Historical period
Paris in the
Belle Epoque
was a period in the history of the city between the years 1871 to 1914, from the beginning of the
Third French Republic
until the
First World War
. It saw the construction of the
Eiffel Tower
, the
Paris Metro
, the completion of the
Paris Opera
, and the beginning of the
Basilica of Sacre-Cœur
on
Montmartre
. Three lavish "universal expositions" in 1878, 1889, and 1900 brought millions of visitors to Paris to sample the latest innovations in commerce, art, and technology. Paris was the scene of the first public projection of a motion picture, and the birthplace of the
Ballets Russes
,
Impressionism
, and
Modern Art
.
The expression
Belle Epoque
("beautiful era") came into use after the First World War; it was a nostalgic term for what seemed a simpler time of optimism, elegance, and progress.
Rebuilding after the Commune
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After the violent end of the
Paris Commune
in May 1871, the city was governed by
martial law
under the strict surveillance of the national government. At the time, Paris was not actually the capital of France. The government and parliament had moved to
Versailles
in March 1871 once the Paris Commune took power, and they did not return to Paris until 1879, although the Senate returned earlier to its home in the
Luxembourg Palace
.
[1]
The end of the Commune left the city's population deeply divided.
Gustave Flaubert
described the atmosphere in the city in early June 1871: "One half of the population of Paris wants to strangle the other half, and the other half has the same idea; you can read it in the eyes of people passing by."
This sentiment soon became secondary to the need to reconstruct the buildings that had been destroyed in the last days of the Commune. The
Communards
had burned the
Hotel de Ville
(including all the city archives), the
Tuileries Palace
, the
Palais de Justice
, the
Prefecture of Police
, the Ministry of Finances, the
Cour des Comptes
, the State Council building at the
Palais-Royal
, and many others. Several streets, particularly the
Rue de Rivoli
, had also been badly damaged by the fighting. Besides the cost of reconstruction, the new government was obliged to pay an
indemnity
of 210 million francs in gold to the victorious
German Empire
as reparations for the disastrous
Franco-Prussian War
of 1870. On 4 August 1871, at the first meeting of the city council after the Commune, the new Prefect of the Seine,
Leon Say
, put forward a plan to borrow 350 million francs for reconstruction and indemnity payments. The city's bankers and businessmen quickly raised the money, and the reconstruction was soon underway.
The
Conseil d'Etat
and
Palais de la Legion d'Honneur
(Hotel de Salm) were rebuilt in their original style. The new Hotel de Ville was built on the lines of a more picturesque
Neo-Renaissance
style than the original that was based on the appearance of the
Chateau de Chambord
in the
Loire Valley
, with a facade decorated with statues of outstanding personages who contributed to the history and fame of Paris. The destroyed Ministry of Finance on the Rue de Rivoli was replaced by a grand hotel, while the Ministry moved into the
Richelieu wing
of the
Louvre Palace
, where it remained until 1989. The ruined Cour des Comptes on the
Left Bank
was replaced by the Gare d'Orleans, also known under the name
Gare d'Orsay
, now the
Musee d'Orsay
. The one difficult decision was the Tuileries Palace, originally built in the 16th century by
Marie de' Medici
as a royal residence. The interior had been entirely destroyed by fire, but the walls were still largely intact. The walls remained standing for ten years while the fate of the ruins was debated.
Baron Haussmann
, in retirement, appealed for a restoration of the building as a historic monument, and there was a proposal to turn it into a new museum of modern art. In 1881, however, a new
Chamber of Deputies
more sympathetic to the Commune than previous governments decided that it was too much a symbol of the monarchy and had the walls pulled down.
On 23 July 1873, the National Assembly (the legislature of the early French
Third Republic
that was replaced by the Chamber of Deputies and a Senate in 1875) endorsed the project of building a basilica at the site where the uprising of the Paris Commune had begun. The gesture was intended as a symbolic means to atone for the sufferings of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune. The
Basilica of Sacre-Cœur
was subsequently built in a
Neo-Byzantine
style and paid for by public subscription. It quickly became one of the most recognizable landmarks in Paris during construction, but was not finished until 1919.
[4]
The Parisians
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The population of Paris was 1,851,792 in 1872, at the beginning the
Belle Epoque
. By 1911, it reached 2,888,107, higher than the population today.
Near the end of the
Second Empire
and the beginning of the
Belle Epoque
, between 1866 and 1872, the population of Paris grew only 1.5%. Then the population surged by 14.09% between 1876 and 1881, only to slow again to a 3.3% growth between 1881 and 1886. After that, it grew very slowly until the end of the
Belle Epoque
. It reached a historic high of almost three million persons in 1921 before beginning a long decline until the early 21st century.
In 1886, about one-third of the population of Paris (35.7%) had been born in Paris. More than half (56.3%) had been born in other
departments of France
and about 8% outside France.
[6]
In 1891, Paris was the most cosmopolitan of European capital cities, with 75 foreign-born residents for every thousand inhabitants. In comparison, there were only 24 per thousand in
Saint Petersburg
, 22 in London and Vienna, and 11 in Berlin. The largest communities of immigrants were Belgians, Germans, Italians and Swiss, with between 20 and 28,000 persons from each country. Followed by these were about 10,000 from Great Britain and an equal number from Russia; 8,000 from Luxembourg; 6,000 South Americans and 5,000 Austrians. There were also 445 Africans, 439 Danes, 328 Portuguese and 298 Norwegians. Certain nationalities were concentrated in specific professions. Italians were concentrated in the businesses of making ceramics, shoes, sugar and conserves. Germans were concentrated in leather-working, brewing, baking and
charcuterie
. Swiss and Germans were predominant in businesses making watches and clocks, and accounted for a large proportion of the domestic servants.
The remnants of old Paris
aristocracy
and the new aristocracy of bankers, financiers and entrepreneurs mostly had their residences in the
8th arrondissement
, from the
Champs-Elysees
to the
Madeleine
church; in the
"Quartier de l'Europe"
and "Butte Chaillot" (now the area of the
Place Charles de Gaulle
; the
Faubourg Saint-Honore
; the
"Quartier Saint-Georges"
, from the Rue Vivienne and the Palais-Royal to Roule; and the
Plain of Monceau
. On the
Right Bank
, they lived in
Le Marais
. On the Left Bank, they lived on the south of the
Latin Quarter
, at
Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Odeon
; near
Les Invalides
; and at the
Ecole Militaire
. The less affluent shop owners lived from the
Porte Saint-Denis
to
Les Halles
to the west of the
Boulevard de Sebastopol
. The middle class employees of enterprises, small businesses and government lived closer to the center of the city along the
"Grands Boulevards"
; in the
10th arrondissement
; in the
1st
and
2nd arrondissements
near the
Paris Bourse
(Stock Exchange); in the
Sentier
quarter near Les Halles; and in Le Marais.
[8]
Under
Napoleon III
, Baron
Haussmann
demolished the poorest, most crowded and historical neighborhoods in the center of the city to make room for the new boulevards and squares. The working-class Parisians moved out of the center toward the edges of the city, particularly to
Belleville
and
Menilmontant
in the east; to
Clignancourt
and the
Quartier des Grandes-Carrieres
to the north; and on the Left Bank to the area around the
Gare d'Austerlitz
,
Javel
and
Grenelle
, usually to neighborhoods that were close to their places of work. Small quarters of working-class Parisians remained in the center of the city, mainly on the sides of the
Montagne Sainte-Genevieve
in the Latin Quarter near the
Sorbonne
and the
Jardin des Plantes
and along the covered
Bievre River
, where the tanneries had been located for centuries.
[9]
Paris was both the richest and poorest city in France. Twenty-four percent of the wealth in France was found in the
Seine department
, but 55% of burials of Parisians were made in the section for those unable to pay. In 1878, two-thirds of Parisians paid less than 300 francs a year for their lodging, a very small amount at the time. An 1882 study of Parisians, based on funeral costs, concluded that 27% of Parisians were upper or middle class, while 73% were poor or indigent. Incomes varied greatly according to the neighborhood: in the 8th arrondissement, there were eight poor persons for ten upper or middle class residents; in the
13th
,
19th
and
20th
arrondissements, there were seven or eight poor for every well-off resident.
[10]
The
Apaches
of Paris
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Apaches
was a term that was introduced by Paris newspapers in 1902 for young Parisians who engaged in petty crime and sometimes fought each other or the police. They usually lived in
Belleville
and
Charonne
. Their activities were described in lurid terms by the popular press, and they were blamed for all varieties of crime in the city. In September 1907, the newspaper
Le Gaulois
described an
Apache
as "the man who lives on the margin of society, ready to do anything, except to take a regular job, the miserable who breaks in a doorway, or stabs a passer-by for nothing, just for pleasure."
Government and politics
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After the Commune took over the municipal government of Paris in March 1871, the French national government concluded that Paris was too important to be run by the Parisians alone. On 14 April 1871, just before the end of the Commune, the National Assembly, meeting in Versailles, passed a new law giving Paris a special status different from other French cities and subordinate to the national government. All male Parisians could vote. The city was given a municipal council of eighty members, four from each arrondissement, for a term of three years. The council could meet for four sessions a year, none longer than ten days, except when considering the budget, when six weeks were allowed. There was no elected mayor. The real powers in the city remained the Prefect of the Seine and the Prefect of Police, both appointed by the national government.
The first legislative elections after the Commune, on 7 January 1872, were won by the conservative candidates.
Victor Hugo
, running as an independent candidate on the side of the radical republicans, was soundly defeated.
