The Future of Paris

I

PARIS is a Lady with a Past. With that Past, dazzling and shady, tragic and light-hearted, we are all enamored. We are less impressed with the fact that she has also a Future. Indeed, as a Senator eloquently said of Aviation, ‘most of her future is ahead of her.’

That future is to-day for the French a cause of serious concern. Innumerable commissions are at work about it. Reports, articles, pamphlets, and volumes are pouring forth as inexorably as Niagara, and the present writer has contributed his 120,000 French words to the flood. But why should we in America worry about the future of Paris? Because Paris belongs to us, as a beloved memory or as a dream. The world’s great show places are the world’s common heritage; the local inhabitants are only their custodians, and have no right to deface them under the plea, ‘Can’t we do what we like with our own?’ We all felt poorer when the Campanile of St. Mark’s collapsed, and when Rheims was martyred; and we followed the painful recovery of St. Paul’s dome, threatened with a fatal disease, with the same respectful sympathy as that with which we read the doctors’ bulletins about King George.

In spite of the slogan, ‘See America first!’ there are many European thoroughfares that hold more attraction for us than Main Street, State Street, or even Beacon Street. And, among our dream cities, Paris has a place apart. We feel more at home on the boulevards and the Champs-Élysées than on Piccadilly or Enter den Linden. This is such a truism that the one difficulty is to put it moderately enough; as the present writer was born on the banks of the Seine, it is embarrassing for him to praise too glowingly the city of Anatole France, Le Rat Mort, and Jean Patou. The classic expression of that prestige is the formal promise: ‘Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.’ This prospect seems too nebulous in this age of doubt, and Americans not quite so good prefer to take no chances. Even Lorelei, the Blonde Preferred, was thrilled when she reached the historical spot where Coty dispenses his fragrance to a grateful world. Paris is ours, not for the sordid reason that the American flood leaves every year a fertilizing sediment of dollars, but in the only way that can make a person or a thing our own — because we love her.

Now the mellow charm of Paris is threatened. What concerns us immediately is ‘the Future of the Past of Paris.’ We cannot afford to see the unique masterpiece of centuries ruined in a single generation. It is our right, and our duty, to express our misgivings.

We have a more definite responsibility in the future of Paris. In this, as in all other European tragedies, we have been cast for the character of the villain: it is Americanism, you will hear everywhere, that is spoiling Paris. Now, this accusation is neither to be dismissed with a shrug, like the ‘Uncle Shylock’ amenities, nor to be taken too tragically.

Americanism is guilty, you understand — not the individual Americans. The tourists are not blameless; they do patronize a few resorts which are not models of French taste. Still, it would be unjust to single out the cousins from Emporia as though they alone were corrupting the innocence of Montmartre and scandalizing the bucolic Latin Quarter. Villon had led the Ernest Hemingway life before Columbus sailed for ports unknown. There are other tempters, from Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, without counting the noisy throng of the French nouveaux riches. The majority of American tourists are cheerful, well-behaved students, teachers, and professional men. They are not addicted to vice, are extremely conscientious in the performance of their sight-seeing duty, and have but a limited supply of dollars to squander. Their influence, if it were felt at all, would be on the conservative side. As Samuel McChord Crothers remarked, progressive Uncle Sam, on his trips abroad, blossoms into a fine old Tory. He would like to foster quaintness, not modernization. The Anglo-American invasion is saving the picturesque Breton costumes, which otherwise would already have been superseded by alleged Parisian fashions. Soon many parts of Europe and North Africa will be turned into a comic-opera stage for the entertainment of transatlantic visitors. After all, it is pleasant to live in comic-opera scenery — that is what the Beverly Hills millionaires are attempting to do; and if the setting reacted upon the sullen mood of Europe, the gain might be very great. So, if the beauty of Paris is threatened, American visitors must be absolved from any serious responsibility.

