The Triumphant Republic
The Triumphant Republic
‘Paris en 1889: les opérations de voirie exécutées entre 1871 et 1889’
This chapter examines Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand’s Travaux de Paris, an atlas containing a series of maps that present the spatial and technical organization and amelioration of the city from 1789 to 1889. I focus specifically on planche (map sheet) XIII documenting ‘Paris en 1889: Les Opérations de voiries exécutées entre 1871 et 1889’ (‘Opérations de voiries’) as it documents the government’s ambitious Parisian road-building drive. Alphand’s ‘Opérations de voiries’ employs bright yellows and reds to celebrate the city and reaffirms the importance of an effective road network to Paris. By planning and building these streets and avenues and then publishing a map documenting its progress, the government proved its commitment to bettering all of the city’s neighbourhoods. In addition to demonstrating a more egalitarian approach to Paris betterment, chapter two argues Alphand’s work here also conveys authority and stability in the early republic. Perhaps more important is its presentation of the city. Here, the government’s definition of ‘Paris’ ends at the Thiers’ 1840s wall. By limiting his time and efforts to this space, Alphand reinforces a bourgeois view of the capital, and suggests that any existing development beyond that line does not merit cartographic representation in a map representing Paris.
Keywords: Alphand, Third-Republic, Modernity, Roads, Paris, 1889
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