In the Paris municipal elections of 1878, however, the radical Republicans were overwhelmingly victorious, winning 75 of the 80 municipal council seats. In 1879, they changed the name of many of the Paris streets and squares. The "Place du Chateau-d’Eau" became the
Place de la Republique
, and a statue of the Republic was placed in the center in 1883. The avenues "de la Reine-Hortense" (named for the mother of Napoleon III,
Hortense de Beauharnais
), "Josephine" (name for the wife of Napoleon I,
Josephine de Beauharnais
), and "Roi-de-Rome" (named for
Napoleon II
), were renamed
Avenue Hoche
, Avenue Marceau, and
Avenue Kleber
, after generals who served during the period of the
French Revolution
:
Lazare Hoche
,
Francois Severin Marceau-Desgraviers
, and
Jean-Baptiste Kleber
.
The burning of the Tuileries Palace by the Commune meant that there was no longer a residence for the French
head of state
. The
Elysee Palace
was chosen as the new residence in 1873. It was built between 1718 and 1722 by the architect Armand-Claude Mollet for
Louis Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne
,
Count of Evreux
, then purchased in 1753 by King
Lous XV
for his mistress, the
Marquise de Pompadour
. During the period of the
French Consulate
, it was owned by
Joachim Murat
, one of Napoleon's marshals. In 1805,
Napoleon
made it one of his imperial residences, and it became the official presidential residence when his nephew,
Louis-Napoleon
, the future Emperor Napoleon III, became President of the
Second Republic
. During the
Bourbon Restoration
of 1815?30, the Elysee gardens were a popular amusement park. The Elysee Palace had no large room for ceremonial events, so a large ballroom was added during the
Third Republic
.
The most memorable Parisian civic event during the period was the funeral of
Victor Hugo
in 1885. Hundreds of thousands of Parisians lined the
Champs-Elysees
to see the passage of his coffin. The
Arc de Triomphe
was draped in black. The remains of the writer were placed in the
Pantheon
, formerly the Church of Saint-Genevieve, which had been turned into a
mausoleum
for great Frenchmen during the French Revolution, then turned back into a church in April 1816, during the Bourbon Restoration. After several changes during the 19th century, it was secularized again in 1885 for the occasion of Victor Hugo's funeral.
Social unrest, anarchists and the Boulanger crisis
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The
Belle Epoque
was spared the violent uprisings that brought down two French regimes in the 19th century, but it had its share of political and social conflicts and occasional violence. Labor unions and strikes had been legalized during the regime of Napoleon III. The first labor union congress in Paris took place in October 1876,
[15]
and the socialist party recruited many members among the Paris workers. On May 1, 1890, the socialists organized the first celebration of
May Day
, the international day of labor. Since it was an unauthorized celebration, it led to confrontations between police and demonstrators.
The majority of political violence came from the
anarchist
movement of the 1890s. The first attack was organized by an anarchist named
Ravachol
, who set off bombs at three residences of wealthy Parisians. On April 25, he set off a bomb at the Restaurant Very at the Palais-Royal and was arrested. On 8 November, anarchists planted a bomb in the office of the Compagnie Miniere et Metallurgique, a mining company, on the
Avenue de l'Opera
. The police found the bomb, but when it was taken to the police headquarters, it exploded, killing six persons. On 6 December, an anarchist named
Auguste Vaillant
set off a bomb in the building of the National Assembly that wounded forty-six persons. On 12 February 1894, an anarchist named
Emile Henry
set off a bomb at the cafe of the Hotel Terminus next to the
Gare Saint-Lazare
that killed one person and wounded seventy-nine.
Another political crisis shook Paris beginning on 2 December 1887, when the president of the republic,
Jules Grevy
, was forced to resign when it was discovered that he had been selling the nation's highest award, the
Legion of Honour
. A popular general,
Georges Ernest Boulanger
, had his name put forward as a potential new leader. He became known as "the man on horseback" because of images of him on his black horse. He was supported by ardent nationalists who wanted a war with Germany to take back
Alsace
and
Lorraine
, which were lost in the
1870 Franco-Prussian War
. Monarchist politicians began to promote Boulanger as a potential new leader who could dissolve the parliament, become president, recover the lost provinces and restore the French monarchy. Boulanger was elected to parliament in 1888, and his followers urged him to go to the Elysee Palace and declare himself president; but he refused, saying that he could win the office legally in a few months. However, the wave of enthusiasm for Boulanger quickly faded away, and he went into voluntary exile. The government of the Third Republic remained firmly in place.
The Police
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The Paris police force was completely re-organized after the fall of Napoleon III and the Commune; the
sergents de ville
were replaced by the
gardiens de la paix publique
(Guardians of the Public Peace), which by June 1871 had 7,756 men under the authority of the Prefect of Police named by the national government. Following a series of anarchist bombings in 1892, the number was increased to 7,000 guardians, 80
brigadiers
and 950
sous-brigadiers
. In 1901, under the prefect
Louis Lepine
, in order to keep up with the technology of the time, a unit of policemen on bicycles (called the
hirondelles
after the brand of the bicycles) was formed. They numbered 18 per arrondissement and reached 600 by 1906 for the whole city. A unit of river police, the
brigade fluviale
, was organized in 1900 for the
Universal Exposition
, as well as a unit of traffic police who wore a symbol of a Roman chariot embroidered on the sleeve of their uniform. The first six motorcycle policemen appeared on the streets in 1906.
In addition to the
gardiens de la paix publique
, Paris was guarded by the
Garde republicaine
under the military command of the
Gendarmerie
Nationale. Gendarmes had been a particular target of the Commune; 33 had been taken hostages and were executed by a (Communard) firing squad on Rue Haxo on 23 May 1871 in the last days of the Commune. In June 1871, they provided security in the damaged city. They numbered 6,500 men in two regiments, plus a unit of
cavalry
and a dozen cannon. The number was reduced in 1873 to 4,000 men in a single regiment, called the
Legion de la Garde republicaine
(Legion of the Republican Guard), with its headquarters on the Quai de Bourbon and troops quartered in several barracks around the city. The Republican Guard was given the duty of providing security for the president of the republic at the Elysee Palace, the National Assembly and the Senate, at the prefecture of police, and also at the
Opera
, theaters, public balls, racetracks, and other public places. A unit of bicyclists was formed on 6 June 1907. When World War I began, the entire unit of Paris gendarmes was mobilized and fought at the front during war; 222 of them lost their lives.
By a decree of 29 June 1912, to assure the security of Paris by fighting organized criminals such as the
Apaches
and the
bande a Bonnot
, a criminal section called the
Brigade criminelle
was created.
Religion
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Paris in the
Belle Epoque
witnessed a long and sometimes bitter dispute between the Catholic Church and governments of the Third Republic. During the Commune, the Church was particularly targeted for attack; 24 priests and the Archbishop of Paris were taken hostages and shot by firing squads in the final days of the Commune. The new government after 1871 was conservative and Catholic, and provided substantial funding for the Church establishment through the Ministere des Cultes, which approved the building of the Basilica of Sacre-Cœur on Montmartre without government funds as an act of expiation for the events of 1870?1871. The anti-clerical Republicans took power in 1879, and one of their leaders,
Jules Ferry
, declared: "My objective is to organize humanity without God and without kings."
[21]
In March 1880, the Assembly outlawed religious congregations not authorized by the State, and on 30 June had the police expel the Jesuits from their building at 33 Rue de Sevres. 260 monasteries and convents were closed in Paris and the rest of France. A new law was passed declaring that all public education should be non-religious (
laique
) and obligatory. In 1883, new laws were passed to forbid public prayers and forbid soldiers to attend religious services in uniform. In 1881, twenty-seven cadets from the
Ecole speciale militaire de Saint-Cyr
(Military Academy of Saint-Cyr) were expelled for attending a mass at the
church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres
. The law against working on Sunday was repealed in 1880 (it was reinstated in 1906 to assure workers a day of rest), and in 1885, divorce was authorized.
The new Municipal Council of Paris, also dominated by radical republicans, had little formal power, but it took many symbolic measures against the Church. Nuns and other religious figures were forbidden to have official positions in hospitals, statues were put up to honor
Voltaire
and
Diderot
, and the Pantheon was secularized in 1885 to receive the remains of Victor Hugo. Several of the streets of Paris were renamed for republican and socialist heroes, including
Auguste Comte
(1885),
Francois-Vincent Raspail
(1887),
Armand Barbes
(1882), and
Louis Blanc
(1885). Specifically forbidden by the Catholic Church, cremation was authorized at
Pere Lachaise Cemetery
. In 1899, the
Dreyfus affair
divided Parisians (and the whole of France) even more; the Catholic newspaper
La Croix
published virulent anti-Semitic articles against the army officer.
The new National Assembly of 1901 had a strongly anti-clerical majority. At the urging of the socialist members, the Assembly officially voted the separation of Church and State on 9 December 1905. The budget of 35 million francs a year given to the Church was cut off, and disputes took place over the official residences of the clergy. On December 17, the police evicted the Archbishop of Paris from his official residence at 127 Rue de Grenelle; the Church responded by banning midnight masses in the city. A law of 1907 finally resolved the issue of property; churches built before that date, including the cathedral of Notre Dame, became the property of the French state, while the Catholic Church was given the right to use them for religious purposes. Despite the cutoff of government assistance, the Catholic Church was able to build 24 new churches, including 15 in the suburbs of Paris, between 1906 and 1914. Official relations between Church and State were almost non-existent to the end of the
Belle Epoque
.
The Jewish community in Paris had grown from 500 in 1789, or one percent of the Jewish community in France, to 30,000 in 1869, or 40 percent. Beginning in 1881, there were new waves of immigration from Eastern Europe that brought 7 to 9,000 new arrivals each year, and French-born Jews in the 3rd and 4th arrondissements were soon outnumbered by new arrivals, whose numbers increased from 16 percent of the population in those arrondissements to 61 percent. The
pogroms
in the
Russian Empire
between 1905 and 1914 provoked a new wave of immigrants arriving in Paris. The community faced a strong current of
antisemitism
, exemplified by the Dreyfus Affair. With the arrival of the great number of
Ashkenazi Jews
from Eastern Europe and Russia, the Paris community became more and more secular and less religious.
