Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Volume 2

A new main sewer, called the collecteur général de Clichy, was commenced in 1896, to supplement those of Asnières and Monceau, become insufficient; this passes under the Avenue and the Rue de Clichy to terminate at the Place de la Trinité. The prolongation of the line of the Orléans railway to the Quai d'Orsay, by means of a tunnel, has necessitated a very important modification of the sewers of the left bank of the river, which has had much to do with the lengthening of the work of excavation which has so greatly annoyed the dwellers on this side of the river in 1898 and 1899. It was understood that this excavating was to be done entirely underground, whereas it has blockaded many of the narrower streets, and even when it tunnels it contrives to raise the street level about a mètre and substitute a wooden floor, as along the Quai Voltaire. It is stated that this work will cost the railway company not less than five million francs.

The diameter of the vault of the égouts collecteurs varies between four and six mètres; that of the égouts secondaires from two mètres to three mètres, seventy centimètres; that of the égouts ordinaires, including ten varieties, from one mètre to one mètre, seventy-five. The size the most in use has a diameter of one mètre, forty. The problem of purifying and utilizing the contents of the sewers, which were provisionally discharged into the Seine at Saint-Denis and at Asnières, occupied the attention of the municipality from the period of the establishing of the collecteurs, but the vigorous local opposition which was encountered greatly delayed the carrying out of these projects. Consequently, the purification of the river is not yet complete. On the sandy and arid plain of Genevilliers, situated in the first loop of the Seine, beyond Clichy, the experiment of fertilizing with this drainage was commenced in 1869. At present, the ground thus under cultivation includes some seven hundred and ninety-five hectares,—about two and a half acres each,—of which six belong to the city of Paris and constitute the model garden. The remainder is held by private individuals, who pay a rental of from four to six hundred francs the hectare. The distribution of the sewage is effected by agents of the administration in regular rotation, in three zones. In 1896, each hectare absorbed thirty-seven thousand and sixty-seven cubic mètres. All varieties of vegetables are grown, and this land, on which were raised formerly only meagre crops of rye and potatoes, is now a flourishing garden.

A second agricultural establishment at Achères, farther on, on both sides of the Seine, was inaugurated in 1895, the larger portion of which is held by individuals, but as each hectare of land can absorb not more than forty thousand cubic mètres annually, it has been found necessary to seek additional champs d'épuration. These have been secured by the municipality at Méry and les Gresillons and in their neighborhood, still farther westward, and the completion of these is promised for the summer of 1899. In the model garden of Asnières, all varieties of culture are practised, the sewage is carried in trenches into the cultivated land in such a manner as to bathe only the roots of the plants. The extremely winding course taken by the Seine west of Paris renders it necessary for the conduits conveying this drainage to cross the river three times before reaching Achères, as may be seen by reference to the map. From the usine elévatoire of Clichy it is carried under the Seine by a siphon, four hundred and sixty-three mètres in length; the aqueduct crosses the river again near the usine de Colombes, opposite Argenteuil, on a steel bridge, and again near Herblay, by another siphon. In 1897, on the total surface, a thousand hectares, under cultivation, there were spread seventy million cubic mètres of sewage.

After many and long debates, carried on both in the Conseil Municipal and the Chamber of Deputies, the much-discussed question of Tout à l'égout was disposed of by a law passed on the 10th of July, 1894, by which the proprietors of all houses situated in streets provided with a public sewer were required to make connections with this and drain into it all the refuse of their cabinets d'aisances. This connection was to be made within the space of three years, and a proportionate tax for this privilege was laid upon each dwelling. But the streets in which there are no public sewers,—including those private streets, impasses, and cités which the municipality considers as the property of individuals, and for which it provides neither policemen nor street-cleaners,—and those buildings in which this connection has not been made, still furnish occupation for those nocturnal vehicles the mere thought of which drives the careful citizen to close his windows. In the seventeenth century, this nocturnal agent was known as Maître fy-fy et des basses-œuvres, and he fulfilled his task by carting his material to one of the public dumping grounds and there discharging it. Many of the now picturesque sites of the city owe their characteristics to these eminences of refuse,—the Buttes of the Rues Meslay and Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth, Bonne-Nouvelle, des Moulins, the labyrinth of the Jardin des Plantes. "The voirie of Montfaucon," says M. Strauss, "with its infected basins, its pestilential reservoirs, its charnier and its gibbet, was a cause of shame and anxiety to several quarters of Paris; even after being transferred from the Faubourg Saint-Martin to the foot of the Buttes Chaumont, it was an object of horror and disgust. An army of rats garrisoned the charnier, whilst the basins overflowed with rottenness. This horrible establishment had its clientèle; in 1832, the Préfet de Police, M. Gisquet, found, according to the account of M. Mille, a hideous thing,—individuals who, in the midst of these lakes, fished up again the dead fish.

