Birth of the Modern City

In the same manner as the morgue, the cemetery too became a tool for governmental organization and ornamentation. In the 18^th century, the cemetery was nothing but a source of concern for Parisians. The example of the largest Parisian cemetery, Les Innocents, was a frightful place – completely over saturated with bodies, and leading to the contamination and the spread of disease caused by open graves in the city center. As the implementation of decrees failed to contain this space, and problems continued to proliferate, unilateral action was finally taken. It was primarily this concern that led to the creation of the Parisian Catacombs, south of the city at Denfert-Rochreau, and a push for elimination of churchyard cemeteries in the city-center [1].

A new breed of suburban cemeteries soon emerged, edified by an 1804 Napoleonic decree (the Decret du 23 prarial an XII) which placed cemeteries outside city limits [2]. Among these were the cemeteries of Montparnasse, Montmartre, and Pere Lachaise. These cemeteries, were a completely different breed of animal. Designed, plotted, and far enough removed from the city centers to allow for expansion — these cemeteries were “distinct spaces” and modeled in a manner reflective of the rambling and picturesque parks of the 19th century. This element of openneness and serenity, created yet another form through which admnistrative oversight would impact the perception of the city by its citizens.

These cemetaries, like parks created a new visual culture that embraced picturesque and monumental forms. Though initially, the public was hesitant to use these new cemeteries, the burial there of “several Napoleonic heroes” as well as the transfer of the tombs of Abelard & Heloise, Moliere, and La Fontaine turned the location into a “fashionable” venue for strolling and also spectatorship [3].

April 23, 2009, 2:47pm

Detail of engraved map of the Eastern division of Paris (1834) via the David Rumsey Map Collection

In this map, one can clearly note the placement of Pere Lachaise on the outskirts of the city — its placement just east of one of the main routes marking the start of the suburbs. Additionally of note is the relative dearth of buildings around the cemetery. Unlike Les Innocents, which saw continual construction around it, this new form of cemetery was to be removed from the general public. The largest buildings of note in the immediate area are a women’s correctional facility to the west, and the Melinmontant abattoir to the north west.

April 23, 2009, 1:34pm

Carree des Generaux via Gallica Consultation

April 23, 2009, 1:29pm

Monument raised for General Foy via Gallica Consultation

One of the many tombstones erected at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, the creation of such statues served to create not only a destination for Parisians of the time, but played heavily into the aspect of visual culture emphasized in this time period. Instead of the clustered forms of the inner-city cemetery, Pere Lachaise required the use of plots, upon which could be created ornamented and monumental tombs. As a type of catalogue of past individuals, this organization of not only visual space, physical space, and history represented the top-down organizing potential of government influence.

April 23, 2009, 1:27pm

Au Pere Lachaise (1829) via Gallica Consultation

The cemetery as a place for artistic endeavor and monumental construction. With the large-scale territory occupied by the cemetery, it soon became a place for recreation and commemoration. Strolling couples are pictured in this rather pastoral scene, so far removed from the crowded and unhygenic inner-city cemeteries of the 18th century.

April 23, 2009, 1:22pm

The Parisian Morgue presents perhaps one of the best examples of the transformative force that institutional power brought to one of the most basic elements of life. Though throughout history the morgue had always served as “a depository for the anonymous dead”[1] the imposition of the state in this matter, specifically the police prefecture, strove to make the process of identification into a clean and ordered matter.

In the 18^th century, the existing city morgue, also know as the basse-geole, was a remote underground site, linked with a Prison located at Chatelet. The basement viewing chamber, described as a “stinking pestilent place” came to represent everything wrong with prior levels of regulation in terms of institutional presence, hygiene, and order. In its role, pursuant of the identification of corpses, “visitors could only present themselves one at a time; in order to look into the horrible and somber cave they were forced to breathe the poisoned air of this grotto and put their faces against a narrow opening.”[2]

With an 1804 police order, under the new administration of the First Empire, the morgue was officially transferred to a “specially designed building in the shape of a Greek temple,” a former butcher-shop located at the place du Marche-Neuf. The location was not only central to the city of Paris, located on the Ile-de-la-Cite, but brought with it a massive increase in visibility by a bustling and curious public. The architecture, which promoted a stark visual presentation of death, with a gigantic viewing salon, bridged the gap between living and dead, in a senses feeding into the visual culture and sense of spectacle evolving in this time period.

The institution of the morgue, was therefore central to the production of a new visual culture in Paris. The architecture sought to emphasize the clean lines, and grandiosity of a new French manner of thinking – in this sense too, its subject matter, death came to be increasingly linked with a visual manner of thinking within Paris. Themes of fantasmorgia, shadows & darkness came to represent a fascination of the unknown beyond its administrative function. The initial curiosity which would bring as many as 40,000 individuals through the morgue’s viewing rooms in one day [3], evolved into a manner of thinking that embraced these new forms on a daily level.

April 23, 2009, 1:14pm

La Morgue (1830) via The Brown Univeristy Center for Digital Intiatives

The Morgue, located on the banks of the Seine river, allowed for the easy transport and access to bodies transported by water. This location, also meant that the Morgue retained a now-central place in the the city center, accessible to thousands of individuals on a given day.

April 23, 2009, 12:18pm

The first half of the 19th century, specifically in Paris, presented a monumental shift in the manner through which individuals interacted with the urban setting. Governmental projects (though not yet the Haussmannization that would be implemented in the 1860s and beyond), challenged the forms and functions of various structures in the city. Their reconstruction, combined with a new institutional backing, created a new set of relations between the public and a more functional, “modern” city.

Under the rule of Napoleon I, during the First French Empire (1804-1814), the state became heavily involved in the role of the city in the life of the individual. Administrative buildings, and bureaucracy could be seen as a restructuring force which challenged the prevailing chaos of the city during the time of the French Revolution. As a means of solidifying authority and representing the power of empire, Paris as a capitol underwent significant modernizing efforts which had vast repercussions on its citizens during the course of the 19th century.

One of the most interesting cases of state intervention in life, was ironically the role of the state in restructuring the means of dealing with death. In the examples and photographs that follow, I hope to explore the changes undergone by two institutions typically linked with the afterlife in Paris — the morgue, and the cemetery (specifically Pere Lachaise).  Whereas before the governmental restructuring of these two elements of Parisian life, they had always carried an air of disorder and had kept them removed from daily life – their later incorporation into city life, as a function of the city itself, reshaped the manner in which the public viewed and interacted with death. Instead of being something sidelined within the city environment, the clear demarcation of death, brought about a new visual culture surrounding the dressings of death, and clearly influenced the popular imagination and perceptions of the time.

Digital Project: The Morgue
Digital Project: Pere Lachaise

April 23, 2009, 11:58am