There was no
mosque
in Paris until after the First World War. In 1920, the National Assembly voted to honor the memory of the estimated one hundred thousand Muslims from the French colonies in the Maghreb and black Africa who died for France during the war, and gave a credit of 500,000 francs to build the
Grand Mosque of Paris
.
The economy
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The economy of Paris suffered an economic crisis in the early 1870s, followed by a long, slow recovery that led to a period of rapid growth beginning in 1895 until the First World War. Between 1872 and 1895, 139 large enterprises closed their doors in Paris, particularly textile and furniture factories, metallurgy concerns, and printing houses, four industries had been the major employers in the city for sixty years. Most of these enterprises had employed between 100 and 200 workers each. Half of the large enterprises on the center of the city's Right Bank moved out, in part because of the high cost of real estate, and also to get better access to transportation on the river and railroads. Several moved to less-expensive areas at the edges of the city, around
Montparnasse
and La Salpetriere, while others went to the
18th arrondissement
,
La Villette
and the
Canal Saint-Denis
to be closer to the river ports and the new railroad freight yards. Still others relocated to Picpus and
Charonne
in the southeast, or near
Grenelle
and
Javel
in the southwest. The total number of enterprises in Paris dropped from 76,000 in 1872 to 60,000 in 1896, while in the suburbs their number grew from 11,000 to 13,000. In the heart of Paris, many workers were still employed in traditional industries such as textiles (18,000 workers), garment production (45,000 workers), and in new industries which required highly skilled workers, such as mechanical and electrical engineering and automobile manufacturing.
[26]
Cars, airplanes and movies
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Three major new French industries were born in and around Paris at about the turn of the 20th century, taking advantage of the abundance of skilled engineers and technicians and financing from Paris banks. They produced the first French automobiles, aircraft, and motion pictures. In 1898,
Louis Renault
and his brother Marcel built their first automobile and founded a new company to produce them. They established their first factory at
Boulogne-Billancourt
, just outside the city, and made the first French truck in 1906. In 1908, they built 3,595 cars, making them the largest car manufacturer in France. They also received an important contract to make taxicabs for the largest Paris taxi company. When the first World War began in 1914, the Renault taxis of Paris were mobilized to carry French soldiers to the front at the
First Battle of the Marne
.
The French aviation pioneer
Louis Bleriot
also established a company, Bleriot Aeronautique, on the Boulevard Victor-Hugo in
Neuilly
, where he manufactured the first French airplanes. On 25 July 1909, he became the first man to fly across the
English Channel
. Bleriot moved his company to
Buc
, near
Versailles
, where he established a private airport and a flying school. In 1910, he built the Aerobus, one of the first passenger aircraft, which could carry seven persons, the most of any aircraft of the time.
The
Lumiere brothers
had given the first projected showing of a motion picture,
La Sortie de l'usine Lumiere
, at the
Salon Indien du Grand Cafe
of the Hotel Scribe on the
Boulevard des Capucines
, on 28 December 1895. A young French entrepreneur,
Georges Melies
, attended the first showing and asked the Lumiere brothers for a license to make films. The Lumiere Brothers politely declined, telling him that the cinema was for scientific purposes and had no commercial value. Melies persisted and established his own small studio in 1897 in
Montreuil
, just east of Paris. He became a producer, director, scenarist, set designer and actor, and made hundreds of short films, including the first science-fiction film,
A Trip to the Moon
(
Le Voyage dans la Lune
), in 1902. Another French cinema pioneer and producer
Charles Pathe
, also built a studio in Montreuil, then moved to the Rue des Vignerons in
Vincennes
, east of Paris. His chief rival in the early French film industry,
Leon Gaumont
, opened his first studio at about the same time at the Rue des Alouettes in the 19th arrondissement, near the Buttes-Chaumont.
Commerce and the department stores
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The
Belle Epoque
in Paris was the golden age of the
Grand magasin
, or
department store
. The first modern department store in the city,
Le Bon Marche
, was originally a small variety store with a staff of twelve when it was taken over by
Aristide Boucicaut
in 1852. Boucicaut expanded it, and by deft discount pricing, advertising, and innovative marketing (a mail order catalog, seasonal sales, fashion shows, gifts to customers, entertainment for children) turned it into a hugely successful enterprise with a staff of eleven hundred employees and income that increased from 5 million francs in 1860 to 20 million in 1870, then reached 72 million at the time of his death in 1877. He built an enormous new building near the site of the original shop on the Left Bank, with an iron structure designed with the help of the engineering firm of
Gustave Eiffel
.
The success of Bon Marche inspired many competitors. The
Grands Magasins du Louvre
opened in 1855 with an income of 5 million francs that rose to 41 million by 1875 and 2400 employees in 1882. The
Bazar de l'Hotel de Ville
(BHV) opened in 1857 and moved into a larger store in 1866.
Printemps
was founded in 1865 by a former department head of Bon Marche;
La Samaritaine
was opened in 1870; and La Ville de Saint-Denis, the first building in France to have an elevator, in 1869. Alphonse Kahn opened his
Galeries Lafayette
in 1895.
High fashion and luxury goods
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At the beginning of the
Belle Epoque
, the industry of
haute couture
(high fashion) was dominated by the
House of Worth
.
Charles Worth
had designed the clothes of the
Empress Eugenie
during the
Second Empire
and turned high fashion into an industry. His shop at 7
Rue de la Paix
helped make that street the center of fashion in Paris. By 1900, there were more than twenty houses of
haute couture
in Paris, led by designers including
Jeanne Paquin
,
Paul Poiret
,
Georges Doeuillet
,
Margaine-Lacroix
,
Redfern
, Raudnitz, Rouff,
Callot Sœurs
, Blanche Lebouvier, and others, including sons of Charles Worth. Most of these houses had fewer than fifty employees, but the top six or seven firms each had between four hundred and nine hundred employees. They were concentrated on Rue de la Paix and around the Place Vendome, with a few on the nearby Grands Boulevards. At the
Universal Exposition of 1900
, an entire building was devoted to fashion designers. The first fashion show with models had taken place in London in 1908; the idea was quickly copied in Paris.
Jeanne Lanvin
became a member of the
Chambre syndicale de la haute couture
(Syndicate of fashion designers) in 1909.
Coco Chanel
opened her first shop in Paris in 1910, but her fame as a designer came after the First World War.
[30]
The growth of the department stores and tourism created a much larger market for luxury goods, such as perfumes, watches and jewelry. The perfumer
Francois Coty
began making scents in 1904, and achieved his first success selling through department stores. He discovered the importance of elegant bottles in marketing perfume and commissioned
Baccarat
and
Rene Lalique
to design bottles in the
Art Nouveau
style. He realized the desire of middle class consumers to have luxury goods and sold a range of less-expensive perfumes. He also invented the fragrance set, a box of perfume, powder soap, cream and cosmetics with the same scent. He was so successful that in 1908 he built a new laboratory and factory, La Cite des Parfums ("The City of Perfume"), at
Suresnes
in the Paris suburbs. It had 9,000 employees and made one hundred thousand bottles of perfume a day.
[31]
: 24
The watchmaker Louis-Francois Cartier opened a shop in Paris in 1847. In 1899, his grandchildren moved the shop to the Rue de la Paix and made the shop international, opening branches in London (1902), Moscow (1908) and New York (1909). His grandson
Louis Cartier
designed one of the first purpose-built
wristwatches
for the Brazilian aviation pioneer
Alberto Santos-Dumont
, who made the first aircraft flight in Paris in 1906. The "Santos watch" went on sale in 1911 and was a huge success for the company.
Tourism, hotels and railroad stations
[
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]
The industry of mass tourism and large luxury hotels had arrived in Paris under Napoleon III, driven by new railroads and the huge crowds that had come for the first international expositions. The expositions and the crowds grew even larger during the
Belle Epoque
; twenty-three million visitors came to Paris for the
1889 exposition
, and the
1900 exposition
welcomed forty-eight million visitors. The
Grand Hotel du Louvre
, built for the
universal exposition of 1855
, opened that same year. The Grand Hotel on the Boulevard des Capucines opened in 1862. More luxury hotels appeared near the train stations and in the city center during the
Belle Epoque
; the Hotel Continental opened in 1878 on the Rue de Rivoli on the site of the old Ministry of Finance, which had been burned by the Paris Commune. The
Hotel Ritz
on the Place Vendome opened in 1898, and the
Hotel de Crillon
on the
Place de la Concorde
opened in 1909.
The growing number of visitors to Paris required the enlargement of the main train stations to handle all the passengers. The
Gare Saint-Lazare
had been covered with a forty-meter high shed between 1851 and 1853; it was further enlarged for the 1889 exposition, and a new hotel, the Terminus, was built next to it. The station and its huge shed became a popular subject for painters, among them
Claude Monet
, during the period. A brand-new station, the Gare d'Orsay, designed by
Victor Laloux
, opened on 4 July 1900; it was the first station designed for electrified trains. The line was not profitable, and the station was almost demolished in 1971, but between 1980 and 1986 it was turned into the Musee d'Orsay. The
Gare Montparnasse
, serving western France, had been built between 1848 and 1852. It was also enlarged between 1898 and 1900 to serve the growing number of passengers. The
Gare de l'Est
and
Gare du Nord
were both expanded, and the
Gare de Lyon
was completely rebuilt between 1895 and 1902 and given a new restaurant in the ornate style of the period, Le buffet de la Gare de Lyon, renamed the
Train Bleu
in 1963.
