THE PLANNING OF PARIS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3280, 24 January 1917, Page 63

THE PLANNING OF PARIS.

By Edith Searle Gkossmann, M.A. A peculiar interest attaches to the city plan of Paris. It was executed under the Second Empire before the town-planning of the present era, which has transformed scores of towns and villages in England, America, and Germany. In most of the literature of that movement the example of Paris is almost, if not quite, ignored. Yet it has been followed in at least two other European capitals— Athens and Brussels, —as well as in several provincial towns of France, and it has furnished ideas to town-planners in nearly every country. Briefly, the design is the concentric one. The city is divided into a number of (more or* less imperfectly) circular divisions, centring round one or two innermost circles. If we had to fix upon one of these as the centre, we might take that one formed by the Boulevards St. Sebastopol, Du Temple, Beaumarchdis, Henri IV, and that part of the Rue de Rivoli which lies between the Place du Chatelet and the Place de la Bastille. Around this cluster other imperfect circles, flattened and elongated, and around this group yet others (exactly as in some types of marine creatures). A fairly complete circle of inner boulevards encloses the most central group, and to this is joined an outer series. Finally the whole city is encircled by the outer boulevards" The imperfect circles form the >arron<Hssements and quartiers into which the city is divided for the purposes of local government. On the whole their boundaries lie along the lines of streets and boulevards, though not invariably. For the purposes of city traffic and scenic effect also the concentric design has been adopted. Had it been carried out perfectly all the streets and avenues would (1) radiate from one single and common centre in the middle of the city. or (2) form short connecting links between these main streets, or else (3) form encircling boulevards. That is one of the model designs of town-planners (with variations to suit the features of the landscape). But except by its outer circumference, Paris is not on the design of a single circle, but of a series of circles. It would have been impossible to alter a great and ancient city to a perfectly symmetrical design last century. Many of the main avenues were already built, and their direction could not be altered. In some parts this convergence is carried out—e.g., where the wide avenues, converge into or radiate from the Place de l'Etoile, where Napoleon's Arc de Triomph stands What has been done to the city as a whole is to form a number of circular or rounded open spaces (places) along the lines of the main thoroughfares, and to make the streets in the neighbourhood of each place converge to that place. The plan is best illustrated by the great chain of thoroughfares interrupted only by these open spaces, which for the greater part of its length follows the direction of the River Seine, turning off, however, in a northerly direction just where the Seine curves round to the south, the whole traversing the middle of the city throughout its entire breadth, east to west, oi vice versa. On the west this artery starts from the Avenue de la Grande Armee, where the ample boulevards on the boundaries of Paris merge into the glades of the Bois de Boulogne. East of the Place de l'Etoile and on both sides of the open garden circle of the Champs Elysees the line is called the Avenue des" Champs Elysees. On the further side of another place (Place de la Concorde) if turned into the Rue de Rivoli. Interrupted again by the Place de la Bastille, it emerges on* the further

