Along the Grands Boulevards.
Putting the 'Grands' Back Into Boulevards
Modest Paris Plan to Make Part of City Centre Congenial for Residents and Visitors
Paris Kiosque - March 1997 - Volume 4, Number 3
Copyright (c) March 1997 Richard Erickson - used with permission
Since coming to Paris some
time ago, a great many new and huge monuments have sprung up, without me
taking much notice them until they were there. Long before my time, the
Tour Eiffel was thrown up and it's been a hard act to top.
'Not paying attention' is a lame excuse for not noticing the Grande
Arche at La Défense before it was complete - one day I was at La
Défense and voilà there it was, as if it had moved in
overnight.
Now I am paying attention. (Now that really big new things seem to be
out of the question.) After the renovation of the Champs-Elysées
over the past few years, the City of Paris has announced its intention to
'upgrade' the Grands Boulevards, and work will start this year.
With true investigative spirit, here I am at métro rue
Montmartre, to capture the essence of what is; to see the treasures that
will be preserved and to try and imagine the possible value of
renovation.
Unfortunately, despite the best 'investigative' intentions; the corner
of the Faubourg, the rue and the boulevard Montmartre/ boulevard
Poissonniére, is nearer to the middle of the project than the
beginning - whether it is the Place de la République in the east or
at the Madeleine in the west.
In all there is a string of 11 of these boulevards, totalling 4.5
kilometres in length, and today I will be looking at only a short stretch
on account of sheer laziness - from this métro stop at rue
Montmartre to the Opéra, by way of the boulevard des Italiens. This
part dates to 1676 and was the location of the old Charles V wall.
This corner where the métro is, is lively. Small bursts of
traffic are popping over the slight hump, east at Bonne Nouvelle. Although
'Grands' is part of the name, the traffic is no more than four abreast,
because there are the usual buses and taxis in the curb lanes, and the
usual double-parked delivery vans. Traffic comes up the rue to the
boulevard, turns left or goes straight through and up the faubourg
Montmartre.
From where the boulevard Haussmann begins, and Montmartre turns slightly
into boulevard des Italiens; where the rue de Richelieu crosses them all -
the city is thinking of reverting all of the eastern 'Grand' Boulevards
into two-way traffic again. A 1910 photo shows two way traffic on the
boulevard des Italiens, composed mostly of double-decker buses and
horse-drawn cabs and a few cars. For some reason, there is also a
low-flying monoplane overhead.
On the sidewalk where I have emerged from the métro, there is a
newspaper kiosk, that fills half of it. Construction workers are
dismantling a building; sliding the interior of it down a chute into a
dumpster, also on the sidewalk. There are loud noises and the kiosk lady
needs ear-plugs.
Further along, there are trees poking through their grilles in the
pavement. I thought they were all Plane trees - 'Platanes' - but there are
also Catapla - 'Indian Bean' - and Sophoras, a tree originating in the
orient. These should be of fairly uniform height with their leaves, later
in the year, and throw good shade on both sidewalks.
Also right here, are the entries to the passages: Jouffrey on the north
side, with the Musée Grévin in the Hôtel Ronceray and
the Panoramas on the south side. Both are fairly intact, and peering into
them from the boulevard reminds me of bazaars in Istanbul.
There was a magic age, when Parisians first had middle-class jobs and
better than working-class clothes, when they had discretionary money to
spend, and time to spend it in - these desires created the need for clean
places to walk raised from the mud in safety away from the unpredictable
traffic of horses, slipping on the cobbles.
In this age, Parisians flooded the grand boulevards, the passages -
meeting places of the 'Incroyables'- these dandies - and the
'Merveilleuses' - extravagantly dressed men as well as ladies, during the
period of the Directoire at the end of the 18th century.
Dress was not the only thing extravagant - when Monsieur Thayer's
Passage des Panoramas opened in 1800, its entry was flanked by two towers,
each 17 metres in diameter. The 20-metre high towers were covered in
paintings, about 100 metres long by 20 high. The first two showed a
panoramic view 
of Paris as seen from the highest tower in the Tuleries, and a scene of
the English retreating from Toulon. This attracted a large crowd to the
passage and a third, bigger, tower was added.
These towers launched a 'ramamania' throughout Paris - géoramas,
dioramas, cosmoramas, diaphanoramas, navaloramas and other diverse
cycloramas. Despite the dismantling of the towers in 1831, the passage was
enlarged and grew more popular than ever.
Next door to the passage, is the Théâtre des
Variétés. On 8. June 1806, Napoléon decreed that there
be no more than eight theatres in the city, and the Variétés
was one of them. But it was at the Palais-Royal and had to find someplace
else.
Its director, Monsieur Montansier, rented the gardens of the Hôtel
de Montmorency-Luxembourg, called since 1800, Panorama Gardens, from Mr.