Americanism is accused. Oh! Not the Americanism of Washington and Lincoln; not that of Edison and Lindbergh; not even that of Wilson, Dawes, and Hoover. Of such Americanism — fundamental democracy, the pioneering spirit, efficiency, large-mindedness in production and trade, optimism, good-fellowship — Europe, and particularly Paris, could take invigorating drafts without fear of a Katzenjammer. But there is another kind of Americanism which, because it is purely material, excessive, a caricature, is infinitely more obvious. The Americanization of Europe means the skyscraper, the traffic jam, the tightly packed subway, the glaring signs, chewing gum, the jazz band, the cocktail, and Miss Josephine Baker. Those things did not belong to old Paris; they belonged to New York. We may exclaim with the Kaiser: ‘We never wanted that!’ Still, we brought that into being. When we realize plainly what harm a slight injection of such ‘Americanism’ is doing to a lovely city, we may be led to wonder whether what is so manifestly bad for Europe can be perfectly wholesome for ourselves. If we do not want the Paris of to-morrow to resemble the New York of to-day, — and we most emphatically do not, — is it not a warning that New York is not traveling exactly on the right road?

II

The Parisians had been slumbering happily on the rather wilted laurels of the Second Empire. They took it quietly for granted that Paris was the most beautiful city here below, and so would remain, world without end. Sixteen centuries had slowly perfected an urban picture that could hardly be matched in its rich and subtle harmony. This picture offered no wild and picturesque grandeur; but the gentle hills, the friendly river, the trees, the houses, the public buildings, were all on the same scale, admirably adapted to the human stature. The gray stone, the bluish slate, the pewter gleams on the Seine, the subtle mist that softens without blurring, the delicately mottled tints of the changing sky, gave to the scene a subdued Racinian grace, while there was in the air a crispness that evoked the smile of a Voltaire. History had served Paris well. The site of old fortifications had twice already been turned into splendid boulevards. Under Louis XIV and Louis XV, noble plans had been carried out, the Champs-Élysées, the Cours-la-Reine, the Invalides, the Champ-de-Mars, with their magnificent vistas between the living colonnades of stately trees. The ‘stupid nineteenth century,’ as it is now the fashion to call it, did not completely mar that slowly maturing splendor. And the Industrial Revolution, when it finally struck France, found on the throne a mystery, Napoleon III, purblind and tottering whenever he tried to be Machiavellian, but strangely practical when he yielded to his generous visions. Napoleon III (Haussmann was but his instrument) made Paris up-to-date without shattering its traditions. There were many sacrifices involved in the transformation, and not all of them were necessary: ‘Haussmannism’ is not an infallible formula. Monotony frequently resulted. Among the innumerable buildings of the period, few would rank as truly beautiful. The Opéra is the masterpiece of the age: but, although its gaudiness has been toned down by the patina of half a century, it remains, like the Bonapartes themselves, too Italianate for the soberness of French taste. Still, when all is said, Napoleon III did solve for his generation the eternal problem of a living, historical city: to give full scope to the new, without sacrificing the old. Our grandparents were dazzled, and well they might be; for at that time Berlin was still provincial, Rome slumbering, New York incredibly crude, and London a chaos.

In the fifty-eight years of its life, the Third Republic has timidly continued the work of Haussmann. It has achieved far less than the great Prefect had in one fourth of the time. The boulevard that bears his name was completed but yesterday, and many of his projects have not yet been carried out. Absolutely nothing has been done that looked beyond Haussmann. Paris has had notable architects in the last half-century, and has added to its collection a number of heterogeneous buildings, like the Sacred Heart, the Trocadéro, and the Eiffel Tower. The Metropolitan Railway, planned by Brame and Flachat as early as 1855, was not undertaken until 1897, and on such a small scale that it was congested from the start. It may be said without injustice that in city planning the last two generations have been merely the Epigoni of the Imperial régime.

Already before the war a few notes of alarm had been sounded. Public opinion remained curiously passive. It offered that blend of constant grumbling and invincible conservatism which is so peculiarly French. Those who ought to have defended the beauty of Paris, the scholars, the artists, were satisfied with a fatalistic attitude. They seemed to take it for granted (‘decadence’ had recently been in vogue) that ugliness would inexorably engulf the city; and they found bitter delight in bewailing, like Cassandra of old, the doom they could not avert. They did not realize that men with a purpose, antiquarians as well as engineers, are natural allies against the ruinous influence of laissez faire.

