MEMORIES OF LEDOUXWalking Along Paris’s Forgotten Enceinte des Fermiers GénérauxBen Burghart | 2015 Nix Fellow | UVa School of Architecture

Introduction

In the waning years of ancien regime France, the increasingly tyrannical Fermiers Généraux (Farmers-General) convinced Louis XVI to commission the construction of an 11 foot wall around the city of Paris. Over 14 miles in length, this mur (or enceinte) would regulate the collection of import tariffs (octroi) on specific agricultural products, especially wine, livestock, game, poultry, straw, wood, and coal. In order to sell these goods in the city – now covering over 300% more area because of the wall – a trader would need to pass through one of 45 tollgates or barrières, conveniently aligned to existing entryways to the city. This new system would require over 800 staff, including guards and tax collectors. The Fermiers Généraux commissioned Claude Nicolas Ledoux to design the buildings for each barrière that would provide housing, office space, and storage for tariff collection operations. Work proceeded at a rapid pace: designs commenced in May 1784, ground broke in June 1785, and 42 of the 45 projects were completed by 1790.1

Just as fast as they were built, however, they became the hated symbol of the ancien regime: on July 10, 1789 (four days before the storming of the Bastille), 46 of the 55 completed structures that comprised the barrières were either attacked or destroyed. They had a relatively brief appearance in the urban history of Paris – by the end of Haussmann’s reconstruction, virtually the entire wall and less than a dozen of the tollgates remained. However, the infrastructural project has had a profound impact on the way Paris has grown outward. The wall’s path was literally used as the foundation for two of the city’s major peripheral metro lines and the public spaces that accompany Ledoux’s four surviving monuments are vibrant locations for public markets, protests, social gatherings, recreation, and leisure. They operate outside the realm of the city’s well-known and congested sites of mass tourism, providing a view into the rhythms and networks of a global cosmopolitan urban environment.

cover photo: last piece of the wall that remains today, on the campus of Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital

Portrait of Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Martin Drolling, 1790.

Ledoux’s Besançon Theater in Franche-Comté, 1784.

Ledoux’s well-known Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, 1778.

“Map of the Trigonometric Operations for the City of Paris,” from Atlas du plan général de la ville de Paris, Edmé Verniquet, 1796 (ETH-Bibliothek Zürich). First complete map of Paris to show l’enceinte des Fermiers Généraux. Verniquet needed eight years to survey the new boundaries of a greatly enlarged city. His commission was meant to reinforce a new standard of building codes and it marked a changing perception of the “city,” as a unified whole rather than a clustering of neighborhoods.2

Partial metro map of central Paris with highlighted shape created by peripheral Lines 6 (green, southern half) and 2 (blue, northern half), connecting at Place de la Nation and Charles de Gaulle-Étoile stations. L’enceinte des Fermiers Généraux of 1790 almost exactly decided the placement of these critical metro lines, built at the start of the 20th century. A typical transect across the wall (from inside to outside) included a peripheral road, 11’ high wall, 39’ boulevard, and a 328’ zone where buildings were prohibited.3

What remains of the wall?

After walking 19 miles, I finally found the only part of the wall that still stands, on the campus of Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, in the 13th, hidden along a service road behind a medical facility.

Le mur, murant Paris, rend Paris murmurant. (The wall, walling Paris, rendered Paris discontent.)4

popular epigram from 1785

[W]onderful improvements are making here in various lines. In architecture, the wall of circumvallation round Paris, and the palaces by which we are to be let out and in, are nearly completed...5

Thomas Jefferson, Letter from Paris,August 14, 1787

Diagrams from the walk

At each of the tollgate locations, I stopped and drew a quick diagram of the current conditions, including notes and sketches of the infrastructure, public space, circulation and flows, prominent materials and architectural features, and sensory perceptions.

Barrière de Chartres

At the main entrance to Parc Monceau (8th), the Rotonde de Chartres now serves as offices for the city’s park staff and two public bathrooms. The park was first owned by the duc de Chartres, then by the duc d’Orléans, who commissioned Thomas Blaikie to create a picturesque English garden - for example, the park has ruins from a cathedral demolished in 1719. In 1860, the state purchased the site and hired Adolphe Alphand to transform it into a public park.6 The Monceau metro station is just 30’ east of the Rotonde and during my time there, the park was always full with people - exercising, on a lunch break, or for a school recess.