From the fiacre to the taxicab
[
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]
In the first part of the
Belle Epoque
, the
fiacre
was the most common form of public transport for individuals; it was a box-line small horse-drawn coach with driver carrying two passengers that could be hired by the hour or by the distance of the trip. In 1900, there were about ten thousand fiacres in service in Paris; half belonged to a single company, the
Compagnie generale des voitures de Paris
; the other five thousand belonged to about five hundred small companies. The first two automobile taxis entered service in 1898, at a time when there were just 1,309 automobiles in Paris. The number remained very small at first; there were just eighteen in service during the Exposition of 1900, only eight in 1904, and 39 in 1905. However, by the end of 1905, the automobile taxi began to take off; there were 417 on the streets of Paris in 1906, and 1,465 at the end of 1907. Most were made by the Renault company in their factory on the
Ile Seguin
, an island on the Seine between
Boulogne-Billancourt
and
Sevres
. There were four large taxi companies; the largest, the
Compagnie francaise des automobiles de place
owned more than a thousand taxis. Beginning 1898, the automobile taxis were equipped with a meter to measure the distance and calculate the fare. First called a
taxametre
, it was renamed
taximetre
on 17 October 1904, which gave birth to the name "taxi". In 1907, Renault began building three thousand specially-built taxis; some were exported to London and others to New York City. The ones that went into service in New York were named "taxi cabriolets", which was shortened in America to "taxicab". By 1913, there were seven thousand taxis on the streets of Paris.
The omnibus, the tramway and the metro
[
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]
At the beginning of the
Belle Epoque
, the horse-drawn
omnibus
was the primary means of public transport. In 1855, Haussmann consolidated ten private omnibus companies into a single company, the C.G.O. (
Compagnie generale des Omnibus
) and gave it the monopoly on public transport. The coaches of the CGO carried twenty-four to twenty-six passengers and ran on thirty-one different lines. The omnibus system was overwhelmed by the number of visitors at the
1867 Exposition
, thus the city began to develop a new system of tramways in 1873. The omnibus continued to run, with larger cars that could carry forty passengers in 1880, and then, in 1888?89, a lighter vehicle that could carry thirty passengers, called an
omnibus a imperiale
. The horse-drawn tramway gradually replaced the horse-drawn omnibus. In 1906, the first motorized omnibuses began to run on Paris streets. The last horse-drawn omnibus run took place on January 11, 1913 between Saint-Sulpice and La Villette.
The horse-drawn
tramway
, running on a track flush with the street, had been introduced in New York in 1832. A French engineer living in New York, Loubat, brought the idea to Paris and opened the first tramway line in Paris, between the Place de la Concorde and the Barriere de Passy in November 1853. He extended the line, known as the
Chemin de fer americain
("American rail line"), all the way across Paris from
Boulogne
to Vincennes in 1856. But then it was purchased by the CGO, the main omnibus line, and remained simply a curiosity. Only in 1873 did the tramway begin to gain importance, when the CGO lost its monopoly on city transport and two new companies, Tramways Nord and Tramways Sud, one financed by Belgian banks and the other by British banks, began operating from the center of Paris to the suburbs. The CGO responded by opening two new lines, one from the Louvre to Vincennes, the other following the line of fortifications around the city. By 1878, forty different lines were operating, half by the CGO. The companies tried a brief experiment with steam-powered tramways in 1876, but abandoned them in 1878. The electric-powered tramway, in service in Berlin since 1881, did not arrive in Paris until 1898, with a line from Saint-Denis to the Madeleine.
When the
1900 Universal Exposition
was announced in 1898 in anticipation of millions of visitors coming to Paris, most of the public transport in Paris was still horse-drawn; forty-eight lines of omnibuses and thirty-four tramway lines still used horses, while there were just thirty-six lines of electric tramways. The last horse-drawn tramways were replaced with electric trams in 1914.
Other cities were well ahead of Paris in introducing underground or elevated metropolitan railways: London (1863), New York (1868), Berlin (1878), Chicago (1892), Budapest (1896) and Vienna (1898) all had them before Paris. The reason for the delay was a fierce battle between the French railway companies and national government, which wanted a metropolitan system based on the existing railroad stations that would bring passengers in from the suburbs (like the modern
RER
). The Municipal Council of Paris, in contrast, wanted an independent underground metro only in the twenty arrondissements of the city that would support the tramways and omnibuses on the streets. The plan of the municipality won and was approved on 30 March 1898; it called for six lines totaling sixty-five kilometers of track. They chose the Belgian method of construction, with the lines just under the surface of the street, rather than the deep tunnels of the London system.
The first line, which connected the
Porte de Vincennes
with the
Grand Palais
and the other exposition sites, was built the most rapidly (just twenty months) and opened on 19 July 1900, three months after the opening the exposition. It carried more than sixteen million passengers between July and December. Line 2, between
Porte Dauphine
and
Nation
, opened in April 1903, and the modern Line 6 was finished at the end of 1905. The earliest lines used viaducts to cross over the Seine, at
Bercy
,
Passy
and
Austerlitz
. The first line under the Seine, Line 4 between Chatelet and the Left Bank, was built between 1905 and 1909. By 1914, the metro was carrying five hundred million passengers a year.
Constructing Paris
[
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]
Monuments
[
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]
Most of the notable monuments of the
Belle Epoque
were constructed for use at the Universal Expositions, for example the
Eiffel Tower
, the
Grand Palais
, the
Petit Palais
, and the
Pont Alexandre III
. The chief architectural legacy of the Third Republic was a large number of new schools and local city halls, all inscribed with the slogans of the republic and statues of allegorical symbols of the republic; representations of scientists, writers and political figures were placed in parks and squares. The largest monument was an allegorical statue of the republic erected in the center of the Place du Chateau-d'Eau, renamed the
Place de la Republique
in 1879. It was an enormous bronze figure 9.5 meters high of the republic holding an olive branch and standing on a pedestal 15 meters high. On 14 July 1880, the Place du Trone was renamed the
Place de la Nation
, and a group of statues by
Jules Dalou
, called
Triumph of the Republic
, was placed in the center. In the middle was
Marianne
in a chariot drawn by two lions surrounded by allegorical figures of Liberty, Work, Justice and Abundance. A plaster version was put in place in 1889, the bronze version in 1899. A 29-meter tall monument with a statue of another republican hero,
Leon Gambetta
, surmounted by a
pylon
crowned by a winged lion, was placed in the
Cour Napoleon
of the
Louvre
in 1888. It was taken down in 1954 after destructions during World War II, but some remaining sculptures including that of Gambetta himself were placed in 1982 in the Square Edouard-Vaillant (
20th arrondissement
) by the socialist president
Francois Mitterrand
.
Streets and boulevards
[
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]
The construction of the new boulevards and streets begun by Napoleon III and Haussmann had been much criticized by Napoleon's opponents near the end of the Second Empire, but the government of the Third Republic continued his projects. The
Avenue de l'Opera
,
Boulevard Saint-Germain
, Avenue de la Republique, Boulevard Henry-IV and Avenue Ledru-Rollin were all completed by 1889 essentially as Haussmann had planned them before his death. After 1889, the pace of construction slowed down. The
Boulevard Raspail
was finished, the Rue Reaumur was extended, and several new streets were created on the left bank: the Rue de la Convention, Rue de Vouille,
Rue d'Alesia
, and Rue de Tolbiac. On the Right Bank, the Rue Etienne-Marcel was the last of the Haussmann projects to be completed before the First World War.
While the streets planned by Haussmann were completed, the strict uniformity of facades and building heights imposed by him was gradually modified. Buildings became much larger and deeper, with two apartments on each floor facing the street and others facing only onto the courtyard. The new buildings often had ornamental rotundas or pavilions on the corners and highly ornamental roof designs and gables. In 1902, maximum building heights were increased to 52 meters. With the advent of elevators, the most desirable apartments were no longer on the lowest floors, but on the highest floors, where there was more light, nicer views and less noise. With the arrival of automobiles and the beginning of traffic noise on the streets, the bedrooms moved to the back of the apartment, overlooking the courtyard.
The facades also changed from the strict symmetry of Haussmann: undulating facades appeared, as did bay and bow windows. Eclectic facades became popular; they often mixed the styles of
Louis XIV
,
Louis XV
and
Louis XVI
, and then, with the advent of
Art nouveau
style, floral patterns could be incorporated. The most striking examples of the new architecture were the
Castel Beranger
on the Rue La Fontaine and the
Hotel Lutetia
. Between 1898 and 1905, the city organized eight competitions for the most imaginative building facades; variety was given precedence over uniformity. .
Architecture
[
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]
The architectural style of the
Belle Epoque
was eclectic and sometimes combined elements of several different styles. While the structures of the new buildings were resolutely modern, using iron frames and reinforced concrete, the facades ranged from the
Romano-Byzantine style
of the Basilica of Sacre-Cœur on Montmartre, to the strange
neo-Moorish
Palais du Trocadero
, to the
neo-Renaissance style
of the new Hotel de Ville, to the exuberant reinvention of
French classicism of the 17th
and
18th centuries
in the
Grand Palais
,
Petit Palais
and Gare d'Orsay, decorated as they are with
domes
,
colonnades
,
mosaics
and statuary. The most innovative buildings of the period were the
Gallery of Machines
at the 1889 exposition and the new railroad stations and department stores: their classical exteriors concealed very modern interiors with large open spaces and large glass skylights made possible by the new engineering techniques of the period. The Eiffel Tower shocked many traditional Parisians, both because of its appearance and because it was the first building in Paris taller than the cathedral of Notre-Dame.
Art Nouveau
became the most striking stylistic innovation of the period in architecture. It is associated particularly with the metro station entrances designed by
Hector Guimard
and a handful of buildings, including Guimard's
Castel Beranger
(1889) at 14 Rue La Fontaine and the Hotel Mezzara (1910) in the
16th arrondissement
.
The enthusiasm for Art Nouveau metro station entrances did not last long; in 1904 it was replaced at the
Opera
metro station by a less exuberant "modern" style. Beginning in 1912, all the Guimard metro entrances were replaced with functional entrances without decoration.
[41]
A revolutionary new building material,
reinforced concrete
, appeared at the beginning of the 20th century and quietly began to change the face of Paris. The first church built in the new material was
Saint-Jean de Montmartre
, at 19 Rue des Abbesses at the foot of Montmartre. The architect was
Anatole de Baudot
, a student of
Viollet-le-Duc
. The nature of the revolution was not evident, because Baudot faced the concrete with brick and ceramic tiles in a colorful Art Nouveau style with stained glass windows in the same style.