.si<!o of that space as the Rue St Antoitie, and yet again beyond the l'lace de la Nation as the Cours de Vincennes. Speaking poetically, one might compare the lino to a gold chain with a round pearl between every two links. At intervals all along this, the most famous thoroughfare of Paris, are these circular spaces (the "places"), and to each place numerous avenues converge from different directions. Thus between the Avenue de la Grande Armee and the Avenue des Champs Elysees is the Place de l'Etoile, its colossal arch visible in vistas from all sides. In the middle of the Avenue des Champs Elysees is the charming garden space of flowers and trees and children at play. It terminates in a place pregnant with tragic memories, once the Place do la Revolution, where sovereigns and nobles were executed, transformed in the nineteenth century into the most magnificent public place m Europe, as well as the gayest and most fashionable, adorned with the lofty obelisk from Egyptian Luxar, with fountains, and large statues representing the queens of France. The traveller looked from across the way at these monuments, and down long stately avenues of trees, and southward to the river and the strong bridges spanning it. Besides these main places there are smaller open spaces along the way. Each one of the principal places is adorned with magnificent monuments—the Etoile with its triumphal arch; Place de la Concorde with its fountains, statuary, and obelisk; the Chatelet with fountains; the Place de la Bastille with the lofty "Column of July," crowned by the statue of Liberty; the Nation with its own column and symbolic statues. In nineteenth century Paris the tourist could drive on top of the omnibuses or in a cab the entire breadth of the city from north-west to south-east along this chain of avenues, or he would walk the whole way. The vistas before his eyes impressed him with their magnificence, delighted him with their charm, or moved him with the extraordinary emotional interest of their associations, raising visions of the splendour, the pride, pity, enthusiasm, terror of former days. He no sooner passed one grand place than he caught sight of another, and where the boulevards converged, he continually found himself looking along avenues of dense shade, where dainty demoiselles and exquisite messieurs and well-dressed mesaames strolled, chatted, or sipped refreshments gracefully, as if graceful posing and gesture were nature rather than art with them. On his way he had glimptes of historic architecture, the immense solid walls, the courts and wings of the Louvre, and down another vista of a thronged avenue, festively decorated, he saw the columned front of the Opera, further east the dark walls of the old Hotel de Ville ; a little distance off the Gothic towers of Notre Dame, with its solemn old world tale of remote times —St. Louis, Joan of Arc. the St. Bartholomew. The modern buildings that he passed were mostly of noble proportions, though none had the mystery and wonder of the antique Gothic cathedral. This main artery then, which for a great part of its course is the Rue de Rivoli, is only the chief example of several others traversing Paris in parallel or diagonal directions. The place forms the centre of its neighbourhood, the lines of traffic diverging out from it : so that there are in reality numbers of centres. Off the great line described above the chief of these centres are the Place de la Republique, the Place de l'Opcra. and the open spaces in front of the great railway stations in Northern Paris, the Gare du Nord: in the north-westerly quarter the Gare de St. Lazare; in the south the Gare du Lyon and the Gare d'Orleans. Besides these grand places there are innumerable minor ones, many of them either in front of or surrounding on all sides the finest churches, palaces, and public buildings. Some of these are merely open spaces of pavement : but even these add incalculably to the impressive effect of fine architecture. No amount of decoration, nor skill nor pains, nor costliness of material can ever make up for lack of space in which to see a fine building. When it is crowded in amongst meaner and more commonplace buildings, skill is of no avail, millions of money are wasted, and the church or hall that might have helped to give fame and nobility to a city is ineffective and of little account. This is a point the artistic Parisians appreciated. Colonial architects and town-planners might well learn the lesson from them, for if they do not, they will never build anv fine city. In many of tiro places there is. besides the open'space, a garden, or at least a group of trees with seats beneath them, where weary citizens and sightseers may rest in the shadow. This then is the town plan of modern Paris. A series of centres connected by thoroughfares, a double circle of treos'haded boulevards. The River Seine passes through the city, making a wide curve from the south-eastern corner up towards the north, then down again to the south-west; the line of quays alone/ its banks forming if not open spaces, at least wide open avenues from which many spacious bridges of stone traverse the river, giving fine vistas down its yellow flood—the Isle of St. Louis and the romantic Gothic front of Notre Dame haunting the mind with its look of mystery and the vanished years of Kings and the old Re«ion. If vou take up a street man of London, what" strikes you is its shapelessness as a whole. It has grown and grown without design, except in single patches, just as our small colonial cities have. But if yon look at a map of Paris you will see at a glance the sr>me order and symmetry that mark the French mind (when it is not excited), and that proceed from an indwelling ideal. A morn studied survey of the significance and effect of its concentric svstcm and of the places and the boulevardes will make you appreciate the fact that the city as a whole is a work of ait. fitly erected by the most perfectly artistic rana in the world.