jules and Edmond de Goncoun. Journals: 185!/870 (Pa¡is) p. 93.

214. Cha¡les Baudelai¡e, I¿s Fleurs du tVal, ü.'.Tableaux Parisiens." Ixxxix, Le Cygne (Paris: Gamier,

Steet I ll

. 232. S-yìvain Maréchal. The llaniþsto of the Eguats.

April 1796.

223. Lissagcray. History of the Commune of tg7f. ¡ranslated from rhe French by Eleanor MarxiAveling (London. 1886), o. 127.

224. Edrvards,'Paris Commune, g. 144.

225. Procàs-Verbaux de la Comìtutte de parìs, ed. G. B^ourgin an!_G. Henrior. fl (Paris, l9a5). p. 189: edict oi 30 April 1871.

126. Edwa¡ds. Paris Conmune, o.3lZ. 2?7. Procès.Verbau. p. .118.

328. lbid.. p..tl9.

219. A chaßcrerisric criricized by Blanqui some rhree years befbre. ft was essen¡ial. he wrote. '.above all not to be.come shut up each in his quaner. as all uprisings have failed ro do. ro their ercar lois."

330. Lissagaray, H-istory of the Commune, p. 319.

331. lbid., p. i20.

232. Ibid., p. 32a.

233. G. Ma¡oreau, Sa/a, Publioue,23 Mav lSTt:' quoted in Lissagaray, History of the'Co^^une, ó. 3Zl. 334. Lissagaray, Hístory of rhe Commune, o.'323.

235. Marx. Civil jVar in France, p. 239.

336. Lissagaray. Hístory of the Còmmune, o. 379. ]]]. Quote<l in Edw¿¡d5. Paris Conmune. þ. 340.

238. Engels, Ilr e Housing Questio¡ (l 872), (ñerv york: ,Intemational Publishers), o. 7.1.

239. tbid., p. 75.

2.10. Engels. zlnri.Duhring (1885), uans. Emile Bums, ed.- C. q: Durr. (New York, l9?2), p. 318.

241. Ibid.. p. 323.

242. See William Monis, News From Nowhere (Lo¡don. l89l), ed. A. L. Monon (New York: Inrernarional Publishers, 1968), p. 250.

2a3. tbid.. p.25a.

221.4. "Pilgrims of Hopè," published in rhe Co¡nmonweal berween April 1885 and 1886. was wri¡ten as a saga of the Paris Commune, described wirh rn¡e hooe as a "glimpse of the coming day." Morris had ¡aken an acrive pan in rhe even¡s of rhe free-speech march on Tratãlgar Square on "Bloody Sunday," ñovember 13, I887.

196l), p.95.

215. Paris Guide, p.924.

216. Emile Zola, Le Vente de Paris (18731, Oeuvres Complètes. II. p. 570.

217. Paris Guide, p. 294.

218. P..J.

Prou<Jhon,

Du Principe de I'Art et de

sa

Destination Socral¿ ( I 8ó5), in Oeuires Complètes (Paris: Riviere. 1939). p. 281.

219. Zola. La Clochc. Febnrary 13, 1870. in Oeuvres Complètes. 13, p. 259. Zola's anicles on rhe rransformation of Paris. wrirren berween 1868 and 1870. deserve serious analysis: rhey appeareci in La Tribune ot'June 21. l8ó8: Augusr 23. 186E, Ocrober I I, t8ó8; Februarv 4, 1869, and la Cloche of Apnl 22. 1870.

220. Ka¡l Ma¡x.The Civit lvdr in France. in Karl Marx, The Fírst Interna¡ional and a¡ier, Polirical Wrirings. volume fll (New York: Vinrace'Books. 1974). o. 22á.

221. Cf ., Stewan Edwa¡ds, The Paris Co'mmune t87t (London. I 97 I ), p. 8: rhis is rhe bes¡ rccenr account of ¡he shon life of ¡he Commune and is polirical significance.

;:

l' I i