Thayer and the 1,600-seat theatre was built and inaugurated on 24. June
1807. The first show was a vaudeville by Désaugiers, the 'Panorama
de Momus.' 'La Belle Hélène' by Offenbach premiered here on
13. December 1864.
More recently, since Monday, 21. October 1996, Jean-Paul Belmondo has
been playing the lead in 'La Puce à l'Oreille,' which is a piece in
the Variétés tradition. Mr. Belmondo owns a part or all of
the theatre, where Napoléon laughed a little, Louis XVIII laughed
loudly, Charles X smiled and Louis-Philippe laughed, also resoundingly.
Another way to keep warm was to go directly across the street and into
the Passage Jouffroy, which was built in 1835, and was Paris' first heated
passage. The hotel built on top on it was called Le Grand Hôtel de la
Terrace Jouffroy in 1847 and is now named Hôtel Ronceray.
The hotel is to the left of the passage, and the wax works of the
Musée Grévin is to the right. Cartoonist, famous for his
album 'Les Parisiennes' and his designs in the 'Journal Amusant,' Alfred
Grévin opened his museum on 10. January 1882 and it hasn't closed
since.
So far, I am still within about 50 metres of the métro exit, and
there is still the rest of the boulevard Montmartre to explore - not to
mention the remaining 4,450 metres of the 'Grands Boulevards.'
This particular stretch had a number of newspaper offices and other
hotels, whist clubs, shops and cafés; with the final building at the
Richelieu corner, being at various times an Italian ice cream parlor, a
hotel, a gambling house and a newspaper office. Balzac was evicted by his
tailor-landlord on 1. April 1842.
This is where the boulevard des Italiens starts, and like the rest of
the 'Grands Boulevards' only got sidewalks after 1830. The present
Opéra-Comique used be the Théâtre des Italiens, and
that is where the present name of the boulevard comes from.
Along here were the famous cafés; the 'Grand-Balcon,' the
'Café Rich,' the 'Café Anglais,' the 'Café Hardy,' the
'Maison Dorée,' the 'Tortini' and the 'Café de Paris.' The
'Bains Chinois' rounded off the reputation of the number 'one'
boulevard.
Unlike the passages, the Variétés and the Musée
Grévin, these cafés are all gone; replaced by less lustrous
duplicates. The Opéra-Comique remains in place - as does the
Théâtre du Vaudeville, inaugurated in 1869, and now occupied
by the Paramount cinema. Strictly speaking, this is the beginning of the
boulevard des Capucines as the boulevard des Italiens ends at the
Chaussée d'Antin. The Paramount has been here since 1927.
Of lesser interest, unless you need some cash, are the banks. The main
Crédit Lyonnais building is on the south side, and the slightly
sinister-looking Banque National de Paris is on the north and extends
through to the boulevard Haussmann.
The truly grand time of the boulevards was in the second half of the
last century; there was an incredible profusion of theatres, cafes, large
shops, clubs, private mansions - all of which changed owners rapidly; came
into and went out of fashion, where sold, bought, re-built - where journals
and newspapers were published, where all of the day's famous authors
gathered, as well as most of the 'romantic' figures and characters of the
time. There were the 'nouveau riche' and this is where they played.
Since the fifties in this century - the songs of Yves Montand - they
have lost interest as the sidewalks have become crowded with waffle-wagons
and spin-the-wheel stands, the terraces of restaurants edge towards the
gutters, and fast-food restos come and go.
The passages are still intact; the Variétés is open,
playing and looks as new as it did in 1807. These represent perhaps one
percent of the total activity once taking place within 500 metres of the
Montmartre intersection. The city's modest plan will cause no overnight
resurrection of all that was.
Without spending much of its own money, the city wants to preserve what
original architecture there is, regularize the width of the sidewalks and
upgrade the street furniture, and bring order to the chaos of signs. Paris
did this sort of thing with Champs-Elysées only a few years ago and
turned spirits around there - it is all of a piece now without being overly
uniform.
Reading about the past activity of the Grands Boulevards sets me to
dreaming, puts my imagination back to the middle of the last century. This
lasts all of a few minutes - it is not going to come back. Nobody has time
for it.
A reader has just written, announcing a "squeeze-weekend' visit to
Paris. Modern jet aircraft make this possible; sitting beside the pool in
California, how easy it is to actually think of spending the weekend in
Paris. And going ahead and doing it takes no more than a phone call to get
it started.
The reason I can dream at all; the first time I came it took three days
on a train and twelve days at sea. With that behind me, trying to get back
on time for the Monday office was out of the question. In fact, from the
time I first got off the ship in Europe, it only took me another 12 years
to get to Paris.
I guess then, if somebody does open a huge café on the Grands
Boulevards - one that I can sort of use as an alternate living room - I
might become a customer. I've got time to spare, but beside the unwillingly
unemployed, I don't know who else has.
Richard Erickson, living in Paris for the last twenty years, has been putting
Paris online as long as anyone. More of his writings can be found in
Metropole Paris
where this article first appeared.
He can be contacted via
erickso@world-net.sct.fr.
