Paris pour mémoire, le livre noir des destructions haussmaniennes

Haussmann, the grave digger of ancient Paris! This is not the first time this accusation is made and it has some truth though the Paris everyone loves is the one he created, with its large boulevards and its large standard buildings. We must admit though that the préfet of the Seine was honest enough to leave traces of his deeds. Pierre Pinon has recently taken out certain documents from the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris that give an idea of the remarkable idea of the transcriptions that took place before knocking down 250 houses from the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries along rue de Rivoli. Water colored drawings were made of the condemned facades. Unfortunately these documents disappeared during the fire of the Hôtel de Ville. Luckily though Davioud mentioned in 1877 to the librarian that he had kept the minutes (line drawings before the clean copy), which had not been seen since. But they are published in this book, without any comments, something like a slide show of the constructions on rue de la Tixeranderie, rue Trognon, rue Tirechappe,the hôtel de l’Union on rue Nicolas-Flamel, the colonial staples of Villary or the Marivaux baths. A Paris long gone by…

• Paris pour mémoire, le livre noir des destructions haussmaniennes by Pierre Pinon, Parigramme, 2012, 49 Euros.