The
Theatre des Champs-Elysees
(1913) is another architectural landmark of the period, one of the few Paris buildings in the
Art deco
style. Designed by
Auguste Perret
, it was also built of reinforced concrete and decorated by some of the leading artists of the era:
bas-reliefs
on the facade by
Antoine Bourdelle
, a dome by
Maurice Denis
, and paintings in the interior by
Edouard Vuillard
. It was the setting in 1913 for one of the major musical events of the
Belle Epoque
: the premiere of
Igor Stravinsky
's
The Rite of Spring
.
Bridges
[
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]
Eight new bridges were put across the Seine during the
Belle Epoque
. The
Pont Sully
, built in 1876, replaced two foot bridges that had connected the
Ile Saint-Louis
to the Right and Left Bank. The
Pont de Tolbiac
was built in 1882 to connect the Left Bank with
Bercy
. The
Pont Mirabeau
, made famous in a poem by
Apollinaire
, was dedicated in 1895. Three bridges were built for the 1900 Exposition: the
Pont Alexandre-III
, dedicated by Czar
Nicholas II of Russia
in 1896, which connected the Left Bank with the grand exposition halls of the
Grand Palais
and
Petit Palais
; the
Passerelle Debilly
, a foot bridge that linked two sections of the Exposition; and a railroad bridge between Grenelle and Passy. Two more bridges were dedicated in 1905: the Pont de Passy (now the
Pont de Bir-Hakeim
), and the
Viaduc d'Austerlitz
, crossed by the metro.
Parks, gardens and squares
[
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]
The work of creating parks, squares and promenades during the
Belle Epoque
continued in the Second Empire style. The projects were managed at first by
Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand
, who had been the head of department of parks and promenades under Haussmann and was elevated to the post of Director of Public Works of Paris, a position he held until his death in 1891. He was also the director of works of the 1889 Universal Exposition, responsible for building the exposition's gardens and pavilions.
Alphand finished several of the projects begun under Haussmann: the
Parc Montsouris
(1869?1878), the Square Boucicaut (1873), and the Square Popincourt (later renamed Parmentier, and still later Maurice-Gardette), which replaced a demolished slaughterhouse and opened in 1872. Alphand's first major project of the
Belle Epoque
was the
Jardins du Trocadero
, the site of the Universal Exposition of 1878 that surrounded the enormous Palais de Trocadero, which served as the main building for the exposition. He filled the park with a grotto, fountains, gardens and statues (the statues can now be seen on the parvis of the
Musee d'Orsay
). The park also displayed the full-sized head of the
Statue of Liberty
(
Liberty Enlightening the World
) before the statue was completed and shipped to
New York City
. The grotto and much of the park are still preserved as they were. It was used again for the Universal Exposition of 1889 Exposition, and with new fountains and a new palace added, it was also used for the Universal Exposition of 1937.
During the exposition of 1878, Alphand used the
Champ de Mars
as the site of a huge iron-framed exhibit hall, 725 meters long, surrounded by gardens. For the 1889 exposition, the same site was occupied by the Eiffel Tower and the huge Gallery of Machines, plus two large exhibit halls: the Palace of Liberal Arts and the Palace of Fine Arts. The two palaces were designed by
Jean-Camille Formige
, the chief architect of Paris. The two palaces and the Gallery of Machines were demolished after the exposition, but in 1909, Formige was given the task of transforming the exposition site around the Eiffel Tower into a park with broad lawns, promenades and groves of trees in the form it is today.
Between 1895 and 1898, Formige created another
Belle Epoque
landmark, the
Serres d'Auteuil
, a complex of large greenhouses designed to grow trees and plants for all the gardens and parks of Paris. The largest structure, one hundred meters long, was designed to grow tropical plants. The greenhouses still exist today and are open to the public.
Other than the parks of the expositions, no other large Paris parks were created in the
Belle Epoque
, but several squares of about one hectare each were created. They all had the same basic design: a bandstand in the center, a fence, groves of trees and flower beds, and often also statues. These included the Square Edouard-Vaillant in the 20th arrondissement (1879), the Square Samuel-de-Champlain in the 20th arrondissement (1889), the Square des Epinettes in the 17th arrondissement (1893), the Square Scipion in the 5th arrondissement (1899), the Square Paul-Painleve in the 5th arrondissement (1899) and the Square Carpeaux in the 18th arrondissement (1907).
The best-known and most picturesque park of the period is that composed of the Squares Willette and Nadar on the slope directly below the Basilica of Sacre-Cœur on Montmartre. It was begun by Formige in 1880, but not completed until 1927 by another architect, Leopold Beviere, after the death of Formige in 1926. The park features terraces and slopes dropping eighty meters from the Basilica to the street below, and has one of the best-known views in Paris.
Street lighting
[
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]
At the beginning of the
Belle Epoque
, Paris was lit by a constellation of thousands of
gaslights
that were often admired by foreign visitors and helped give the city its nickname
La Ville-Lumiere
: the "City of Light". In 1870, there were 56,573 gaslights used exclusively to illuminate the streets of the city.
[44]
The gas was produced by ten enormous factories around the edge of the city that were located near the circle of fortifications. It was distributed in pipes installed under the new boulevards and streets. The street lights were placed every twenty meters on the Grands Boulevards. At a predetermined minute after nightfall, a small army of 750 uniformed
allumeurs
("lighters") carrying long poles with small lamps at the end went out into the streets to turn on a pipe of gas inside each lamppost and light the lamp. The entire city was illuminated within forty minutes. The Arc de Triomphe was crowned with a ring of gaslights, and the
Champs-Elysees
was lined with ribbons of white light.
[44]
One of the major urban innovations in Paris was the introduction of
electric street lights
to coincide with the opening of the Universal Exposition of 1878. The first streets lit were the Avenue de l'Opera and the Place de l'Etoile around the Arc de Triomphe. In 1881, electric street lights were added along the Grands Boulevards. Electric lighting came much more slowly for residences and businesses in some Paris neighborhoods. While electric lights lined the Champs-Elysees in 1905, there was no electric lines for any households in the 20th arrondissement.
The Paris Universal Expositions
[
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]
The three "universal expositions" that took place in Paris during the
Belle Epoque
attracted millions of visitors from around the world and displayed the newest innovations in science and technology, from the
telephone
and
phonograph
to electric street lighting.
The 1878 Universal Exposition
[
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]
The
Universal Exposition of 1878
, which lasted from 1 May to 10 November 1878, was designed to advertise the recovery of France from the 1870
Franco-German War
and the destruction of the period of the
Paris Commune
. It took place on both sides of the Seine, in the
Champ de Mars
and the heights of
Trocadero
, where the first
Palais du Trocadero
was built. Many of the buildings were made of new inexpensive material called
staff
, which was composed of jute fiber, plaster of Paris, and cement. The main exposition hall was an enormous rectangular structure, the Palace of Machines, where the Eiffel Tower is located today. Inside,
Alexander Graham Bell
displayed his new telephone and
Thomas Edison
presented his
phonograph
. The head of the newly finished
Statue of Liberty
(
Liberty Enlightening the World
) was displayed before it was sent to New York City to be attached to the body. Important congresses and conferences took place on the margins of the exposition, including the first congress on
intellectual property
, led by
Victor Hugo
, whose proposals led eventually to the first
copyright
laws, and a conference on education for the blind, which led to the adoption of the
Braille
system of reading for the blind. The exposition attracted thirteen million visitors, and was a financial success.
The 1889 Universal Exposition
[
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]
The
Universal Exposition of 1889
took place from 6 May until 31 October 1889 and celebrated the centenary of the beginning of the
French Revolution
; one of the structures on the grounds was a replica of the
Bastille
. It took place on the Champ de Mars, the hill of
Chaillot
, and along the Seine at the
Quai d'Orsay
. The most memorable feature was the
Eiffel Tower
, 300 meters tall when it opened (now 324 with the addition of broadcast antennas), which served as the gateway to the exposition.
The Eiffel Tower remained the world's tallest structure until 1930.
[47]
It was not popular with everyone; its modern style was denounced in a public letter by many of France's most prominent cultural figures, including
Guy de Maupassant
,
Charles Gounod
and
Charles Garnier
.
[48]
The largest building was the iron-framed
Gallery of Machines
, at the time the largest covered interior space in the world. Other popular exhibits included the first musical fountain, lit with colored electric lights that changed in time to music.
Buffalo Bill
and sharpshooter
Annie Oakley
drew large crowds to their
Wild West Show
at the exposition.
[49]
The exposition welcomed 23 million visitors.
The 1900 Universal Exposition
[
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]
The
Universal Exposition of 1900
took place from 15 April until 12 November 1900. It celebrated the turn of the century and was by far the largest in scale of the Expositions; its sites included the
Champ de Mars
,
Chaillot
, the
Grand Palais
and the
Petit Palais
. Beside the Eiffel Tower, it featured the world's largest
ferris wheel
, the "Grande Roue de Paris", one hundred metres high, that could carry sixteen hundred passengers in forty cars. Inside the exhibit hall,
Rudolph Diesel
demonstrated his new engine, and one of the first
escalators
was on display. The Exposition coincided with the
1900 Paris Olympics
, the first Olympic games held outside of Greece. The Exposition popularized a new artistic style, the
Art nouveau
, to the world.
[51]
Two architectural legacies of the Exposition, the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, are still in place in the city.
[52]
Though it was a great popular success, attracting an estimated forty-eight million visitors, the 1900 exposition lost money and was the last such exposition in Paris on such a grand scale.
