boulevard

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A Boulevard [ bulvaʁ (] listen ? / I ) is a wide , flanked by trees and along a former city wall running road in big cities . Boulevards are mostly laid out as a road ring and consequently surround the former core city in a ring . The term boulevard is used today in a broader sense for boulevards or representative streets of any kind. Audio file / audio sample

The Boulevard Saint-Denis with the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris, painting by Jean Béraud (1899)

history

Paris - Boulevard Saint-Denis with the Porte Saint-Denis today (September 2014)
Jean Boisseau - city map of Paris (1654), detail: Bastille with "Le Grand Boulevart"

The origin of the word from the Middle Dutch "bulwerc" (German Bollwerk , English bulwark , Italian balvardo ) suggests its original architectural orientation. They were laid out on urban open spaces, which arose from looped city ​​walls that usually encompassed a city in a ring or semi-ring shape. First, however, the name "Le Grand Boulevart" appeared as the name for a walled open space that was on a map drawn by Jean Boisseau in 1654 next to the Bastille on what is now Boulevard Beaumarchais .

From June 1670 were in Paris under Philippe Auguste built forts and walls under King Louis XIV. Demolished and the trenches filled. Roads should be built in their place. There were two projects within the “boulevard intérieur”, the northern (“boulevard du Nord”) and the southern (“boulevard du Midi”). Its name indicates its (present-day) location, because the northern ones are in the Rive Droite (north of the Seine ), the southern ones in the Rive Gauche (south of the Seine). The north with a length of 2,643 meters was originally divided into twelve sections, namely the boulevards Bourdon and Saint Antoine (today: Boulevard Beaumarchais ; 750 m), des Filles-du-Calvaire (210 m), du Temple (405 m) , Saint-Martin (470 m), Saint Denis (210 m), de Bonne Nouvelle (347 m), Poissonière (351 m), Montmartre (215 m), des Italy (390 m), des Capucines (440 m) and de la Madelaine (220 m). The northern boulevards were completed in 1704, the southern only in 1761. The core section of this - between the Boulevard de la Madeleine on La Madeleine and the Boulevard Beaumarchais on the Place de la Bastille - has been called Grands Boulevards since 1785 . The boulevard Beaumarchais had an 18 meter wide median and was one of the first to be commissioned on June 7, 1670. The southern ones are 8,257 meters long with originally seven sections, namely the Boulevards de l'Hôpital (1,395 m; completed on August 9, 1760), the Gobelins (today Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui ; 1,040 m), de la Glacière (now Boulevard Auguste -Blanqui ), Saint-Jacques (575 m), d'Enfer (today: Boulevard Raspail ; 2,370 m), du Montparnasse (1,632 m) and des Invalides (1,245 m).

In addition, the outer boulevards ("boulevard extérieurs") - again with a northern and a southern section - were laid out on the course of the customs border established between 1784 and 1797. The rotunda of Parc Monceau is one of them. From 1780 a systematic street cleaning began on the Parisian boulevards. On April 10, 1783, a royal decree stipulated a width of at least 27 meters for already existing streets, which had to be achieved by demolishing houses if necessary. Until 1850, the streets were asphalted like gravel and the sidewalks ("trottoirs") were asphalted, gas lamps ("becs intensifs") were installed in 1878. The typical flaneur of the boulevards was called a boulevardier . In 1860, however, a nomenclature commission decided that from now on the name Boulevard should be reserved for ring-shaped streets: hence the name of the Boulevards des Maréchaux on the one hand and the name Avenue de l'Opéra on the other.

The longest boulevards in Paris today are Saint-Germain (3,150 m), Malesherbes (2,650 m) and Haussmann (2,530 m). They are surpassed by the longest street in Paris, the Rue de Vaugirard (4,360 m), which is documented as early as 1523. The widest Paris street is also not a boulevard, but avenue Foch at 120 meters .

Outside France

The Parisian boulevards formed the basic shape of the world's multi-lane boulevards. The road-building are three kinds of avenues:

Outside France, however, city planners did not always take into account the technical requirements of the original Parisian boulevards, especially the ring shape and tree population. Boulevards in the narrower sense could only arise in cities that once had a city wall or similar (ring-shaped) city fortifications.

This included the Vienna Ringstrasse , the history of which began on December 20, 1857. Emperor Franz Joseph I made the decision to “abandon the walls and fortifications of the inner city, as well as the trenches around it” and ordered the construction of a boulevard at this point. Construction began on February 29, 1864, and the opening took place on May 1, 1865 by Emperor Franz Joseph I. The Cologne rings also form a street system typical of boulevards, which was based on the course of the old Cologne city wall . The city acquired the inner fortification ring on May 5, 1881, and the 104-hectare open space was to be laid out as a splendid boulevard based on Parisian urban planning and the Vienna Ringstrasse. After the approval of the development plan ("chain of festive rooms") designed by Josef Stübben on June 3, 1884, the construction of the representative Cologne Ringstrasse began. The ten sections were originally between 32 meters and 114 meters wide and were opened on June 11, 1886. They are partly covered with trees, but today have partly lost their planted median (as it still exists on the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring ).

Streets were called boulevards even if they lacked these structural requirements. In the USA, for example, the grid patterns are mainly divided into avenues and streets . Boulevards are the exception here and should at best emphasize their importance for traffic (like Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles ).

Other famous boulevards

Europe

Bulevardul Unirii in Bucharest
Leopoldstrasse in Munich
Königsallee in Düsseldorf

North America

Others

Popular street events were also called “boulevard” ( boulevard theater ) from around 1777 , probably originating from the Parisian Boulevard du Temple , where pantomimes , tightrope dances and animal demonstrations took place. The tabloid was also originally based on mass street sales.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Boulevard  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b A and W Calignani: The History of Paris , 1825, p. 178 f.
  2. ↑ Hildegard Schröteler-von Brandt: Stadtbau- und Urbanungsgeschichte , 2008, p. 78.
  3. ^ Allan B. Jacobs, Elizabeth Macdonald, Yodan Rofé: The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards , 2002, p. 12.
  4. ^ Allan B. Jacobs, Elizabeth Macdonald, Yodan Rofé: The Boulevard Book: History, Evolution, Design of Multiway Boulevards , 2002, p. 5.
  5. ↑ Fred Hennings: Ringstrasse Symphony, 1st movement 1857-1870, It is my will , 1963, p. 15.
  6. ↑ Hans-Joachim Völse: Cologne , 2008, p. 18.
  7. ↑ Peter Fuchs (Ed.): Chronicle of the History of the City of Cologne , Volume 2, 1991, p. 158.