Haussmann

The sight of residents dangling precariously out of their windows left you wondering what George-Eugène Haussmann, the man who carefully rebuilt Paris in the 19th Century, would make of it all.

In the mid-1800s, Georges-Eugene Haussmann — Napoleon’s prefect of the Seine — helped usher in the city’s modern sewer system as part of an immense redevelopment effort that saw the leveling of thousands of old structures to make way for Paris’ trademark sweep of broad boulevards.

The Boulevard Haussmann store was outfitted with tags that fluttered under the awning, while puppet seagulls and owls made of paper flapped in the windows among piles of wish lists.

Paris, she said, had by then been transformed by Napoleon III’s urban planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann, bringing with it grand department stores like Le Bon Marché and Samaritaine.

Inside the capital, those projects were recognized as the most significant changes since the Baron Haussmann built his famous boulevards a century earlier.