Restaurants, cafes, and brasseries
[
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]
Paris was already famous for its restaurants in the first half of the 19th century, particularly the Cafe Riche, the Maison Doree and the Cafe Anglais on the Grands Boulevards, where the wealthy personalities of Balzac's novels would dine. The Second Empire had added more luxury restaurants, particularly in the center near the new grand hotels: Durand at the Madeleine; Voisin on the Rue Cambon and
Rue Saint-Honore
; Magny on the Rue Mazet; Foyot near the Luxembourg Gardens; and Maire at the corner of the
Boulevard de Strasbourg
and Boulevard Saint-Denis, where
lobster thermidor
was invented. During the
Belle Epoque
, many more prestigious restaurants could be found, including Laurent,
Fouquet's
and the Pavillon de l'Elysee on the Champs-Elysees; the
Tour d'Argent
on the Quai de la Tournelle; Prunier on the Rue Duphot;
Drouant
on the Place Gaillon; Laperouse on the Quai des Grands-Augustins; Lucas Carton at the Madeleine, and Weber on the
Rue Royale
. The most famous restaurant of the period,
Maxim's
, also opened its doors on the Rue Royale. Two luxury restaurants were found by the lakes in the Bois de Boulogne: the Pavillon d'Armenonville and the Cascade.
For those with more modest budgets, there was the
Bouillon
, a type of restaurant begun by a butcher named Duval in 1867. These establishment served simple and inexpensive food and were popular with students and visitors. One from this period, Chartier, near the Grands Boulevards, still exists.
A new type of restaurant, the
Brasserie
, appeared in Paris during the 1867 Universal Exposition. The name originally meant a place that brewed beer, but in 1867 it was a type of cafe where young women in the national costumes of different countries served different drinks of those countries, including beer, ale, chianti, and vodka. The idea was continued after the Exposition by the Brasserie de l'Esperance on the Rue Champollion on the Left Bank, and was soon imitated by others. By 1890, there were forty-two brasseries on the Left Bank, with names including the Brasserie des Amours, the Brasserie de la Vestale, the Brasserie des Belles Marocaines, and the Brasserie des Excentriques Polonais (brasserie of the eccentric Poles), and they were often used as a place to meet prostitutes.
Sports
[
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]
Paris played a central role in the organization of international sports and in the professionalization of sports. The first efforts to revive the
Olympic Games
were led by a French educator and historian,
Pierre de Coubertin
. The first meeting to organize the games took place at the
Sorbonne
in 1894, resulting in the creation of the
International Olympic Committee
and the holding of the first modern Olympic Games in
Athens
in 1896. The second games, the first Olympics held outside of Greece, were the
1900 Summer Olympics
in Paris, from 14 May until 28 October 1900, organized in conjunction with the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900. There were 19 sports included in the event, and women competed in the Olympics for the first time. The swimming events took place in the Seine. Some of the sports were unusual by modern standards; they included automobile and motorcycle racing,
cricket
,
croquet
, underwater swimming, tug-of-war, and shooting live pigeons.
Cycling also became an important professional sport, with the opening in 1903 of the first cycling stadium, the
Velodrome d'hiver
, on the site of the demolished Palace of Machinery from the 1900 Exposition on the Champ de Mars. The first stadium was demolished and moved in 1910 to
boulevard de Grenelle
. The first
Tour de France
, the most famous of all French cycling events, took place in 1903, with the finish line at the
Parc des Princes
stadium.
In September 1901, Paris hosted the first European
lawn tennis
championship in 1901, and on June 1, 1912, hosted the first world championship of tennis, at the stadium of the Faisanderie in the
Domaine national de Saint-Cloud
.
The first championship of France in
football
took place in 1894, with six teams competing. It was won by the team
Standard Athletic Club of Paris
; the team had one French player and ten British players. The first
rugby
match between England and France took place on 26 March 1906 at the
Parc des Princes
, with the victory of England.
Paris also hosted several of the world's earliest automobile races. The first, in 1894, was the Paris-Rouen race, organized by the newspaper
Le Petit Journal
. The first Paris-Bordeaux race took place on 10?12 June 1895, and the first race from Paris to Monte-Carlo in 1911.
Science and technology
[
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]
Scientists in Paris played a leading role in many of major scientific developments of the period, particularly in
bacteriology
and
physics
.
Louis Pasteur
(1822-1895) was a pioneer in
vaccination
, microbacterial fermentation and
pasteurization
. He developed the first vaccines against
anthrax
(1881) and
rabies
(1885), and the process for stopping bacterial growth in milk and wine. He founded the
Pasteur Institute
in 1888 to carry on his work, and his tomb is located at the institute.
The physicist
Henri Becquerel
(1852-1908), while studying the fluorescence of uranium salts, discovered
radioactivity
in 1896, and in 1903 was awarded the
Nobel Prize
in physics for his discovery.
Pierre Curie
(1859-1906) and
Marie Curie
(1867-1934) jointly carried on Becquerel's work, discovering
radium
and
polonium
(1898). They jointly received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903. Marie Curie became the first female professor at the University of Paris and won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1911. She was the first woman to be buried in the Pantheon.
The
neon light
was used for the first time in Paris on 3 December 1910 in the Grand Palais. The first outdoor neon advertising sign was put up on
Boulevard Montmartre
in 1912.
The arts
[
edit
]
Literature
[
edit
]
During the
Belle Epoque
, Paris was the home and inspiration for some of France's most famous writers.
Victor Hugo
was sixty-eight when he returned to Paris from Brussels in 1871 and took up residence on the Avenue d'Eylau (now
Avenue Victor Hugo
) in the
16th arrondissement
. He failed to be re-elected to the National Assembly, but in 1876, he was elected to the French Senate.
[56]
It was a difficult period for Hugo; his daughter
Adele
was placed in an
insane asylum
, and his longtime mistress,
Juliette Drouet
, died in 1883. When Hugo died 28 May 1885 at the age of eighty-three, hundreds of thousands of Parisians lined the streets to pay tribute as his coffin was taken to the Pantheon on 1 June 1885.
Emile Zola
was born in Paris in 1840, the son of an Italian engineer. He was raised by his mother in
Aix-en-Provence
, then returned to Paris in 1858 with his friend
Paul Cezanne
to attempt a literary career. He worked as a mailing clerk for the publisher
Hachette
and began attracting literary attention in 1865 with his novels in the new style of
naturalism
. He described in intimate details the workings of Paris department stores, markets, apartment buildings and other institutions, and the lives of the Parisians. By 1877, he had become famous and wealthy from his writing. He took a central role in the
Dreyfus affair
, helping win justice for
Alfred Dreyfus
, a French artillery officer of
Alsatian Jewish background
, who had falsely been accused of treason.
Guy de Maupassant
(1850-1893) moved to Paris in 1881 and worked as a clerk for the
French Navy
, then for the
Ministry of Public Education
, as he wrote short stories and novels at a furious pace. He became famous, but also became ill and depressed, then paranoid and suicidal. He died at the asylum of Saint-Esprit in
Passy
in 1893.
Other writers who made a mark in the Paris literary world of the Third Republic's
Belle Epoque
included
Anatole France
(1844-1924);
Paul Claudel
(1868-1955);
Alphonse Allais
(1854-1905);
Guillaume Apollinaire
(1880-1918);
Maurice Barres
(1862-1923);
Rene Bazin
(1853-1932);
Colette
(1873-1954);
Francois Coppee
(1842-1908);
Alphonse Daudet
(1840-1897);
Alain Fournier
(1886-1914);
Andre Gide
(1869-1951);
Pierre Louys
(1870-1925);
Maurice Maeterlinck
(1862-1949);
Stephane Mallarme
(1840-1898);
Octave Mirbeau
(1848-1917);
Anna de Noailles
(1876-1933);
Charles Peguy
(1873-1914);
Marcel Proust
(1871-1922);
Jules Renard
(1864-1910);
Arthur Rimbaud
(1854-1891);
Romain Rolland
(1866-1944);
Edmond Rostand
(1868-1918); and
Paul Verlaine
(1844-1890). Paris was also the home of one of the greatest Russian writers of the period,
Ivan Turgenev
.
Music
[
edit
]
Paris composers during the period had a major impact on European music, moving it away from romanticism toward
impressionism in music
and
modernism
.
Camille Saint-Saens
(1835-1921) was born in Paris and admitted to the
Paris Conservatory
when he was thirteen. When he finished the Conservatory, he became organist at the church of
Saint-Merri
, and later at
La Madeleine
. His most famous works included the
Danse Macabre
, the opera
Samson et Dalila
(1877), the
Carnival of the Animals
(1877), and his
Symphony No. 3
(1886). On 25 February 1871, he co-founded the
Societe Nationale de Musique
with
Romain Bussine
to promote French contemporary and chamber music. His students included
Maurice Ravel
and
Gabriel Faure
, two of the foremost French composers of the late 19th- and early 20th centuries.
Georges Bizet
(1838-1875), born in Paris, was admitted to the Paris Conservatory when he was only ten years old. He finished his most famous work,
Carmen
, written for the
Opera-Comique
, in 1874. Even before its premiere,
Carmen
was criticized as immoral. Furthermore, the musicians complained that it could not be played, and the singers complained that it could be not be sung. The reviews were mixed, and the audience cold. When Bizet died in 1875, he considered it a failure. Nonetheless,
Carmen
soon became one of the best-known and beloved operas in the repertoire worldwide.
The most famous French composer of the late
Belle Epoque
in Paris was
Claude Debussy
(1862-1918). He was born at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
, near Paris, and entered the Conservatory in 1872. He became part of the Parisian literary circle of the symbolist poet Mallarme. At first an admirer of
Richard Wagner
, he went on to experiment with
impressionism in music
,
atonal
music and
chromaticism
. His most famous works include
Clair de Lune
for piano (written ca. 1890, published 1905),
La Mer
for orchestra (1905) and the opera
Pelleas et Melisande
(1903-1905).
The most revolutionary composer to work in Paris during the
Belle Epoque
was the Russian-born
Igor Stravinsky
. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the
impresario
Sergei Diaghilev
and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's
Ballets Russes
:
The Firebird
(1910),
Petrushka
(1911) and
The Rite of Spring
(1913). The last of these transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and
dissonance
treatment.
