768 Ch. 19 • Rapid Industrialization and Its Challengesthat some of the new arteries cut through some of the most traditionally
revolutionary neighborhoods, providing troops quick access into the nar
row streets in eastern Paris where ordinary people had risen up during the
June Days in 1848, as well as during the French Revolution. This made it
more difficult to erect barricades. The impressionist painter Auguste Renoir
(1841-1919) would lament the transformation of these old Parisian neigh
borhoods and the new symmetrical buildings that lined the boulevards,4 cold
and lined up like soldiers at review.” It seemed an appropriate image to
accompany the further consolidation of state power. Glittering department
stores and fancy cafes stood along the elegant boulevards, showcases to impe
rial monumentalism but also to modern life. Large iron structures provided
space for Les Halles, the refurbished market of central Paris.
Napoleon III also wanted to make Paris a healthier place. Some of the
broad boulevards replaced narrow, winding streets, cutting through
unhealthy neighborhoods. Aqueducts were built to provide cleaner water
for residents. Four hundred miles of underground sewers (which emptied
into the Seine River northwest of Paris) improved health conditions in a
city that had been recently ravaged by cholera.
Although the massive rebuilding provided jobs for many workers, it also
forced many thousands of workers and their families to leave the central city
for the cheaper rents of the inner suburbs, particularly those to the north
and northeast—which were annexed to Paris in 1860—or to increasingly
industrialized suburbs farther out, themselves emerging symbols of the Sec
Emperor Napoleon III {left) and Baron Georges Hauss