Repost: Pont Neuf: The First Modern Street in Paris
A City Street Optimized for Conveying Traffic
Was Pont Neuf the first modern street in Europe? Today it is the most beloved bridge in Paris and also the most recently constructed bridge crossing the River Seine within Paris. Pont Neuf means “new bridge” in French. In 2021, however, Pont Neuf is already over 400-years-old. This beautiful old bridge remains an amazing work of construction and engineering.
Detail from the 1739 Turgot Map of Paris. Pont Neuf runs north and south, connecting, the Rive Droite (on the left), Ile De Paris (center), and Rive Gauche (right). In front of the bridge is pedestal with a statue of Henri IV.
If Pont Neuf was not the first modern street in Paris, it was certainly an example of its first modern bridge. The old way of designing bridges included the construction of buildings at the sides of the bridge. It was a medieval form of real estate value capture. The bridge created new real estate in a desirable area, and the developers of the bridge leased space as a way of repaying the financiers. Yet this old value-capture financing technique created not just the bridge, but the development on the bridge created an urban street environment, complete with customers, shopkeepers, hawkers, porters, and cartmen. This activity in turn attracted other social behavior of pre-industrial streets. The bridge-streets were great economic and social successes.
However, these bridges were terrible at conveying traffic. Those in the business of carrying freight in the Elizabethan era complained that crossing London Bridge could take all day. Pre-industrial streets served a variety of functions, but these economic and social functions compromised the conveyance of traffic, especially vehicle traffic. Of course, wagons were the trucks of the day, carrying goods over long distances. These carried economic importance as well. With many important cities developing at river banks, bridges were critical for transportation. Because of their expense, there could never be bridges occurring as frequently as regular urban streets. Thus bottlenecks formed at bridges. In one sense, this was bad for business since it slowed down freight traffic conveying goods to local stores and goods from local shops. In another sense, development on bridges was itself an economic engine.
Henri IV of France plotted a different strategy for financing bridge construction, while simultaneously solving the the traffic congestion problem. He mandated a tax on wine, and in seventeenth-century France, he expected this would generate a great amount of revenue. The wine tax replaced the old value-capture financing. There would be no buildings on Henri’s New Bridge. With no buildings with residences and businesses as attractions, the scheme annihilated the economic and social functions of the per-industrial street, and Pont Neuf had a single function. It conveyed traffic. There would be no lingering on Pont Neuf.
In the early 1600s, most Parisians walked everywhere, while the wealthy, including Henri IV, rode in carriages. The many wagons required for transporting produce and other freight converged on this bridge, since the other bridges were still developed and remained congested. So it is easy to imagine many vehicles speeding over Pont Neuf’s carriageway. Which brings us to another novel feature of the bridge. Pont Neuf had banquettes,* at that time a novelty in Paris. These raised footpaths became known as trottoirs over a century later, and became the talk of visitors to Paris. In the United States, we call these sidewalks. Therefore, Pont Neuf segregated vehicle traffic onto the carriageway and pedestrian traffic onto the banquettes. Visitors to Paris raved about these raised sidewalks. Did they understand that this sharp division of sidewalk and carriageway would result in a loss of pedestrian freedom?
Now we have a comprehensive understanding of the first modern bridge in Paris. Pont Neuf was financed by a new scheme. Instead of using value-capture of real estate, Henri IV collected a tax on wine. With no buildings and no people congregating, Pont Neuf served as an efficient traffic conveyance. Part of this arrangement implied a different use of the street for pedestrians. Pedestrians could inhabit any part of a pre-industrial street, walking on any part it as they desired. With the efficient movement of vehicle-traffic made possible by a street denuded of buildings, it was too hazardous to use it according to older custom, and pedestrians were consigned to the raised sidewalks. While many people heralded the sidewalks as a great invention*, this new scheme actually stole the freedoms enjoyed by pedestrians on other streets. In this sense, sidewalks on Pont Neuf were wagon and carriage infrastructure.
* Sidewalks go back to at least ancient Rome. Like acueducts, they were a forgotten technology.
References:
Joan DeJean, How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2014.
Hilary Ballon, The Paris of Henri IV: Architecture and Urbanism. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.
Colin Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.
Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, ed., John Stow, A Survey of London. Oxford: Clarendon Press, (2 Volumes) 1927.