Other influential composers in Paris during the period included
Jules Massenet
(1842-1912), author of the operas
Manon
and
Werther
, and
Eric Satie
(1866-1925), who made his living as a pianist at
Le Chat Noir
, a cabaret on Montmartre, after leaving the Conservatory. His most famous works are the
Gymnopedies
(1888).
Painting
[
edit
]
Paris was the home and the frequent subject of the
Impressionists
, who tried to capture the city's light, its colors, and its motion. They survived and flourished because of the support of Paris art dealers, such as
Ambroise Vollard
and
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
, and wealthy patrons, including
Gertrude Stein
.
The first exhibit of the Impressionists took place from April 15 to May 15, 1874 in the studio of the photographer
Nadar
. It was open to any painter who could pay a fee of sixty francs. There,
Claude Monet
exhibited the painting
Impression: Sunrise
(
Impression, soleil levant
), which gave the movement its name. Other artists who took part included
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
,
Berthe Morisot
,
Edgar Degas
,
Camille Pissarro
, and
Paul Cezanne
.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
(1864-1901) spent much of his short life in Montmartre painting and drawing the dancers in cabarets. He produced 737 canvases in his lifetime, thousands of drawings and a series of posters made for the cabaret
Moulin Rouge
. Many other artists lived and worked in
Montmartre
, where rent was low and the atmosphere congenial. In 1876,
Auguste Renoir
rented space at 12 Rue Cartot to paint his
Bal du moulin de la Galette
, which depicts a popular ball at Montmartre on a Sunday afternoon.
Maurice Utrillo
lived at the same address from 1906 to 1914,
Suzanne Valadon
lived and had her studio there, and
Raoul Dufy
shared an atelier there from 1901 to 1911. The building is now the
Musee de Montmartre
.
[61]
A new generation of artists arrived in Montmartre at the turn of the century. Drawn by the reputation of Paris as the world capital of art,
Pablo Picasso
came from
Barcelona
in 1900 to share an apartment with the poet
Max Jacob
and began by painting the cabarets and prostitutes of the neighborhood.
Amedeo Modigliani
and other artists lived and worked in a building called
Le Bateau-Lavoir
during the years 1904?1909. In 1907, Picasso painted one of his most important masterpieces,
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
, in
Le Bateau-Lavoir
. Led by Picasso and
Georges Braque
, the artistic movement
cubism
was born in Paris.
Henri Matisse
came to Paris in 1891 to study at the
Academie Julien
in the class of painter
Gustave Moreau
, who advised him to copy paintings in the Louvre and study
Islamic art
, which Matisse did. He also made the acquaintance of
Raoul Dufy
,
Cezanne
,
Georges Rouault
and
Paul Gauguin
, and began to paint in the style of Cezanne. Matisse visited
Saint-Tropez
in 1905, and when he returned to Paris, he painted a revolutionary work,
Luxe, Calme et Volupte
, using bright colors and bold dabs of paint.
Matisse and artists such as
Andre Derain
,
Raoul Dufy
,
Jean Metzinger
,
Maurice de Vlaminck
and
Charles Camoin
revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called
Fauvism
. Henri Matisse's two versions of
The Dance
(1909) signified a key point in the development of modern painting.
[63]
The
Paris Salon
, which had established the reputations and measured the success of painters throughout the Second Empire, continued to take place under the Third Republic until 1881, when a more radical French government denied it official sponsorship. It was replaced by a new Salon sponsored by the
Societe des Artistes Francais
. In December 1890, the leader of the society,
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
, propagated the idea that the new Salon should be an exhibition of young, yet not awarded, artists.
Ernest Meissonier
,
Puvis de Chavannes
,
Auguste Rodin
and others rejected this proposal and made a secession. They created the
Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts
and its own exhibition, immediately referred to in the press as the Salon du Champ de Mars
[64]
or the Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux?Arts;
[65]
it was soon also widely known as the "Nationale". In 1903, in response to what many artists at the time felt was a bureaucratic and conservative organization, a group of painters and sculptors led by
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
and
Auguste Rodin
organized the
Salon d'Automne
.
Sculpture
[
edit
]
The
Belle Epoque
was a golden age for sculptors; the government of the Third Republic commissioned very few monumental buildings, but did commission a large number of statues to French writers, scientists, artists and political figures that soon filled the city's parks and squares. The most prominent sculptor of the period was
Auguste Rodin
(1840-1917). Born in Paris into a working-class family, he was rejected for entry into the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts
and rejected by the Paris Salon. He had to struggle for many years to win recognition, supporting himself as a decorator and later as a designer for the
Sevres porcelain factory
. He gradually won attention for his design for the
Gates of Hell
, a museum of decorative art which was never built; its plan included what became his most famous work,
The Thinker
. He was commissioned by the city of
Calais
to make a monument,
The Burghers of Calais
(1884), to commemorate an event that took place in that city in 1347, during the
Hundred Years' War
. He was also commissioned to create a
Monument to Balzac
(now on the
Boulevard Raspail
), which caused a scandal and made him a celebrity. Rodin's work was exhibited near the 1900 Exposition, which won him many foreign clients. In 1908, he moved from
Meudon
to Paris, renting the ground floor of a private mansion in the
7th arrondissement
, the Hotel Biron, now the
Musee Rodin
. By the time of his death, he was the most famous sculptor in France, perhaps in the world.
Other more traditional sculptors whose work won acclaim in Paris during the
Belle Epoque
included
Jules Dalou
,
Antoine Bourdelle
(also a former assistant of Rodin), and
Aristide Maillol
. Their works decorated theaters, parks, and were featured at the International Expositions. The more
avant-garde
artists organized themselves into the
Societe des Artistes Independants
. They held annual Salons that helped set the course of modern art. At the turn of the century, Paris attracted sculptors from around the world.
Constantin Brancu?i
(1876-1957) moved from
Bucharest
to
Munich
to Paris, where he was admitted, in 1905, to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He worked for two months in the workshop of Rodin, but left, declaring that "Nothing grows under big trees", and went in his own direction into modernism. Brancu?i won fame at the 1913 "Salon des independants" and became one of the pioneers of modern sculpture.
The flood of 1910
[
edit
]
The Paris flood of 1910 reached the height of 8.5 meters on the scale measuring the river's level on the
Pont de la Tournelle
. The Seine rose above its banks and flooded along the course it had followed in prehistoric times; the water reached as far as the
Gare Saint-Lazare
and the Place du Havre. It was the second-highest flood recorded in the history of Paris (the highest was in 1658), and was the third major flood of the
Belle Epoque
(the others were in 1872 and 1876). Nonetheless, it received much more attention than earlier floods, largely because of the advent of photography and the international press. Postcards and other images of the flood spread around the world. The municipal authorities made a special survey of the city to measure exactly its extent. It also demonstrated the vulnerability of the city's new infrastructure: the flood stopped the Paris Metro and shut down the city's electricity and telephone system. Afterwards, new dams were constructed along the Seine and its major tributaries. No comparable floods have taken place since.
The end of the
Belle Epoque
[
edit
]
On 28 June 1914, the news reached Paris of the assassination of the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand of Austria
by
Serbian
nationalists in
Sarajevo
.
Austria-Hungary
declared war on
Serbia
on 28 July, and following the terms of their alliances, Germany joined Austria-Hungary, while Russia, Britain and France went to war against Austria-Hungary and Germany. France declared a general mobilization on 1 August 1914. On the day before the mobilization, the leader of the French socialists,
Jean Jaures
, was assassinated by a mentally-disturbed man in the Cafe du Croissant near the headquarters of the socialist newspaper
L'Humanite
in Montmartre. The new war was supported by both French nationalists, who saw an opportunity to gain back Alsace and Lorraine from Germany, and by most on the left, who saw an opportunity to overthrow the monarchies in Germany and Austria-Hungary. Parisian men of military age were ordered to report to mobilization points in the city; only one percent did not appear.
The German army rapidly approached Paris. On 30 August, a German plane dropped three bombs on the Rue des Recollets, the Quai de Valmy and the Rue des Vinaigriers, killing one woman. Planes dropped bombs on 31 August and 1 September. On 2 September, a bulletin of the military governor of Paris announced that the French government had left the city "in order to give a new impulsion to the defense of the nation." On 6 September, six hundred Parisian taxis were called upon to carry soldiers to the front lines of the
First Battle of the Marne
. The offensive of the Germans was stopped and their army pulled back. Parisians were urged to leave the city; by 8 September, the population of the city had fallen to 1,800,000, or 63 percent of the population in 1911. For the Parisians, four more years of war and hardship lay ahead. The
Belle Epoque
became just a memory.
Chronology
[
edit
]
1871-1899
[
edit
]
- 1872
- Population: 1,850,000
- 13 January – opening of the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, or
Sciences Po
.
- 1873
- 24 July – Law passed supporting the construction of the
Basilica of Sacre-Cœur
on Montmartre, financed by private contributions.
- 1874
- 1875
- 5 January – Opening of the
Palais Garnier
opera house.
- 3 March: Premiere of Bizet's opera
Carmen
.
- 15 June – first stone placed of the Basilica of Sacre-Cœur.
- 1877
- 1878
- 1879
- July – Installation of first telephone system in Paris.
- 1880
- 1881
- 1882
- 1883
- 16 June – The Catholic daily newspaper
La Croix
begins publication.
- 14 July – Inauguration of the statue
Monument a la Republique
on the
Place de la Republique
.
- August – First municipal summer camp for students of the schools of the 9th arrondissement.
- 22 September – The opening of the first lycee for girls, the
Lycee Fenelon
.
- 1884
- 7 March – Decree requiring the use of trash cans, nicknamed
poubelles
after the Prefect of Paris
Eugene Poubelle
, who introduced it.
[74]
- 8 July – Opening of the first municipal swimming pool at 31 Rue du Chateau-Landon.