Barrière Saint-Martin

Perhaps the most familiar of the tollhouses to Parisians and tourists alike, the Rotonde de La Villette (19th) now houses a restaurant and several outdoor patio bars. The adjacent plaza is bordered by stone terraces shaded well by trees, making for ideal people watching and social gatherings. The Rotonde also faces the heavily strolled Bassin de La Villette and serves as a central node for Parisians biking to and from work in the 10th. The elevated metro line running just behind the Rotonde is well-disguised and hardly noticed. Upper levels of the building are reserved for large events, such as dinner receptions and weddings.

Barrière du Trône

Ledoux reserved a distinct monumentality to the tollhouses at the western and eastern entrances to Paris (Étoile and here, Trône). The two Doric columns still function as a grand eastern gate, a noticeable transition from the 10-lane Cours de Vincennes to the more dense network of bike, bus, metro, car lanes radiating out of Place de la Nation (12th). During my visit, the two main buildings were undergoing restoration. The site has dozens of park benches and shaded open space - very conducive to a lively conversation with an older French couple, who never knew that we were sitting right in the path of wall.

Barrière d’Enfer

Amongst the congestion of Place Denfer-Rochereau (14th) - the site of a major metro station, the entrance to the Catacombs, and cars circling the Lion of Belfort - sit two symmetrical tollhouses on either side of Avenue Leclerc, guarding the major southern entrance to the city. Currently they serve as offices for city employees. The east building is consistently wrapped by the line of tourists waiting to get into the Catacombs; the west building’s backyard is a public park, secluded from the noise by trees and bushes. Here I saw one of the only acknowledgments of the wall - a plaque stating “Old Wall of Paris, Constructed by Ledoux, 1785-1859.”

ESRI Story Map

Most of my research has been curated and posted online, as part of an interactive web journal. This allows people to follow along the path I walked, zoom into aerial photography, and see paintings and drawings of the original tollgates alongside my diagrams.

http://arcg.is/1JV3Q6F

Travel Log

July 9: ArrivalJuly 10: Visit Maison de Verre (Pierre Chareau), go to the top of Tour MontparnasseJuly 11: 3.32 miles, 10 tollgatesJuly 12: 3.16 miles, 10 tollgatesJuly 13: All day at Barrière de ChartresJuly 14: 3.94 miles, 14 tollgates (Bastille Day)July 15: All day at Barrière de Saint-MartinJuly 16: 3.43 miles, 14 tollgatesJuly 17: Rest dayJuly 18: All day at Barrière du TrôneJuly 19: Visit Jardin du Luxembourg, Centre PompidouJuly 20: 5.2 miles, 10 tollgatesJuly 21: 2.72 miles, 7 tollgatesJuly 22: Rest dayJuly 23: All day at Barrière d’EnferJuly 24: Visit Jardin du Palais Royal and Hôtel d’HallwyllJuly 25: Explore St. Germain and the Latin QuarterJuly 26: Rest day, final stage of Tour de FranceJuly 27: Travel to Giverny (Monet’s house and gardens), visit Sacré-CœrJuly 28: Explore Petit Ceinture, walk the Promenade PlantéeJuly 29: Walk along Quai d’Orsay, visit Bois de Boulogne (and Fondation Louis Vuitton), visit Maison La RocheJuly 30-August 1: Travel to Besançon, visit Saltworks at Arc-et-SenansAugust 2: Visit Musée du quai BranlyAugust 3-5: Follow up visits to Parc Monceau, La Rotonde de la Villette, Place de la Nation, and Place Denfert-RocherauAugust 6: Departure

NOTES: 1 Vidler, Anthony. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux: Architecture and Social Reform at the End of the Ancien Régime. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1990. 209-43. / 2 Papayanis, Nicholas. Planning Paris Before Hausmann. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004. 14. / 3 Vidler, 211. / 4 Ibid. / 5 Jefferson, Thomas. “Letter to Colonel Humphreys, Paris, August 14, 1787.” The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21002/21002-h/21002-h.htm (accessed March 26, 2016). / 6 Poisson, Michel. Paris: Buildings and Monuments. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers, 1999. 294.

FURTHER READING: Gagneux, Renaud and Denis Prouvost. Sur Les Traces des Enceintes de Paris. Paris: Parigramme. / Lyonnet, Jean-Pierre. Les Propylées de Paris: 1785-1788. Paris: Honoré Clair.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The project was made possible by the Sarah McArthur Nix Traveling Fellowship and I’m very grateful for the help and advice of Terry Lippmann, Deborah McGrady, Bertrand Bosvieux, Bill Sherman, and Alanna Pardee.