Then came the four years of the world’s nightmare, and a whole decade of slow fever. In a readjusted, stabilized France, Paris is awake at last. But the consequences of fifty years of complacent apathy are palpable. The city is antiquated and congested; the present building code permits architectural atrocities which destroy the miraculous balance achieved in the past. A vast suburban zone has grown haphazard, unsanitary, and appallingly mean, bearing everywhere, like the mark of the beast, the imprint of the dishonest promoter. And as the greed of the money lenders inevitably fosters hatred, the Zone of Ugliness has become the Red Belt, a threatening camp of Communists encircling the capital. One billion francs have already been voted as an emergency measure, for the relief of les mal lotis, the victims of unprincipled realtors. The great housing scheme of Loucheur is under way. The last traces of the old fortifications are vanishing. Yes, Paris is thoroughly awake. But how late! If drastic measures are not adopted and carried out within the next few years, Paris will remain a vast centre of trade and hectic amusement; but the refined joy of living that it once offered to all comers will be gone forever.

III

The first difficulty that Paris has to face in that great task is the indifference, nay, the hostility, of the national government. French municipalities do not enjoy the same measure of autonomy as similar bodies in the United States, and Paris, the sole exception to a rigidly standardized scheme of local administration, is far less free than the rest. The city executive is not a mayor, but the Prefect of the Seine, a functionary appointed by the Minister of the Interior; and the police are controlled by another agent of the Central Government, the Prefect of Police. It is almost inevitable that the capital of a great nation should be submitted to a régime different from that of the other cities, and Washington, for instance, is not altogether ‘free.’ The history of Paris justifies exceptional measures. The influence of the capital in national affairs has been overwhelming and not uniformly good. For nearly a century Paris was in the habit of starting a revolution every ten, fifteen, or eighteen years, and expected the country to follow with grateful obedience. In February 1848, France acquiesced with more resignation than enthusiasm; in June 1848, she rebelled against that capricious leadership and gave the Paris radicals a tragic lesson. In 1871, under the eyes of the victorious Prussians, Paris rose once more against the national government. The street fighting, the burning of public buildings, that marked the agony of the Commune, and above all the sombre ferocity of repression, left memories that have profoundly seared the French soul.

It may be said that, from June 1848 to the present day, France has been governed from Paris, but against Paris. Napoleon III, if he curbed his capital politically, if he strove to overawe any possible insurrection by a vast display of military power, if he planned his wide and straight boulevards for strategic reasons, sought at any rate to placate Paris by adding enormously to its wealth and splendor. The hostility of the bourgeois republic to its unruly metropolis is more insidious. Parliament would virtuously disclaim any anti-Parisian prejudice. Yet Paris cannot do a thing for itself without the consent of the national government, and that consent is either withheld or interminably deferred, or granted at last in the most grudging fashion. A striking instance of that veiled, half-unconscious unfriendliness is the fate of the Paris Ship Canal scheme. Elaborated by some of the greatest engineers in French history, Belgrand and Bouquet de la Grye, it would bring to the gates of Paris the seagoing vessels which at present stop at Rouen, at a cost of less than sixty million dollars. The project was first officially submitted to the French Government in 1886; it has never been formally rejected, but Parliament has always found something more important to do than to give it a hearing.

This hostility is not purely political. The provinces follow the social and intellectual leadership of Paris with an excessive docility spiced with secret resentment. They hate Paris for their own slavishness. They suffer from an inferiority complex, and they take their revenge by snubbing the great centre whose very glory stamps them as ‘provincial.’ Parisians, for ages past, have poked fun at their country cousins. These offenses have to be atoned for, and Limoges has not yet forgiven the reception that the Paris of Molière held in store for M. de Pourceaugnac. Pourceaugnac now controls Parliament, and has the last laugh. The situation is not without a touch of absurdity. The French are immensely fond and proud of their capital, yet they are jealous of it. You can imagine the feelings of a good plodding husband whose wife makes a brilliant career for herself. Of course he is delighted; he basks in her glory — but he is human.

