Marville's Finger of Death

During the transformation of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s, the lens of Charles Marvillle’s camera was called the “finger of death.” Wherever he pointed it, a building or an entire neighborhood soon was demolished. Now, his work shines a “ray of light” on ancienne Paris.

The Second Empire was an autocrat’s dream. For two decades, Emperor Napoleon III ruled France with minimal limits on his power. The most notable achievements of his reign was the wholesale renovation of Paris. Under his plan, carried out from 1853 to 1870, the city was transformed from a tangle of Medieval streets into a boulevard-laced jewel for the bedazzlement of the greater invited world.

In carrying out the emperor's plan, Haussmann moved boldly and flaunted an unbridled sense of entitlement. He answered to no one, save the Emperor, and his colossal financial expenditures were unknown even to Parlement. To this day, Haussmann is denounced by progressive urbanists the world over, but in the case of Paris…eh bien, he won. The Paris we know today is largely the Paris that Haussmann created.

But fortunately, we have Marville.

Marville was engaged by the city to document the transformation of Paris through the nascent craft of photography. Marville’s mandate was, in large part, to demonstrate the wretchedness of the ancienne neighborhoods that Haussmann planned to remove. He replaced them with wide boulevards that let in air and light, and and he provided running water and sanitary sewers.

No doubt, good things came from Haussmann’s plan. Despite this, Haussmannization is anathema to contemporary proponents of "layered" urban renewal that preserves diverse architectural styles and respects community vitality.

Les Deux Portes, Rue des Innocents
Photograph by Charles Marville

Charles Marville: The City's Photographer

Charles Marville (1813-1879) was born Charles François Bossu. He was born in Paris and lived his entire life there. He trained as a painter and illustrator and became a photographer around 1850.

Marville had two tours of duty as an official photographer of Paris. Initially, he was engaged by the city in 1856 to document neighborhoods marked for destruction and replacement. In 1862, he was named “official photographer of Paris,” a title that he proudly displayed over the entrance to his studio.

The time parameters of Marville’s assignment are not well known, as records as well as Marville’s original prints were destroyed when revolutionaries burned the Hotel de Ville in 1871). What is clear is that in 1865, Marville became part of the Travaux Historiques, or the Permanent Subcommittee on Historic Works, overseen by the City Council. His work was included in its publication of "Historique General de Paris in 1866.” In 1873, Marville again worked with the Travaux Historique, reprinting 425 of his “vues de vieux Paris” that were destroyed in the City Hall fire.

In 1877, Marville was commissioned to document the new construction—or in many cases the open spaces, boulevards and parks—that occupied the neighborhoods now gone. A great deal of his photos detail new hardware of the street, so to speak: lamp posts, benches and pissoirs. These were signs of modernity, and Marville photographed them in a manner fit for a museum.

Marville’s photographs, both early and later, are remarkable as documents of quotidian detail and are just as striking in their unemotional quality. They contrast with the later work of Eugene Atget, with whom Marville is often grouped. Atget seems to wring emotion (generally nostalgia) from every patch of fog; Marville projects a clinical clarity.

Marville’s photographic method was to take two shots of an intersection or street, from different vantage points, and often from the center of the street. His camera was placed low, as was his subject matter, favoring puddles and cobblestones over rooftops and sky. He was apparently an early riser, as most streets are devoid of people, barren of activity, though a pushcart or empty café table suggests that at any moment the scene could be flooded with a bustling crowd. The photos are pregnant with expectation.

Marville's photographs also hold a sadness; his visual documentation is all we have left of the streets of Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue and Henri Mugler. We no longer can walk lost streets, but we think we know them from the words of these and other Parisian writers and from the images of Marville.

Parc Monceau neighborhood

Fortunes Were Made in Paris Real Estate

Historians are pretty much in agreement that while Haussmann lived a lavish lifestyle—the plush carriage, the many servants, elegant evenings at the Opera with his bejeweled mistress—he was not, as might be expected, “on the take.” However, a gaggle of his cronies made fortunes from real estate speculation, and their key to buying low and selling high was to know what buildings Marville’s camera (“the finger of death”) was pointed at.

The inside game: Speculators would purchase properties they knew were about to be demolished. Haussmann, on behalf of the city, then overpaid the speculators for them. Once a neighborhood had been “pierced” and cleared, speculators (sometimes the same people) would buy and develop the vacant property; they scored coming and going.

As for the residents of those destroyed neighborhoods? They were forced to the outer faubourgs (working class suburbs) of Paris, in search of affordable housing. Over time, those faubourgs were incorporated into Paris, but the transfer of low-income Parisians from core to perimeter had been achieved.

Following his removal from office, Haussmann lived another 22 years, during which time he penned a voluminous “Memoires du Baron Haussmann” that is filled with self-praise for his success in a transforming Paris into a "magnificent city." 

At this same time, the last three decades of the 19th century, Paris experienced a colossal building boom. Boulevards were lined with the luxury apartment buildings we see today. The Opera Garnier opened to great fanfare. Galleries Lafayette and the expanded Printemps flooded the Grands Boulevards with shoppers. Great fortunes were made. And Haussmann had paved the way for all of it.

Over the past century and a half, Haussmanization has morphed from a historic event to a verb indicating callous urban transformation and even “infrastructure violence.” It is used to describe transformation of cities around the world, from Rio to Mexico City. In New York, Robert Moses, “the Power Broker,” went to school on Haussmann and perfected his technique: Answer only to the big boss, keep your finances above review, give the people parks, and make no apologies for progress, especially if it eliminates congestion.