Three volumes of memoirs in which the prefect of the Seine (1853–70) defended his transformation of Paris: new straight streets cut through the old city to link its railway stations and monuments, planted boulevards, parks, squares, sewers and water supply.
Haussmann wrote his memoirs in retirement, twenty years after his dismissal, and they are a work of self-justification as well as a record. The third volume, on the grands travaux, describes the three “networks” of new streets financed in turn by the state and the city; the reasoning behind the percées: to open the congested centre to traffic and air, to join the railway stations to one another and to the heart of the city, and to give each great building a straight approach and a view; and the parks and promenades laid out by Adolphe Alphand.
The book, part by part
I Volume III: Grands travaux de Paris
The street networks, the Étoile, the boulevards and their plantations, the parks and squares, water and sewers.
Rules: Straight streets from station to monument · The star: avenues radiating from a monument · Plant the boulevards; open squares in every quarter