M. Poincaré, the sturdy embodiment of all the virtues and all the limitations of the provincial bourgeoisie, may be an ornament of Tout Paris, but he is more at home at Bar-le-Duc. So it was natural that he should voice, clearly and officially, the sentiment of his class: Paris is already overgrown. Every scheme that is proposed for the extension, expansion, or reorganization of the capital finds the same obstacle in its path: it might favor the development of Paris, which ought to be checked by all possible means. The fear of Paris is almost as unreasoning with the Poincaré bourgeois as the dread of the Channel Tunnel was with Field Marshal Lord Wolseley.

We are quite willing to admit that the giant city is a mixed blessing. We hope that, with electric power, aviation, the radio, television, and other inventions still undreamed of, our civilization, instead of being centred in a few monstrous Babylons, will become ubiquitous; that a man will be able to attend to business, hold conferences, enjoy social life, from a forest lodge in Maine, or a ‘castle in Spain’ at La Jolla. In the meantime the big city is a fact, and offers problems which have to be settled forthwith, under penalty of tragic discomfort. ‘The way out is forward.’ No good will be done to France by hampering Paris. The only restrictions that are justifiable are those that are dictated by hygienic and aesthetic considerations. Impose upon Paris such drastic conditions that it will have to grow into an ideal city or not grow at all — well and good. But a policy of sullen obstruction will serve no useful purpose. It will not prevent Paris from increasing, so long as industry, commerce, finance, find their advantage in a large market; but it will make the development of Paris lopsided and morbid.

There is nothing monstrous, anyway, about the size of Paris or the rate of its growth. The city, on a ridiculously cramped area of 31 square miles, has a population of about 2,900,000; on very nearly the same area as Chicago (Seine, 185 square miles; Chicago, 190), the department of the Seine has 4,600,000; and Greater Paris might legitimately be extended so as to count a little over 5,000,000 inhabitants. This is not alarmingly out of proportion with the total population of France, which is about 41,000,000; or with that of the French empire, which is over 100,000,000. It bears no likeness to the abnormal situation of Vienna in a ruthlessly clipped Austria; to the conditions in Australia, where two cities have one third of the population between them; to the case of California, where fully one half of the people live within twenty miles of San Francisco or Los Angeles. Paris might increase to 8,000,000 within the next quarter of a century, and France be none the worse. Only that population must be better distributed, better housed, better transported, better protected against disease and nervous fatigue, than it is at present. And that can be done only through a hearty constructive campaign for ‘the future of Paris,’ and not through an attitude of diffidence and a policy of checks.

IV

The most immediate danger to the beauty and amenity of Paris is the skyscraper. It will amuse the citizens of Waco, Texas, which boasts of a twenty-four-story building, that ‘skyscraping’ in Paris begins at a height of about seventy feet. Many Americans see nothing but blind traditionalism in this opposition to the skyscraper. They think that the French are in all things among those foolish people who repeat, ‘The wisdom of our ancestors is good enough for us’ — a very un-American attitude, to be sure. The French are exceedingly conservative, it is true; but in this matter there are sound and up-to-date reasons for their attitude. It is obvious that modern methods of construction, and particularly swift and reliable elevator service, have made the twenty stories of to-day more manageable than the six or seven stories of our fathers. Nor is the skyscraper necessarily a thing of ugliness and a disgust forever. The old-fashioned cube of brick or terra cotta was hideous enough, even though the lower stories were veneered with marble and a bold cornice graced the top. Just as the lake freighter was nicknamed the Dachshund of the Sea, the skyscraper of the early McKinley era often resembled a dachshund standing on its hind legs. H. G. Wells, a quarter of a century ago, could compare Lower Manhattan to a titanic accumulation of packing boxes. Those days are almost over. In the form of soaring towers, and more recently through the use of setbacks and the proper balancing of masses, the new skyscrapers have achieved a majestic beauty that the seven-story houses never possessed.

