Albert Lenoir (1801-1891), Large In-folio Work "monumental Statistics Of Paris", 1867

A major work of the 19th century in terms of town planning and architecture, the Monumental Statistics of Paris was written under the direction of Albert Lenoir (1801-1891) and largely by him. There we find one of the first scientific attempts to describe all of the great Parisian monuments, using plans, architectural drawings, and exhaustive notices. (137 pages). 19th century, 1867. Albert Lenoir (dir.), 1867. Monumental statistics of Paris published by the Minister of Public Education: Maps, plans and drawings. Atlas, Volumes 2 to 3. Paris: Imprimerie imperiale. In 1835, Lenoir proposed to the Committee of Arts and Monuments, which had just been installed by Minister Guizot, the project of a publication dedicated to Paris. The work, published in several issues brought together in a large folio format, is composed of 266 engraved or lithographed plates. The number of monuments described is even greater than the number of pages, and includes buildings and fragments of sculpture from the Roman era, churches founded in Paris during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as well as the various monuments that the latter contain, civil monuments and private hotels dating from the Gothic and Renaissance periods. Albert Lenoir had gathered around him around thirty collaborators, specialists in the capital; notably collaborated with: Adolphe Berty, Jean-Baptiste Lassus, Théodore Vacquer, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc… Its writing having spread over many years (for which the hostility of the minister Gustave Rouland was largely responsible2), it was able to slowly enrich itself with archaeological discoveries caused by urban upheavals: Notre-Dame square (excavated in 1847), remains of the Hôtel d'Harcourt (discovered at the time of the widening of rue Du-Sommerard and destroyed in 1852), etc. A “rivalry between the Prefecture (Haussmann since 1853) and the Ministry of Public Education, materialized by the creation, at the Prefecture, of a “Plan Department” of the City of Paris”3 was also the origin of the amputation of the initial summary: the plan could not be given in Statistics since, in a cavalier manner, Adolphe Berty, former assistant of Lenoir for the archaeological plan of the City, had monopolized it and had begun its publication in 1866 in a Topography of old Paris in 6 volumes (from 1866 to 1897) (“General History of Paris” collection published by the City of Paris). Disappointed, bruised, Lenoir can only note this in the 3rd volume of Statistics: “Statistics has therefore been reduced, as far as topography is concerned, to two small planes. » (reported by Froissart, 2012, p. 134)