19th Arondissement - Buttes Chaumont Before 1860, when Paris was
re-arranged into its present shape, the 19th arrondissement was
part of the township of Belleville – and very much the rough end
of it. In the north, there were the docks and the municipal
slaughterhouses, and with much of the land to the south (after
centuries of gypsum mining) being too porous for permanent
structures, the entire area had been abandoned to rat-infested
knacker's yards, bull-baiting rings and the largest municipal
rubbish dump. A daring act of social engineering was to change
all that: the Park of Buttes Chaumont, still the town's
prettiest, was conceived as an island of gentility whose
effects, it was hoped, would eventually radiate to heal the
whole district. Or, in the words of Baron Haussmann (the de
facto Mayor of Paris at the time): to provide "moral uplift" for
the entire area. After 150 years, however, the Park still has a
long way to go, its gentrifying effects having penetrated the
area about two blocks deep. The dock