The French, who, as the saying is, have not their eyes in their pockets, know all this perfectly well. It is all a matter of proportion. A few hundred feet more or less will not alter the impressiveness of a mountain; an eighth of an inch might make every difference on Cleopatra’s nose, and then, as Pascal warns us, ‘the face of the world might be changed.’ After all, New York could easily afford to see Trinity Church, St. Paul’s, the City Hall, surrounded and as it were engulfed by the enormous Cliffs of Finance. But in old Paris the proper scale is given by the river, by the trees, by the width of the streets, by the historical monuments. In order to preserve that harmony, a limit of five stories, or about sixty feet, would be desirable; the traditional limit of seven stories — seventy to eighty feet — is not disastrous; if you go beyond, the result is immediately and strikingly horrible. A single extra story in the vicinity of the Arc de Triomphe is an eyesore; and lovers of Paris will have no rest until they have humbled the cosmopolitan insolence of the Mercédès and the Astoria. To change a few feet, in the sky line of the Place de la Concorde would be a crime; and I am happy to say that the new American Embassy will, on the contrary, thoroughly respect the scale and style of that admirable ensemble. A two-hundred-foot building by the side of Notre-Dame would be a nightmare. It is not merely a few stately plazas or some quaint and placid districts like Île Saint-Louis that need protection: historical Paris as a whole cannot afford to change its general scale. Modernized it can be and should be; there is no valid objection to good sanitation, good plumbing, and elevators that will ‘function.’ But within the existing limits of the city a building height of seventy feet should be fixed as a maximum.

This height, of course, should not be reached in the narrow streets which are still so numerous, even after the grand slashing of old Paris by Haussmann. The formula favored by hygienists and urbanistes strongly appeals to us: the vertical walls should not be higher than the street is wide. The same rule — and this is too often forgotten — should apply to all inner courts. Paris used to have lovely gardens in the centre of its old-world blocks; they are disappearing very fast. In modern houses, the court is a mere darksome shaft; even in the pretentious palaces of the Champs-Élysées, expensive apartments are immersed in perpetual gloom.

In Greater Paris, the Paris of tomorrow, beyond the historical districts, the aesthetic limitation would not apply, and the buildings would soar as high as they please. Many French architects are interested in the idea, M. Le Corbusier, a strange mixture of verve and ruthless logic, a prophet rather than an artist, has sketched vast towers on a cruciform plan, which would undoubtedly be comfortable as well as impressive. M. Sauvage has actually built, although on a comparatively small scale, houses of a new and very attractive type. With their receding terraces, these truncated pyramids seem to offer tier upon tier of bungalows clinging to an artificial hillside. A vast hollow space is left underneath, unfit for habitation, but suitable for warehouses or garages. There is no undue timidity about certain French minds. But, whether in the heart of the old city or in the new suburbs, there must be a definite relation between the width of the thoroughfare and the height of the building. This is indispensable if we hope to secure light and air for all; if we do not want to sacrifice the loveliest ornament of a capital, its long lines of trees: and especially if we desire to avoid traffic congestion. There is no large city in America to-day in which that proper relation has been preserved. We have thoughtlessly piled up twenty towns on top of each other, along the lanes which once were adequate for New Amsterdam. Now we could escape from the consequences of our short-sightedness only by double-and triple-decking our streets. At the cost of billions, we might secure in that way some kind of efficiency — but an efficiency that could be properly sung by Dante alone. There is yet time for Paris not to become the nightmare Metropolis of the German film.

These simple truths are plain to all men, in France as well as in America. But the dazzling possibilities of real-estate values in a congested business district are plainer still to a handful of landowners. Not to heed the call of ‘opportunity,’ under the present régime, is the unforgivable sin. Even those who have nothing to gain and much to lose by the frenzied piling up of land values recognize the gospel of business, and bow their heads in reverence.

V

A commission is at present engaged in the revision of the nefarious 1902 Building Code. If, as we fervently hope, it decides resolutely against the skyscraper, a whole train of consequences will automatically follow. The population of inner Paris, already on the decrease, will dwindle at a faster rate. We might hope that, within twenty years, it will be reduced to something under two millions instead of nearly three; it would then form barely one third of the total agglomeration. With this possibility in view, it would be madness not to organize ‘Greater Paris’ at the earliest possible moment. It would be an absurdity to keep side by side one enormous congested city and seventy-nine independent suburbs, not one of which is capable of a harmoniously balanced municipal life, while many are wretchedly poor. Already there is a marked tendency to transfer powers from the sundry municipalities of the Seine to the department as a whole, which becomes an adumbration of the future Greater Paris. That tendency should be made more definite, and accelerated.

