Haussmann's Power and Its Limits: Rue de Rennes

View of Rue de Rennes from the Tour Montparnasse. Photograph by Joseph Heathcott, 2019.

One of the best vantages from which to contemplate Haussmann's power and its limits is the Tour Montparnasse looking down the Rue de Rennes.  I took this photograph in December of 2019 while spending a semester teaching at Parsons Paris.  I've been to Paris a dozen times since my first trip in 1984, but this was the first time I ventured to the top of the tower.  Beyond the panoramic sweep, I really wanted to catch this particular view of one of Hausmann's grand boulevards. 

Haussmann (center right) with the Emperor (red sash). Painting by Adophe Yvon, 1867.

Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891) was born into a Germano-French family that had been active in the Revolution and in the Napoleonic wars.  Haussmann served for 20 years as a mid-level civil servant, moving around from town to town as a deputy prefect.  After the 1848 Revolution established the Second Republic, Haussmann applied to President Louis Napoléon for promotion, and served as prefect in a series of increasingly prestigious posts.  In 1851, Louis Napoléon staged a coup d'état, declared himself Emperor Napoléon III, and set about to remake Paris into a grand showpiece.  In Haussmann, he found just the person to barrel through the tangled bureaucracy of the French state.

As Prefect of the Seine, Haussmann coordinated a massive program of public works, including construction of government buildings, the centralized markets at Les Halles, canal and water works, and expanded military and police facilities.  However, the greatest of these endeavors was the reconfiguration of the very map of Paris through the construction of commodious boulevards.  Haussmann demolished his way through the medieval fabric to create long pathways traversing the city.  He imposed controls over the width, length, and linear rectitude of the corridors, as well as rigorous regulation of building heights and frontages.  The emergent urban landscape conveyed a sense of grandeur and awe, while facilitating both commercial movement and the rapid deployment of military operations to quell uprisings.  

Before and after Haussmann. Left, the medeival Rue du Jardinet, c. 1860. Photograph by Charles Marville. Right, demolition on Rue de Reamur, c. 1865. Photographer unknown.

The Rue de Rennes is a case in point.  Named for the city of Rennes in Brittany, Haussmann conceived the new boulevard as a connector between the train station at Montparnasse and the Pont des Arts, which would be rebuilt to accommodate increased traffic over the Seine.  Evident in the photograph, Rue de Rennes slices in a northeasterly direction through the Sixth Arrondissement, beginning at Boulevard Montparnasse (bottom center).  On the right is the open expanse of the Jardin de Luxembourg and the twin towers of St-Sulpice.  Crossing the middle of the photograph from right to left is another grand Haussmann creation, the Boulevard de Raspail.  The Seine runs across the top of the photograph, with the Palais de Louvre in the center distance.

Even as the image testifies to Haussmann's command and control over urban spatial production, it is also reveals the limits of his power.  Haussmann made the decision to begin the project at Montparnasse, rather than working south from the Quai de Malaquais along the Seine.  The area around the Gare de Montparnasse was lightly built up compared to the streets near the river, so there were fewer obstacles to overcome.  Thus, the first section from the station to Rue Notre Dame des Champs moved ahead rapidly, reaching completion in only a year and a half. 

However, the next section faced the much denser fabric of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.  It took eight more years to double the length of the street, reaching Rue de Saint-Sulpice in 1860, and another eight years to reach the Boulevard St-Germain.  Here Haussmann's plans floundered.  To extend Rue de Rennes any further would have required smashing through several venerable institutions of the state, including the Institut de France and the Monnaie de Paris, as well as buildings owned by powerful civil, mercantile, and ecclesiastical interests. 

By 1868, Haussmann was embroiled in controversy over massive expenditures, corruption in contracting, and disruptive projects. The opposition party in the Assembly issued repeated calls for his dismissal, with Napoléon III remaining silent.  Finally, in 1871 the new prime minister invited Haussmann to resign; when he refused, he was dismissed. Six months later, the Second Empire collapsed after defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

Stereopticon card showing Haussmannized Rue de Rivoli. Card by Alfred Campbell, 1896, in possession of the author.

Very few individuals have left so profound a mark on a city.  Hausmann's legacy was not just grand building ensembles or isolated monuments.  He created many of those, of course.  Rather, his major imprint on Paris was the remaking of the very fabric of the city itself, altering the figure-ground relationship and configuring the basic format of the built environment.  While this is partly due to Haussmann's forceful and energetic character, it is largely the result of the concentration of power in an unelected and unaccountable office and the subjugation of a city to the will of an imperial state.

Looking down Rue de Rennes from the top of the Tour de Montparnasse, the implacability of the straight line is an astonishment even today.  This ribbon of asphalt carries with it a set of rules that encodes urban space–the width of the street, the height of conrices, the depth of the streetwall, the array of furniture, the angles of intersecting streets.  And while the grand boulevards may capture our awe and attention, it is worth remembering that the power to draw these straight lines was conferred by an authoritarian state characterized by corruption, electoral manipulation, surveillance, censorship, and police repression.  In the linear rectitude of Rue de Rennes, perhaps we can trace a filament of these social-spatial relations as they define Paris under the sign of modernity.