This photograph shows Boulevard Haussmann being inaugurated by French President Gaston Doumergue on January 15, 1927.
In a simple ceremony on a Friday afternoon, President Doumergue formally opened the full length of the Boulevard Haussmann as it was designed by the great town planner of the reign of Napoléon III. It took the boulevard 70 years to cut its way across the older streets of Paris, as the first decree authorising the construction of the boulevard was signed in 1857.
Eugène Georges Haussmann was the son of a journalist and the grandson of a member of the Convention which refused to vote for the death of Louis XVI. He was in 1852 appointed to the Préfecture of the Seine, when he was handed by Napoléon III a sketch-map of Paris showing the straight Roman-like roads of which the emperor dreamed for his capital. The great town planner, however, went about his work so wholeheartedly that he became known as the ‘Attila of expropriation,’ and his wholesale manner of carrying out his schemes aroused the enmity of many.
In a simple ceremony on a Friday afternoon, President Doumergue formally opened the full length of the Boulevard Haussmann as it was designed by the great town planner of the reign of Napoléon III. It took the boulevard 70 years to cut its way across the older streets of Paris, as the first decree authorising the construction of the boulevard was signed in 1857.
Eugène Georges Haussmann was the son of a journalist and the grandson of a member of the Convention which refused to vote for the death of Louis XVI. He was in 1852 appointed to the Préfecture of the Seine, when he was handed by Napoléon III a sketch-map of Paris showing the straight Roman-like roads of which the emperor dreamed for his capital. The great town planner, however, went about his work so wholeheartedly that he became known as the ‘Attila of expropriation,’ and his wholesale manner of carrying out his schemes aroused the enmity of many.