"In 1848, this notorious laystall was installed in the forest of Bondy, where it has undergone various transformations; for many years the basins were encumbered with a stock but very slightly appetizing; to reduce these mountains of refuse to industrial products was a very serious undertaking. After being, by slow desiccation by drying in the air and grinding, transformed into a fertilizer called poudrette, they are subjected to various chemical processes; there is extracted from them sulphate of ammonia, etc. The odors which are disengaged during these operations, while not injurious to the health of man, are not of those which leave public opinion indifferent; the girdle of insalubrious establishments which immediately surrounds Paris, individual dépotoirs, private voiries, manufactories of fertilizing materials, is no less menacing than disgraceful.

"A single establishment is an exception to this rule, it is the dépotoir of La Villette, in the neighborhood of the Marché aux bestiaux. It would never be thought, from its appearance, that it was the nightly rendezvous of the most infectious scavengers' carts that traverse Paris. A coquettish garden, of a surprising greenness, all flowery and perfumed, charms the eyes; the receiving cisterns conceal themselves under vaults that do not reveal their secret to the first comer. The basin of the water of the Ourcq has the most innocent air in the world, and the return-pumps reveal nothing.

"All night long, the dépotoir is visited by vehicles, two or three hundred in number, which arrive in single file, with a mysterious heaviness, to discharge themselves in the cisterns. What a discharge! a thousand to twelve hundred cubic mètres—of matter!

"The next morning, all this deposit is relegated to a distance of nine kilomètres, as far as Bondy, by elevating machines: the cisterns are washed out and cleansed by floods of water; the heavy matter which the pumps do not take up is put in casks and taken away to be employed directly in the manufacture of manure, by mixing it with other fertilizing materials. The transportal of the liquid matter to Bondy is effected by means of a machine of twenty-five horse-power, through a conduit thirty centimètres in diameter, which follows the right bank of the canal de l'Ourcq."

The great collecteur d'Asnières, a sectional view of which under the Rue Royale, is shown on page 299, is five mètres, sixty centimètres, in width, and three mètres, forty, in height; the channel for the water in the centre is three mètres, fifty, in width, and one mètre, thirty-five, in depth. On each side is a banquette, or sidewalk, ninety centimètres wide. The collecteurs, as well as the smaller sewers of the streets and houses, are constructed of masonry laid in mortar, and they are lined with cement which insures their cleanliness and their sonorousness. The former quality is maintained by an incessant surveillance, an organized force of nine hundred and thirty-one men being constantly employed, and an arrangement of fans or wings, mounted either upon the fronts of the boats or attached to the bottoms of the little trucks which run on rails along the edges of the canal of the larger sewers. These fans descend into the canal and sweep all obstructions before them,—the sand from the street pavements overhead constituting a large portion of this obstructive material. The siphons are cleansed by an ingenious process invented by Belgrand and applied by him to that of the Alma,—a large wooden ball, eighty-five centimètres in diameter, traversing twice a week each of the two conduits, a mètre in diameter. So thorough is this policing of the sewers, that it is recorded that the number of heavy leathern thigh boots furnished the égoutiers is some twelve hundred or two thousand annually, representing a value of nearly a hundred thousand francs. One pair of these boots lasts about six months.

