H ouse and Garden 
In meeting necessary conditions, however, 
he was faithful to the claims of the most 
artistic public in the world. The European 
critic, accustomed to the interesting accidental 
effects of old cities, may, with some justice, 
accuse his work of occasional banalite which 
could not be avoided in the extraordinary 
pressure of work ; but to an American the 
most monotonous of his results are delight¬ 
ful compared with the rigid alignment and 
brutal sky-lines of our cities. 
In no one of these articles has it been 
possible to follow out all the lines of civic 
development. Only the most important 
have been sketched. In considering the 
work of Haussmann we must be satisfied 
with the same method of treatment. There 
are few streets within the fortifications of Paris 
which have not been affected by the execution 
of his plans, but to study them all is impos¬ 
sible. 
Naturally the first point to be secured by 
the administration of Napoleon III. was the 
restoration of the civic center to the old re¬ 
gion within the medieval enceintes and, as 
nearly as possible, to 
the lie de la Cite. To 
accomplish this it was 
necessary to restore 
the importance of the 
Grande Croisee de¬ 
scribed in our first ar¬ 
ticle. This necessity 
was understood by the designers of Louis 
XIV. Napoleon gave it special recognition 
in the commencement of the Rue de Rivoli. 
H aussmann’s first task was the completion 
of this street eastward from the Passage De¬ 
lorme, near the Pavilion de Marsan, and its 
continuation by an enlargement of the Rue 
Saint-Antoine and the Rue du Faubourg 
Saint-Antoine. In this scheme was included 
the completion of the corps de batiment con¬ 
necting the Louvre and Tuileries, the clear¬ 
ing up of the Place du Carrousel and the 
region about the Theatre Francais and the 
Palais Royal, one of the most disreputable 
quarters of Paris at that time. The recon¬ 
struction of the Halles Centrales and the 
improvements about the Hotel de Ville may 
be included in the Rue de Rivoli improve¬ 
ment. The disengagement of the Tour de 
Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie was an interesting 
accomplishment of this time. 
Before Haussmann’s day a beginning had 
been made in the reconstruction of the 
northern arm of the Grande Croisee by a 
“ Boulevard du Centre ” lying between the 
Rue Saint-Denis and 
the Rue Saint-Mar¬ 
tin. That portion of 
it which extends north 
of the Boulevard 
Saint-Denis, now call¬ 
ed Boulevard de Stras¬ 
bourg, had been con- 
THE PLACE DE LA NATION (OLD PLACE DU TRONE) 
283 