This, in its turn, will necessitate, not a mere reform, but a complete recasting of the city government. Paris has never been so glaringly mismanaged and so openly plundered as some American cities have been within the memory of living men. The permanent bureaucracy, on a civil-service basis, is, on the whole, honest, well-trained, and not quite so slow-moving as the State machinery. The fact that it harbored Paul Verlaine should not be forever held up against it. The police are decidedly good, if not invariably courteous. But the essential organ of civic life, the Municipal Council, is weak. It contains a number of men of vision, training, culture; yet, ward elections breed ward politicians. The councillor, elected by his ‘quarter,’ is bound to attend, first of all, to parochial interests. It does not pay a man to think in metropolitan terms. Professor Dausset, who prepared the great plan for turning the former military zone into playgrounds and gardens, was not reelected by his ward. The Paris Ship Canal, as it would end outside the present boundaries, is of no electoral interest to any councillor, and is supported only in the most intermittent and lukewarm fashion. The planning of new streets and even of Metropolitan Railway lines is dictated by the principle of ‘distribution,’ akin to our own pork-barrel and logrolling methods. Every one of the eighty quarters must have its sliver of the pie. A sort of senatorial courtesy has become a tradition at the Hôtel de Ville; nothing can be done in any district against the veto of the local representative. This makes it impossible, for instance, to transfer the Central Market, the Halles, to a less congested location: M. X says No. This unwritten veto power is a source of grievous temptation. When the fate of a vast undertaking depends on the decision of a single councillor, the opinion of that councillor acquires a financial value out of all proportion to his salary, and possibly to his moral stamina. If Paris is to plan for her future in a large way, she will have to discard the ward-elected Council.

French reformers conceive the future government of their city as threefold. First there would be a number of boroughs, perhaps thirty, with an average population of some 200,000. These would have their municipal bodies, with extensive powers, and in close touch with local needs. Over and above these, a Metropolitan Council, elected in such a way as to represent the city as a whole, and not such or such a section. This dual or federal system would resemble in general outline the solutions adopted for the governance of London and Greater Berlin. Finally, municipal enterprises would be, not political, not bureaucratic, but autonomous, and modeled as closely as possible upon private corporations. The Metropolitan Railway, the streetcar and omnibus system, gas, water, electricity, the river port, the ship canal, would each have its director and its executive board. On account of the very special situation of Paris, and of a long tradition, it would probably be advisable to have, as chief executive, an official appointed by the Central Government, instead of an elected mayor.

From the administrative as well as from the aesthetic point of view, it is evident that the problems of Paris cannot be settled or even stated exactly in the same terms as those of American cities. This chief magistrate would not be a city manager in the technical sense; the excellent managerial system would apply chiefly to the direction of the great autonomous services. He would be a dignified figurehead, a fit host for distinguished visitors, the ambassador of the French Republic to Her Capricious Majesty the City of Paris. His duties would normally be those of a constitutional sovereign, or of the governor-general in a British dominion. Such a position, more exalted than that of a regular prefect, could be made attractive to some of the leading men in France. In a crisis, the Governor-General of Paris would no longer merely supervise, adjust, advise — he would actually govern, with the police at his command, and the army held in reserve.

But in France, as in America, constructive policies are needed. Muddling through somehow is far less ‘practical’ than a healthy dose of radicalism. A congregation of ward politicians, were they the best of their kind, would never grasp, far less carry out, any far-reaching scheme. Unless some enlightened leadership should be organized, Paris to-morrow might become a halfhearted and second-rate New York. It would grow ‘modern’ and ‘efficient’ in blotches, and tangled up in the main. Yielding to business temptations, it would tolerate atrocities, soon be heartily ashamed of them, but never find courage enough or money enough to undo the harm. It might never be so cynical as our Babylon-on-the-Subway was a few short years ago; but it might also lack the brutal, the formidable power which at any rate gives Lower Manhattan a sombre grandeur all its own.

Wall Street? The Place de la Concorde? Which will represent ‘the Future of Paris’?