ABSTRACT
The Rue de la Madeleine was the most fashionable shopping street of all Brussels. Several sources indicate that the engraving was intended to provide a faithful representation of the street. Shop windows were obviously not the only way to seduce potential customers on the street. The city council issued regulation after regulation delineating the use of streets, often to the detriment of peddlers and other 'street professionals.' Streets were widened and straightened. The street was used for retail purposes by street traders, who put up displays or took their business from door to door. The list of Brussels' top shopping streets for 1833 shows that, like in 1816, the Chaussee, a paved road cutting through the center in an east-west direction, was the heart of the shopping landscape. The city's main shopping streets were located on the central stretch of the age-old thoroughfare through the city, near the Grand Place.
