<p> The Rue R&eacute;aumur, cleared and constructed between 1896 and 1900, was the first major urbanism project initiated in central Paris after the dismissal of Haussmann. Realized under the Third Republic and under the guidance of a democratically elected Paris Municipal Council, the street provoked an unprecedented public debate about urbanist priorities, the management of municipal debt, and architectural aesthetics. Disappointed with the visual homogeneity of the Haussmannian boulevard, Councilors liberalized building code and declared a Concours des Fa&ccedil;ades in the Rue R&eacute;aumur in order to visually revitalize their city.</p><p> That variation of the streetscape would turn on a monumentalization of the urban party-wall building through enlarged <i>saillies</i> and <i> avant-propos</i>, corbelled fa&ccedil;ade elements hitherto banned in the streets of Paris. Conceived as a central business district, the Rue R&eacute;aumur was also a unique concentration of commercial architecture, which encouraged an expanded use of iron structure to open building interiors and fa&ccedil;ades into naturally illuminated, floor-through spaces of manufacture. Construction in the Rue R&eacute;aumur was, then, guided by contradictory impulses. Charged with psychically countering the uniformity of the rationalized city, the exuberant elevations of the new street simultaneously masked a reordering of the architectural object by similar pressures towards economic and technological efficiency. </p><p> This dissertation treats the architecture of the Rue R&eacute;aumur and the public debate that shaped it as mutually determining engagements of architectural modernity. It situates the street's evolution as a response to the political, economic, spatial, and psychic challenges posed by the emerging capitalist metropolis. Reconstruction of the architectural and social discourses that informed design practice in the Rue R&eacute;aumur positions late-century eclecticism as an indispensable step in the development of interwar Parisian modernism. That architecture served as the primary object of rejection within modernist historiography and avant-garde theory due to its reliance on historical vocabularies. This study demonstrates that the perceptual immediacy desired of the late-century Parisian fa&ccedil;ade was of equal importance to the development of architectural modernism as theories of structural rationalism. It considers eclecticist architecture like that of the Rue R&eacute;aumur as a moment of dynamic invention within nineteenth-century theory and design practice, the terms of which would integrally condition Le Corbusier's reconception of architecture and architectural aesthetics a generation later.</p><p>

Le 4 mai 1913, s’ouvre dans les locaux de la Chambre de Commerce de Nancy, la première exposition d’urbanisme jamais organisée en France, l’Exposition de la Cité Moderne, avec pour point d’orgue un avant-projet de plan d’extension de la capitale lorraine. Caractérisé par un Grand boulevard de circonvallation qui redessine les limites d’une ville en plein développement, ce plan incarne les ambitions urbaines d’un nouvel âge d’or régional né de la proximité de la frontière avec l’Allemagne depuis 1871 et du formidable essor du bassin minier de Briey depuis les années 1900. Cependant, l’exposition n’est pas le fait des édiles nancéiens, mais des maîtres de forges de la Société industrielle de l’Est, et le plan n’est pas du à l’initiative des organisateurs, mais d’un collectif d’architectes locaux plus connus pour leur participation à l’École de Nancy. Au moment même où la place Stanislas s’impose comme une référence incontournable, la qualité de l’enquête documentaire internationale menée au préalable, et la participation du Musée social, mais aussi la publication du projet dans les colonnes de L’Architecture, et son exposition à Gand, Lyon et Paris, achèvent de faire de ce plan d’extension un témoin singulier des premiers temps de l’urbanisme. Au-delà des conditions lorraines et nancéiennes de son émergence, le propos ambitionne de resituer sa genèse par rapport aux grandes questions morphologiques soulevées par le débat international qui s’organise autour des manifestations de Berlin et de Londres, et plus particulièrement, de la question du traitement des limites de la Grande ville, entre boulevard de ceinture et cité-jardin, entre système de parcs et ceinture verte. / May 4, 1913, opens in the premises of the Chambre de Commerce de Nancy, the first exhibition of urban planning ever organized in France, the Exposition de la Cité Moderne, culminating in a preliminary draft of a plan d’extension of the Lorraine capital. Characterized by a Grand Boulevard de Circonvallation that redraws the limits of a city in full development, this plan embodies the urban ambitions of a new regional golden age born from the proximity of the border with Germany since 1871, and formidable boom of the mining basin of Briey since the 1900’s. However, the exhibition is not the fact of the city councilors of Nancy, but of the ironmasters of the Société Industrielle de l'Est, and the plan is not due to initiative of the organizers, but a group of local architects better known for their participation in the École de Nancy. At the very moment when Place Stanislas stands out as an essential reference, the quality of the international documentary survey conducted in advance, and the participation of the Musée Social, but also the publication of the project in the columns of L'Architecture, and its exhibition in Ghent, Lyon and Paris, complete this expansion plan as a singular witness of the early days of urban planning. Beyond the Lorraine and Nancy conditions of its emergence, the intention is to resituate its genesis in relation to the big morphological questions raised by the international debate which is organized around the Berlin and London demonstrations, and more particularly, the question the treatment of the limits of the Big City, between belt-boulevard and garden-city, between park system and green belt.