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The sweeping, majestic boulevards of Paris were created between 1853 and 1870 by Georges-Eugène Haussmann, popularly known as Baron Haussmann. Acting under the instructions of Napoleon III, Haussmann flattened much of medieval and revolutionary Paris to create his wide, straight, long boulevards. Dramatic-looking, yes, but the widths and straightness were not provided for the pleasure of carriage drivers. Air circulation for health, and the desire to be grander than London were part of the plan but crowd control was a significant impetus. Narrow roads can be easily blocked by erecting barricades.While some of the Champs Elysées is today surfaced with oblong granite setts, the road was surfaced initially with compacted crushed stone, surfacing known as macadam after its Scottish inventor John Loudon McAdam. The use of macadam instead of cobblestones, setts or tarred-wooden blocks, reduced the availability of ready-made missiles and fire-starters.
At the time, Mark Twain said Haussmann’s wide, straight roads were a sop to Napoleon’s plans for his own safety:
He is annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead noble boulevards as straight as an arrow – avenues which a cannonball could traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible than the flesh and bones of men – boulevards whose stately edifices will never afford refuges and plotting places for starving, discontented revolution breeders. The mobs used to riot there, but they must seek another rallying point in future. And this ingenious Napoleon paves the streets of his great cities with a smooth, compact composition of asphaltum and sand. No more barricades of flagstones – no more assaulting his majesty’s troops with cobbles.
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