Paris’s Covent Garden Moving To Suburbs

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30747, 11 May 1965, Page 23

Paris’s Covent Garden Moving To Suburbs

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter)

PARIS. Les Halles, the colourful century-old central market of Paris and a favourite place with tourists for late-night onion soup, will shortly move out to the suburbs. For the “belly of Paris,” as Emile Zola described the Halles, is now getting too small to cater for the capital’s fast-growing population.

Bulldozers, huge cranes and an army of workers are now feverishly prepared a new site for it at Rungis, 12 kilometres (eight miles) from Notre Dame Cathedral, on the way to Orly airport. Ultra-modern, tree-lined installations will house the new wholesale vegetables and fruit, fish and oysters, and butter, eggs and cheese sections of the market, covering some 500 hectares (11,250 acres) in all. But the most striking feature at Rungis will be an elaborate rail-road network linking the market directly with all the agricultural centres of France and her partners in the European common market community. Trains Alongside Trains will pull alongside the new stores and some will unload actually inside the larger warehouses. A fleet of 2500 lorries and vans will speed over the Paris ring road, entering by one of its 20-odd gates to deliver their goods before day-break. The new Halles at Rungis will have their own administrative and banking centre, post-office and medical centre, packing and workshops, railway shunting yards and a parking area for 10,000 vehicles.

A sizeable city with its cafes, bars and restaurants, hotels, night clubs and other places of entertainment will grow up round the new central market which is expected to become the latest attraction of Paris life.

Long Controversy Many of the 4m visitors who arrive at Orly airport each year are expected to visit Rungis, while even transit passengers will be able to go out between flights for the traditional onion soup, oysters, snails or grilled pigs’ trotters. When the present Halles were built 100 years ago, Paris had 2M inhabitants and 100.000 horses. Today, the population is increasing fivefold and the capital has more than 2M vehicles in circulation.

The controversy over whether or not to move Les Halles to the suburbs raged for several years. A number of surveys were under-taken. Missions were sent to the United States to study similar problems at towns there, including New York, Manhattan, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Sioux City. The soaring cost of handling food, traffic congestion and deteriorating hygiene conditions in the present overcrowded market perimeter were the deciding factors in the Government’s decision for the removal of Les Halles. Several Moves

Since the foundation of Paris, the central market has moved sites several times. The first Paris market was in the centre of the island village where Notre Dame now stands, on I’lle de laCite. In the 12th century, Louis VI ordered its removal to the present site. In 1183, it was enlarged, provided with permanent shelters for vendors’ stalls and surrounded with a wall. The open market was then not exclusively food but rather a fair where all kinds of wares were sold. From the 16th century onwards, the expansion of Paris caused the supply of food to become of paramount importance, and eventually to replace all other types of sales in the market. The other shopkeepers moved to the ground floors of neighbouring houses, each street being taken up by a particular trade. New Project

Again, in the reign of Napoleon 111, the problem of Les Halles was thoroughly investigated. A new project involving the use of iron girders and sky-light roofs later proved highly successful. Ten pavilions were built between 1854 and 1886.

Provided with huge cellars, separated by covered streets, they were for over half a century the pattern for all similar types of construction, both in France and abroad.

New halls were added during the period between the two world wars.

But in spite of these extensions, Les Halles had become inadequate by 1939. Carts and stalls piled high with produce over-flowed into side streets between the Eglise St. Eustache, where Moliere was baptised, the arcaded Rue de Rivoli, the Chatelet and Boulevard de Sebastopol. Traffic bottlenecks in the old Marias raised very serious problems. In December, 1963, a Cabinet meeting presided over by General de Gaulle decided on the creation of a new central market, le Marche d’lnteret National, for the greater Paris area. The Government approved plans to move the city’s main wholesale meat market from Les Halles to the north-east Paris suburb, at La Villette. where the slaughter house is being modernised and expanded. The fruit and vegetable market is to move to Rungis in the southern suburbs. The first super-structure now being built at Rungis will become the fish and shell-fish market. Before the year is out, another large hall is due to be completed for butter, eggs, and cheese. Its size will make possible more adequate displays than hitherto of France’s 245 varieties of cheese, and more from the Common Market countries, particularly the Netherlands and Italy. The Paris central market authority claims that when in full operation, by 1968, the new Les Halles at Rungis will rank, as the leading food distribution centre in Europe.