ABSTRACT
The city of Paris experienced unprecedented population growth during the mid-1800s. With the Industrial Revolution, rail transport facilitated the mass migration of migrant workers from nearby suburbs and villages to the city, seeking employment opportunities in its new industries.
The years 1852 to 1870 in France were known as the Second French Empire. During these eighteen years, Napoleon III ruled the country and saw a need and opportunity to renew Paris. He marshalled one of the world’s largest and most aggressive urban renewal projects and hired Baron Georges Eugene Haussmann to undertake and oversee the extensive reconstruction and transformation project. Haussmann razed the city and redesigned and rebuilt new infrastructure, monuments, and buildings, and more specifically, created the iconic Haussmann apartment housing blocks.
The Haussmann apartments are six storeys in height with a 45-degree sloped mansard roof; the buildings conform to the city’s street pattern, orientation, height, style, and colour. Each block forms a unified whole, Neoclassical style clad in cream-coloured stone, a shop on the street level and flat façades that are either plain or elaborately detailed, with or without balconies.
