Georges-Eugène Haussmann (French: [ʒɔʁʒ øʒɛn osman]; 27 March 1809 – 11 January 1891), known as Baron Haussmann ([baʁɔ̃ osman]), was a French official who supervised a radical urban renewal programme of new boulevards, parks, and public works in Paris, referred to as Haussmann's renovation of Paris, aimed at introducing grandeur in the city. First a prefect in Var (1849–1850), Yonne (1850–1851), and Gironde (1851–1853), his skills as an administrator led to his appointment in Paris by Emperor Napoleon III in 1853.
The signature architectural landmark of his works was the Paris Opera, the largest theatre in the world, designed by Charles Garnier, crowning the centre of Napoleon III's new Paris. Haussmann completely rebuilt Paris above and below ground; on his own estimation by 1870 one in five streets in central Paris were his creation, while revamped sewers now ran alongside miles of pipes to distribute gas for thousands of new streetlights. With his right-hand Adolphe Alphand and at the Emperor's direction, a plan was laid out for four major parks at the cardinal points of the compass around the city: the Bois de Boulogne to the west, Bois de Vincennes to the east, Parc des Buttes Chaumont to the north, and Parc Montsouris to the south. The major parks and their smaller counterparts in the city were an immediate success with all classes of Parisians.
Critics forced his dismissal as prefect of Seine in 1870, but his vision of the city still defines much of Paris today. He was made a senator in 1857 and a grand cross of the Legion of Honour in 1862. The Boulevard Haussmann as well as Haussmann–Saint-Lazare station in Paris bear his name.
Haussmann was born on 27 March 1809, at 53 Rue du Faubourg-du-Roule, in the Beaujon neighbourhood of Paris, the son of Nicolas-Valentin Haussmann and Ève-Marie-Henriette-Caroline Dentzel, both of Alsatian families. His paternal grandfather Nicolas Haussmann was a deputy of the Legislative Assembly and National Convention, an administrator of the department of Seine-et-Oise and a commissioner to the army. His maternal grandfather was a general and a deputy of the National Convention: Georges Frédéric Dentzel, a baron of Napoleon's First Empire.
He began his schooling at the Collège Henri-IV and the Lycée Condorcet in Paris and then began to study law. At the same time, he studied music as a student at the Paris Conservatory, as he was a talented musician. Haussmann joined his father as an insurgent in the July Revolution of 1830, which deposed the Bourbon king Charles X in favor of his cousin, Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans.
He was married to Octavie de Laharpe on 17 October 1838 in Bordeaux. They had two daughters: Henriette, who married the banker Camille Dollfus in 1860, and Valentine, who married Vicomte Maurice Pernéty, the chief of staff of his department, in 1865. Valentine divorced Pernéty in 1891 and then married Georges Renouard (1843–1897).
On 21 May 1831, Haussmann began his career in public administration. He was named the secretary-general of the prefecture of the department of Vienne at Poitiers. On 15 June 1832, he became the deputy prefect of Yssingeaux. Despite proving himself as a hard worker and able representative of the government, his arrogance, dictatorial manner, and habit of impeding his superiors led to his being continually passed over for promotion to prefect. He was posted as deputy prefect to the Lot-et-Garonne department at Nérac on 9 October 1832, the Ariège department at Saint-Girons on 19 February 1840, and the Gironde department at Blaye on 23 November 1841.
After the 1848 Revolution swept away the July Monarchy, establishing the Second Republic in its place, Haussmann's fortunes changed. In 1848, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, became the first elected President of France. In January 1849, Haussmann travelled to Paris to meet the Minister of the Interior and the new President. He was deemed to be a loyal holdover from the civil service of the July Monarchy, and shortly after their meeting Louis-Napoléon granted Haussmann a promotion to prefect of the Var department at Draguignan. In 1850, he became the prefect of the Yonne department. In 1851 was appointed as prefect of Gironde out of Bordeaux.
In 1850, Louis Napoléon started an ambitious project to connect the Louvre to the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, by extending the Rue de Rivoli and create a new park, the Bois de Boulogne, on the outskirts of the city, but he was exasperated by the slow progress made by the incumbent prefect of Seine, Jean-Jacques Berger. Louis-Napoleon was highly popular, but he was blocked from running for re-election by the constitution of the Second French Republic. While he had a majority of the votes in the legislature at his disposal, he did not have the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution.
At the end of December 1851, he staged a coup d'état, and in 1852 declared himself Emperor of the French under the title Napoleon III. In November 1852, a plebiscite overwhelmingly approved Napoleon's assumption of the throne, and he soon began searching for a new prefect of Seine to carry out his Paris reconstruction program.
The Emperor's Minister of the Interior, Victor de Persigny, interviewed the prefects of Rouen, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and Bordeaux for the Paris post. In his memoirs, he described his interview with Haussmann:
"It was Monsieur Haussmann who impressed me the most. It was a strange thing, but it was less his talents and his remarkable intelligence that appealed to me, but the defects in his character. I had in front of me one of the most extraordinary men of our time; big, strong, vigorous, energetic, and at the same time clever and devious, with a spirit full of resources. This audacious man wasn't afraid to show who he was. ... He told me all of his accomplishments during his administrative career, leaving out nothing; he could have talked for six hours without a break, since it was his favourite subject, himself. I wasn't at all displeased. ... It seemed to me that he was exactly the man I needed to fight against the ideas and prejudices of a whole school of economics, against devious people and skeptics coming from the Stock Market, against those who were not very scrupulous about their methods; he was just the man. Whereas a gentleman of the most elevated spirit, cleverness, with the most straight and noble character, would inevitably fail, this vigorous athlete ... full of audacity and skill, capable of opposing expedients with better expedients, traps with more clever traps, would certainly succeed. I told him about the Paris works and offered to put him in charge."
Persigny sent him to Napoleon III with the recommendation that he was exactly the man needed to carry out his renewal plans for Paris. On 22 June 1853, Napoleon III made him prefect of Seine. On 29 June, the Emperor gave him the mission of making the city healthier, less congested and grander. Haussmann held this post until 1870.
Napoleon III and Haussmann launched a series of enormous public works projects in Paris, hiring tens of thousands of workers to improve the sanitation, water supply and traffic circulation of the city. Napoleon III installed a huge map of Paris in his office, marked with coloured lines where he wanted new boulevards to be. To a degree the boulevard system was planned as a mechanism for the easy deployment of troops and artillery, but its main purpose was to help relieve traffic congestion in a dense city and interconnect its landmark buildings. He and Haussmann met almost every day to discuss the projects and overcome the enormous obstacles and opposition they faced as they built the new Paris. The transformation also involved architects like Gabriel Davioud who contributed to the design of public and urban spaces.
The population of Paris had doubled since 1815, with no increase in its area. To accommodate the growing population and those who would be forced from the centre by the new boulevards and squares Napoleon III planned to build, he issued a decree annexing eleven surrounding communes, and increasing the number of arrondissements from twelve to twenty, which enlarged the city to its modern boundaries.