An analysis of the air of these sewers gives surprising results. The proportion of carbonic acid is somewhat greater than in the air of the streets overhead, that of ammoniacal azote is much more considerable, and that of bacteria only half as great. Consequently, not only does the personnel of this underground labyrinth traverse it constantly without danger, but visitors from the upper world find amusement in exploring it. Every fortnight, on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month, the Préfet of the Seine, or the Chief Engineer of the Service de l'Assainissement de Paris, grants permits for these visits to a certain number of applicants,—the visitors are transported through the collecteurs of the Châtelet to the Place de la Concorde, under the Boulevard Sebastopol and the Rue de Rivoli, in little vehicles forming two trains, drawn each by an electric engine; then from the Concorde to the Madeleine, under the Rue Royale, in boats drawn by an electric tug. The trip takes about an hour, and can be made in either direction; the sewers are open to this invasion from Easter to the end of October, excepting in case of storms, when the water in the canals is apt to rise rapidly over the banquettes and drive the workmen to the regards or places of ascent provided every fifty or a hundred mètres apart. The danger of asphyxia, which was formerly very serious, is now practically abolished, the ventilation being assured by numerous openings in the street gutters under the curb-stones, which are kept free from floating materials and obstructions by a special corps of égoutiers.

For the wagonnets de service in the larger sewers, an ingenious arrangement is used,—on the little four-wheeled truck which runs on rails along the edge of the central canal are laid two more sections of railroad at right angles, and on these are mounted two more four-wheeled trucks carrying each a rectangular little tank or receptacle, with a rounded bottom. The outside rail, at each end, is blocked, so as to keep these tanks in position while in transit,—when arrived at their destination, the blocks are removed and the two run off on other rails to be emptied. The Parisian sewers carry not only the drainage of the streets and houses, but also all those various underground means of communication which in other, and less well-ordered, municipalities have each their own burrowing to do,—at the cost of infinite expense and confusion. The water-pipes, the telegraphic cables, the telephone wires, the pneumatic tubes for the postal service, and the piping for the conveyance of motive power, are all sheltered in these underground thoroughfares. So complete and well organized, indeed, are these égouts, that that constant habitant of sewers, the rat, is being driven out of them,—neither the black rat nor his enemy, the great Norway animal, can find lodging and refuge in these cement-lined walls, as hard as steel. The task of the hunter of rodents is greatly facilitated by all these improved methods.

It is difficult nowadays to conceive the condition of the streets of a mediæval city, and Paris was no exception. Not only were they very crooked—each householder building where he chose, with very little consideration for the general alignment, badly paved or not at all, unsewered and dark, but they were the receptacles for absolutely all the refuse of the dwellings. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker threw everything out of the windows, and nobody carried it away. The first vaulted sewer was constructed in the reign of Charles VI, in the Rue Montmartre, by Hugues Aubriot, prévôt of the merchants; but the state of the public thoroughfares remained much as it had been in the preceding century. The houses were built on the level of the streets, and inundated at every violent shower, the choked-up gutters refusing to carry off the sudden flood. Even the kings of France struggled in vain against the universal infection,—"incommoded in their Hôtels Saint-Pol and des Tourelles, they were constantly protesting to the municipality of Paris; Louis XII, François I, and Henri II vainly attempted to secure the removal of the égout Sainte-Catherine; this unwholesome neighborhood even caused François I to change his property of Chanteloup for the locality of the Tuileries." In 1473, the Parlement ordered the Lieutenant Criminel to clear away the filth which obstructed the entrance to Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet and along the course formerly traversed by the Bièvre, and three years later a more general effort at reformation was made. The main streets, the surroundings of the Palais, were submitted to a sort of system of cleaning, the cost of which was defrayed by a tax laid upon the inhabitants thus favored. The aqueduct of Belleville had been constructed in 1244, to supply the fountain of the monastery of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, and afterward furnished water to most of the fountains of Paris; in 1457, it had been repaired by the prévôt of the merchants, and thus supplied a means of cleansing the streets. In 1265, there was existing a fountain in the upper part of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, known as the Fontaine Saint-Lazare, and fed by the aqueduct of Saint-Gervais—from Romainville, near Vincennes—constructed in the last years of the reign of Philippe-Auguste. The fountain of the Innocents, that of Maubuée, and that of the Halles were also watered by this aqueduct of the Pré-Saint-Gervais. The Cité and the quartier Saint-Jacques were for centuries the most pestilential quarters of the capital, and, despite the various measures taken to ameliorate them, it was not till the reign of Henri IV that the evil was effectively attacked by the widening of the streets so as to permit the noblesse and the bourgeoisie to traverse them in carriages.