- 23 July – Law allowing construction of residential buildings up to seven stories high.
- 7 November – Last serious cholera epidemic in Paris.
- Students' General Association of Paris
founded.
- Les Deux Magots
cafe opens.
- Samuel Bing
art gallery opens.
- Premiere of Massenet's opera
Manon
.
- 2 February – Municipal Council allows women to work as interns in Paris hospitals.
- 1 June – Huge crowds observe the funeral procession of
Victor Hugo
, whose remains are placed in the
Pantheon
.
- 3 August – First stone laid for the new buildings of the
Sorbonne
.
- 1887
- January – Construction begins of the
Eiffel Tower
. The structure is strongly condemned by leading Paris writers and artists.
[75]
- 25 May – A fire destroys the
Opera-Comique
during a performance of
Mignon
; more than a hundred persons are killed.
- 1888
- 1889
- First Paris telephone book published.
- 30 January – First cremation in France at
Pere Lachaise Cemetery
.
- 2 April – Opening of the Eiffel Tower. Guests must climb to the top by the stairs, because the elevators are not finished until May 19.
[75]
- 6 May – Opening of the
Universal Exposition of 1889
. Before it closes on 6 November, the Exposition is seen by twenty-five million visitors.
[75]
- 14 July – Socialist
Second International
founded in Paris.
- 5 August – Opening of the grand amphitheater of the new Sorbonne.
- 1890
- 1 May – First celebration of May 1
Labor Day
by socialists in France, leading to confrontations with police.
- 1891 – Population: 2,448,000
- 15 March – One time zone, Paris time, is established for all of France.
- 20 May – First professional cooking school founded on the
Rue Bonaparte
.
[76]
- 1892
- Le Journal
newspaper begins publication.
- First use of reinforced concrete to construct a building in Paris, at 1 Rue Danton.
- 4 October – Launch of the first weather balloon from the
Parc Monceau
.
- 1893
- 7 April – Cafe
Maxim's
opens.
- 12 April – opening of the
Olympia
music hall on the Boulevard des Capucines.
- 3 July – Disturbances in the Latin Quarter between students and supporters of
Senator Rene Berenger
over supposedly indecent costumes worn at the
Bal des Quatre z'arts
. One person is killed.
[76]
- December – Opening of the
Velodrome d'hiver
cycling stadium on the Rue Suffren, in the former
Galerie des Machines
from the 1889 Exposition.
- 9 December – the anarchist
Auguste Vaillant
explodes a bomb in the National Assembly, injuring forty-six persons.
- 1894
- 10 to 30 January – The Photo-Club de Paris, founded in 1888 by
Constant Puyo
,
Robert Demachy
and Maurice Boucquet, holds the first International Exposition of Photography at the Galeries Georges Petit,
[77]
8 rue de Seze
(8th arrondissement), devoted to photography as an art rather than a science. The exhibit launches the movement called
Pictorialism
.
- First championship of France football tournament between six Parisian teams.
- 12 February – The anarchist
Emile Henry
explodes a bomb in the cafe of the
Gare Saint-Lazare
, killing one person and wounding twenty-three.
- 15 March – The anarchist Amedee Pauwels explodes a bomb in the church of
La Madeleine
. One person, the bomber, is killed.
- 22 July – The first automobile race, organized by
Le Petit Journal
, from Paris to Rouen.
- Asile George Sand (women's shelter) opens.
- 1895
- 1896
- 6 October – Czar
Nicholas II
of Russia lays the first stone for the
Pont Alexandre III
.
- 7 December – the Municipal Council approves the project to build the first Paris Metropolitan subway line.
- 1897
- 1898
- 1899
1900?1913
[
edit
]
- 1900
- 13 February – Whistles are issued to Paris traffic policemen.
- 24 February – The first newsreel films, of the
Boer War
, are shown at the
Olympia Theater
.
- 14 April – The opening of the
Universal Exposition of 1900
that involved the building of the
Grand Palais
, the
Petit Palais
, and the
Pont Alexandre III
. Before it closes on 12 November, the Exposition attracts more than fifty million visitors.
[80]
- 13 May – Right-wing candidates win the municipal elections after twenty years of domination by the left.
- 14 May – The opening of the
1900 Summer Olympics
, Olympiad II, the first Olympic games held outside Greece.
- 19 July – The opening of the first line of the
Paris Metro
, between the
Porte de Versailles
and
Porte Maillot
.
- 15 September – Automatic ticket gates for the metro are replaced by ticket agents due to the high number of people jumping the gates.
- 4 December – Law passed permitting women to practice law.
- 1901
- 1902
- 1903
- 1904
- 6 February ? Opening of the
Alhambra
music hall on Rue de Malte.
- 18 April – The socialist (later Communist) newspaper
L'Humanite
begins publication.
[83]
- 8 May ? Socialists and radicals win the Paris municipal elections.
- 23 November ? Consecration of the first Paris church built of concrete, Saint-Jean-l'Evangeliste de Montmartre.
- 20 December ? The first automobile taxis go into service.
- 1905
- 1906
- Population: 2,722,731.
[85]
- 22 March ? First England-France Rugby match played at the Parc des Princes.
- 11 June ? The first motorized bus line begins service between Montmartre and
Saint-Germain-des-Pres
. Horse-drawn omnibuses continued to run until January 1913.
- 23 October ? First airplane flight in Paris by
Santos Dumont
, who flew sixty meters at an altitude of three meters at the
Parc de Bagatelle
.
- 1907
- 1909
- 1910
- January 21?28 ?
Great flood of Paris
. The Seine rises 8.5 meters, the highest level since 1658, and overflows its banks. The flood affects one sixth of the buildings in Paris.
[86]
- 13 February ? Opening of the
Velodrome d'hiver
cycling stadium on the Rue de Grenelle.
- 3 December ? First use of
neon lights
on the Grand Palais. The first neon advertising sign appears on the
Boulevard Montmartre
in 1912.
- Coco Chanel
opens her first boutique, called Chanel Modes, at 21 Rue Cambon.
[87]
- First
Gauloises
cigarettes go on sale.
- According to
Robert Delaunay
, Salle II of the 1910
Salon des Independants
is "the first collective manifestation of a new art (
un art naissant
), known two years later as
Cubism
.
[88]
- At the Salon d'Automne of 1910, held from 1 October to 8 November,
Jean Metzinger
introduces an extreme form of what would soon be labeled
Cubism
.
[89]
- 1911
- 24 January ? Departure of the first Paris-Monte Carlo automobile race.
- 22 August ? The
Mona Lisa
is stolen from the
Louvre
. It is recovered in Florence in December 1913.
[90]
- Gaumont-Palace
cinema opens.
- Fictional
Fantomas
crime series begins publication.
[91]
- The 1911 Salon des Independants officially introduces "Cubism" to the public as an organized group movement.
- 1912
- 15 February ? Opening of the "Maison de Beaute" salon of
Helena Rubenstein
at 255
Rue Saint-Honore
.
[90]
- 4 May ? Criminal Brigade of the
Surete
formed to deal with major crimes and criminals.
- 1 June ? First world tennis championship held at the Stade de la Faisanderie in
Saint-Cloud
.
- 29 May ? Premiere of Nijinsky's ballet
Afternoon of a Faun
.
- The
Cubist
contribution to the 1912 Salon d'Automne creates a controversy in the Municipal Council of Paris leading to a debate in the French
Chamber des Deputies
about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such art. The Cubists are defended by the Socialist deputy
Marcel Sembat
.
[92]
[93]
- 1913
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
Notes and citations
[
edit
]
- ^
Heron de Villefosse, Rene,
Histoire de Paris
, Bernard Grasset, Paris, 1959, p. 380
- ^
Heron de Villefosse, Rene,
Histoire de Paris
(1959), Bernard Grasset. p. 380-81
- ^
Marchand 1993
, p. 134.
- ^
Marchand 1993
, p. 129.
- ^
Marchand 1993
, p. 132.
- ^
Marchand 1993
, p. 207.
- ^
Jack Aldren Clarke,
French Socialist Congress, 1876,1914
, The Journal of Modern History, The University of Chicago Press, 1989.
- ^
Dansette, A.,
Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine
, pp. 406-407. Cited in Fierro, 1196, p. 369
- ^
Marchand 1993
, p. 126.
- ^
"Coco Chanel & Cremerie de Paris, a Love Story".
- ^
Toledano, Roulhac B.; Elizabeth Z. Coty (2009).
Francois Coty: Fragrance, Power, Money
. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican.
ISBN
978-1-58980-639-9
.
- ^
Marchand 1993
, p. 169.
- ^
a
b
Du Camp, Maxime,
Paris - ses organes, ses fonctions, et sa vie jusqu'en 1870
, p. 596.
- ^
Sutherland 2003
, p. 37.
- ^
"Tour Eiffel, entre refus et fascination, 1899?1950"
(PDF)
.
www.lettresvolees.fr
. Retrieved
4 August
2021
.
- ^
John W. Stamper, "The Galerie des Machines of the 1889 Paris World's Fair."
Technology and culture
(1989): 330-353.
In JSTOR
- ^
Philippe Jullian,
The triumph of Art nouveau: Paris exhibition, 1900
(London: Phaidon, 1974)
- ^
Richard D. Mandell,
Paris 1900: The great world's fair
(1967).
- ^
"Anciens senateurs IIIeme Republique : HUGO Victor"
.
www.senat.fr
.
- ^
Dictionnaire historique de Paris
, (2013), La Pochotheque, (
ISBN
978-2-253-13140-3
)
- ^
Russell T. Clement,
Four French Symbolists
, Greenwood Press, 1996, p. 114.
- ^
Auguste Dalligny, 'Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts - l'Exposition du Champ de Mars',
Journal des Arts
, 16 May 1890
- ^
Paul Bluysen
, 'Le Salon du Champ de Mars - IV, La Republique francaise, 23 June 1890
- ^
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