Vintage Color Photos Capture Street Scenes of Paris in the 1960s

These charming color photographs depict street scenes of Paris in the 1960s. In 1958, Charles de Gaulle formed a new government and the Fifth Republic was born.

During the ten years that de Gaulle held the presidency, France and Paris experienced rapid economic growth, accompanied by the construction of new office buildings and residences and the rehabilitation of historic neighborhoods in the city center.

De Gaulle's Minister of Culture, André Malraux, oversaw the reconstruction of the historic neighborhoods in the centre, especially Le Marais.

In Le Marais and other designated historic areas, rehabilitation included keeping the facades and walls intact, while completely reconstructing the building's interiors.

The Malraux Law also required that building facades be cleaned of soot and dirt accumulated over centuries. The most visible improvement was the cleaning of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which went from black to white in a matter of months.

In other neighborhoods in the city centre, rehabilitation took a different form: residential buildings from the Haussmann era were converted into offices.

As the price of land in the city center doubled, middle-class residents moved to the suburbs. Dilapidated and crumbling residential buildings were demolished and office buildings were constructed in their place. The population of the arrondissement in the city center has decreased significantly.

The central market neighborhood of Les Halles was also the target of renovation. The old market was too small and the traffic around it was too congested to meet the needs of the growing city.

One of the historic pavilions was preserved and moved to a park outside the city, but the others were closed and after lengthy debate the site was eventually transformed into a park and underground commercial space, the Forum des Halles.

Until the 1960s Paris had no tall buildings to share the skyline with the Eiffel Tower, the city's tallest structure; A strict height limit of thirty-five meters was in place.

However, in October 1958, under the Fifth Republic, the rules began to change, to allow the construction of more housing and office buildings. A new urban plan for the city was adopted by the municipal council in 1959.

Tall buildings were permitted as long as they met both technical and aesthetic standards. The first new tower to be constructed was an apartment building, the Tour Croulbarbe, at 33 rue Croulbarbe in the 13th arrondissement.

It was twenty-two storeys and sixty-one meters high and was completed in 1961. Between 1960 and 1975, about 160 new buildings taller than fifteen storeys were built in Paris, more than half of them in the 13th and 15th arrondissements.

The most important project of de Gaulle's government was the creation of a new business district in La Defense, just west of the city limits.

The idea was to build a new business centre, as there was no more space to build in the traditional business center around the Opera; and to extend the historical axis of the city, an imaginary east-west line that ran from the Porte-Maillot on the eastern edge of the city to the Place de la Bastille, to the Louvre and through the Place de la Concorde. From the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.

This allowed the creation of a French version of Manhattan, without disturbing the skyline and architecture of the city's historic center.

The process of de-industrialization in the suburbs of Paris was already underway before de Gaulle. Under the Fourth Republic, enterprises were required to obtain government approval for each new industrial building of more than 500 square meters and pay heavy fees to subsidize transportation and other services. The government also paid subsidies for the demolition of old factory buildings.

The rising cost of land was a major factor in the relocation of industry from the city and suburbs to other areas. Between 1960 and 1966, 352,000 square meters of industrial buildings were destroyed a year, while only 295,000 square meters were constructed.

By 1960, the industrial sector of the Paris region represented only 10 percent of the national total.