To such a height had the deposits of refuse outside the city walls attained, that, in 1525, during the panic that prevailed in Paris at the news of the captivity of François I, Jean Briçonnet, President of the Chambre des Comptes, secured the passage of an ordinance directing their razing, as from their summits an enemy could command the city walls! During this reign, however, considerable progress was made in cleansing and embellishing the capital; the king particularly enjoined upon the municipality the importance of paving and sweeping the streets, and a royal edict of November, 1539, prescribed minute regulations for the conduct of the inhabitants and the measures to be taken that would be considered very satisfactory, if enforced, at the present day. The paving of the streets, which had been commenced under Philippe-Auguste, had proceeded so slowly that in 1545 the greater portion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain was not yet paved, and the Cardinal de Tournon, Abbé of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, undertook the task. A decree of the court, March 30, 1545, ordered the commencement in the Rue de Seine; but when the cardinal desired to straighten the street lines also, he encountered a vigorous opposition on the part of the inhabitants. The Parlement was obliged to come to his assistance, and a decree of the 21st of the following October directed that all those who had valid reasons for opposing this measure should appear by means of a procureur, within the space of three days, to state them.

Five years later, another public-spirited citizen, Gilles de Froissez, an iron-master, proposed to bring the water of the Seine to aid in the great task of cleaning the city, and was instrumental in beginning this good work. In 1605, still another, François Miron, paid out of his own pocket for the facing with masonry of the égout de Ponceau from the Rue Saint-Denis to the Rue Saint-Martin. Various other open sewers were gradually transformed into covered ones, but under Louis XIV, while the total length of the first was only two thousand three hundred and fifty-three mètres, that of the latter, including the long égout de ceinture, or stream of Ménilmontant, was eight thousand and thirty-six.

Marie de Médicis, having begun, in 1613, to plant the trees for the park of her proposed palace on the site of the old Hôtel du Luxembourg, was desirous of securing a supply of water for her fountains, and arrangements were made to divide that which was to be brought from the source at Rungis by the Aqueduct of Arcueil. The old one built by the Romans in this locality—whence its name, Arculi—had fallen to ruins; one Hugues Cosnier had engaged, the preceding year, to construct a new one in three years, which should bring thirty inches of water to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, eighteen for the palace and twelve for the inhabitants. The work was carried out by Jacques Debrosse, between 1613 and 1624; and on his handsome, dressed-stone construction there was erected another in rough stone, less high but twice as long, between 1868 and 1872.

A detailed report has been preserved, setting forth the condition of the streets of the capital, made by Anne de Beaulieu, Sieur de Saint-Germain, to the king, in April, 1636. Everywhere, ordures, immondices, bouès, and eaux croupies et arrestées, the latter proceeding from the broken sewers; in the quartier Saint-Eustache, the égouts were stopped up, as everywhere else, "which causes the aforesaid waters to stagnate and to rise nearly to the church of Saint-Eustache and to give forth such a stinking vapor, in consequence of the carriages, carts, and horses which pass through the aforesaid waters, which is capable of polluting the whole quarter, and the same rising and stagnating of water is caused in the Rue du Bout du Monde as far as the aforesaid Rue Montorgueil; and it is to be remarked that the stench of the aforesaid waters is much more stinking and infectious in this locality than in others, because of the butchers and pork-butchers who have their slaughter-houses on the aforesaid esgout (the égout of the Rue Montmartre), and that the blood and the garbage and other matters proceeding as much from the aforesaid slaughter-houses as from the sweepings of the houses."

In 1670, the city established the two pumps at the Pont Notre-Dame to raise the river-water, which, elevated "to the height of sixty feet and to the quantity of eighty inches, was conducted into different quarters of the city by pipes six inches in diameter." Two mills which were standing on this site were purchased by the city, which diminished considerably the expense and hastened the completion of the work. These pumps were enclosed in a building of the Ionic order of architecture, the door of which was decorated with a medallion of Louis XIV, and with two figures sculptured in bas-relief by Jean Goujon, one representing a naiad, and the other personifying a river. These had previously ornamented an edifice in the Marché Neuf which had been demolished. An inscription by the poet Santeuil completed the decoration of this building. These pumps were restored and reconstructed in 1708, and finally abandoned in 1854.

