Related: road – car – Baron Haussmann – Paris

Works with boulevard in title: Hollywood Boulevard (1976)

Avenue de la Grande Armée, one of Haussmann’s twelve grand avenues radiating from the Arc de Triomphe. La Défense and the Grande Arche (the hollow white cube) can be seen on the horizon. [Oct 2006]
Image sourced here.

Picture of Boulevard Haussmann during the Paris flood of 1910, photo by Pierre Petit (1832-1909)
Image sourced here.

1800s photograph of Printemps (meaning “spring” in French), a French department store (or a grand magasin, literally “big store”). I grandi magazzini Printemps in una foto d’epoca
Image sourced here.

Definition

Boulevard (French, from Dutch Bolwerk – bolwark, meaning bastion) has several generally accepted meanings. It was first introduced in the French language in 1435 as boloard and has since been altered into boulevard.

In this case, as a type of road, a boulevard is usually a wide, multi-lane arterial divided thoroughfare, often with an above-average quality of landscaping and scenery.

Baron Haussmann made such roads well-known in his re-shaping of Second Empire Paris between 1853 and 1870. The French word boulevard originally referred to the flat summit of a rampart (the etymology of the word distantly parallels that of bulwark). Several Parisian boulevards replaced old city walls; more generally, boulevards encircle a city center, in contrast to avenues that radiate from the center.

Boulevard is sometimes used to describe an elegantly wide road, such as those in Paris, approaching the Champs-Élysées. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard [Oct 2006]

Haussmann’s boulevard

Boulevard Haussmann running from Paris VIIIe to Paris IXe arrondissement, 2.53 km long, is one of the wide tree-lined boulevards driven through Paris during the Second French Empire by Baron Haussmann, who retained the complete confidence of Napoleon III.

The department stores (“grands magasins”) Galeries Lafayette and Le Printemps are sited on the Boulevard Haussmann, which is mostly lined with apartment blocks, whose regulated cornice height gives a sense of regularity to the Boulevard.

At No. 102 lived the great French novelist Marcel Proust (1871 –1922) a martyr to asthma spent much of his life writing through the night hours in the famous cork-lined bedroom of his ornate townhouse. Alan Bates starred in 102 Boulevard Haussmann a 1991 made-for-television docudrama written by Alan Bennett [1].

At 158 and 158 bis the Musée Jacquemart-André presents a private collection of French furnishings.

The Impressionist and patron of other artists Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894) painted the Boulevard under many aspects of seasonal and daily change. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevard_Haussmann [Oct 2006]