The most important reformation effected in the eighteenth century was the reconstruction, throughout its whole length, of the great main sewer and the construction of a reservoir for the water with which to flood it. This was decided upon in 1737, and completed in 1740. Sewers were constructed also in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple and Rue de Turenne, the open ditch Guénégaud was covered over, and the Invalides and the École militaire were supplied with water. A police ordinance of January 9, 1767, forbade the inhabitants to put out in the streets any broken bottles, crockery, or glassware, or to throw them out of the windows; all individuals were forbidden, also, by the eighth article, to throw out of the windows in the streets, "either by night or day, any water, urine, fecal matter, or other filth of any nature whatsoever, under penalty of a fine of three hundred livres." The Parisians objected strongly to this interference with their usual habits, and this question of sanitation remained long unsolved; in 1769, the Contrôleur Général, M. de Laverdy, proposed to establish at the street corners brouettes, or small, closed vehicles, in which could be found lunettes for the benefit of the public. "The contractors promised to turn in a certain sum to the royal treasury," says the author of the Mémoirs secrets, "which transformed the affair into an impost worthy of being compared to that which Vespasian laid upon the urine of the Romans."

This idea, much derided at the time, was the germ of the modern cabinets inodores, those very useful institutions which do so much to disfigure the streets of Paris. In 1845, small cabinets of this species, mounted on wheels, could be seen on the Place de la Concorde, drawn about by a man, who stopped when signalled by the passer-by, but these soon disappeared. By a special law, passed February 4, 1851, the establishment of lavoirs publics was authorized in several quarters of Paris, and these establishments have continued to multiply.

The problem of supplying Paris with good drinking water is not yet completely solved, though immense progress has been made within the last sixty years. The cholera epidemic of 1832 did much to arouse the municipal authorities to the necessity of radical reform both in the water-supply and in the system of sewage. At this date, the city was furnished by the pumps in the Seine, by the selenitic water drawn from Belleville, from the Pré-Saint-Gervais and from Arcueil, and from the canal de l'Ourcq,—inferior in quality and insufficient in quantity. The public fountains had long been the great resource of the inhabitants, and these were frequently architectural constructions worthy of their importance,—the Fontaine des Innocents, that of the Birague—now disappeared, that of the Arbre-Sec, of Gaillon and of Grenelle. The porteurs d'eau were robust young fellows, mostly from Auvergne, who carried about the Seine water in two metal buckets by means of a neck yoke, and delivered it in the loftiest houses. At night, the water-casks, always filled, were stationed at various points, so as to be available in case of fire;—the first water-carrier who reached the scene of conflagration received a reward of twelve francs. The eau de Seine, filtered, was retailed at ten centimes the voie, or two pailfuls, of ten or fifteen litres, twenty times the price it is to-day; the poor preferred to use the water just as it came from the river, polluted as it was by the sewage.

As late as 1608, the only resource available outside the Seine water and that of wells was that furnished by the two little aqueducts of Belleville and the Pré-Saint-Gervais, constructed by Philippe-Auguste about the beginning of the thirteenth century. This supply was called les Eaux du Roi, and was dispensed graciously by the monarch to the grand seigneurs and the rich monasteries. The aqueduct of Belleville, which was falling into ruin, was partly reconstructed by the prévôt of the merchants in 1457. Henri IV, in 1598, granted the first concession for a fixed price, which was the origin of the custom of paying for the municipal water-supply. At the end of the eighteenth century, the city was furnished by the "Eaux du Roi," which included that brought by the aqueduct of Arcueil and drawn from the pompe de la Samaritaine (1606-1608); and by the "Eaux de la Ville," from the aqueduct of Belleville and the pompes Notre-Dame. The Eaux du Roi were ceded outright to the city in 1807; their administration is confided to the Préfet of the Seine, under the authority of the Minister of the Interior.