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Paris’ Champs-Elysees : Once-Chic Avenue Goes Democratic

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Times Staff Writer

To some, the recent developments along the broad Avenue des Champs-Elysees are nothing less than a “massacre” of one of the world’s great streets--a desecration of the French triumphal path that once bore the ashes of Napoleon Bonaparte and the coffin of Victor Hugo.

“The degradation of the Champs-Elysees reflects the degradation of society in general,” argues Maurice Casanova, owner of Fouquet’s, the last remaining classic belle epoque- style restaurant left on the avenue. To Casanova, his restaurant is a proud battleship holding out against an armada of swift, modern destroyers.

Others have a more evolutionary view of the 1.1-mile stretch between the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de la Concorde that the French proudly call the “most beautiful avenue in the world.” The Champs-Elysees, this side contends, has been “democratized” to make room for even more people to share its glory.

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“I’m not going to cry any tears over the coming of fast-food restaurants to the Champs-Elysees,” said Claude Marcus, president of Publicis, an international advertising firm based on the avenue. “To me, this is an aspect of modernization and the democratization of the city center that you see in all the big cities of Europe.”

From there, the debate breaks down into the populist vs. elitist, republican vs. monarchist, ready-to-wear vs. high-fashion kind of exchange that has been at the center of history here since the French Revolution 200 years ago this summer.

Still, everyone agrees on one thing: The Champs-Elysees has undergone a metamorphosis in recent years. It is no longer the fashionable center of town. On the other hand, in terms of numbers of visitors and volume of sales in its stores and eateries, it is more popular than ever.

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In the last 20 years, most of the haute couture shops, perfumeries and fancy restaurants that once lined the path have moved away, many to the nearby Avenue Montaigne and Rue du Faubourg-St. Honore. In their place are jeans and sweat-shirt emporiums, compact disc stores, one-hour photo shops and computerized astrology centers, all bouncing to the blaring beat of rock-infused sound systems.

The grand hotels of the past have all been gutted to make room for shopping malls and video-game parlors.

At the same time, fast-food restaurants with names like Pop Inn, Free Time and, yes, McDonald’s and Burger King now battle for sidewalk space with double-deck pizza parlors.

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“You no longer see the elegant set strolling on the Champs-Elysees,” said Police Commissioner Jean-Louis Camus, until recently the man in charge of Paris’ most famous street. “Today is the reign of the cornet de frites-- French fries in a cup. The elegant promenaders have been chased away.”

Instead, the broad sidewalks and tree-lined curbs of the avenue have become havens for peddlers who hawk giant balloons and plastic mechanical birds that dart annoyingly through the air; an increasing number of homeless; performers who amuse the crowds outside movie theaters by swallowing razor blades, and phalanxes of special French police units, the swaggering Compagnie Republicaine de Securite, in their navy blue flight jackets.

The police are there to keep the peace among the avenue’s daily volume of 250,000 people, many of them unemployed youths who come into town on the inexpensive suburban train system. Indeed, those in the elitist camp often mark the beginning of the Champs-Elysees’ transformation with the opening in 1970 of the Reseau Express Regional train station underneath the Arc de Triomphe, which made the center of Paris accessible to those from the mainly working-class suburbs.

The result of all this is that the Champs-Elysees--the avenue that Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, creator of Le Drugstore, calls the “great beating heart of the city, showcase of its riches, its glories and its passions”--is no longer chic.

For the stylish French professional class, the Champs-Elysees has all the allure of a bottle of ketchup. In tribute to this attitude, the annual French yuppie guidebook, “BC BG: Le Bon Chic Bon Genre,” put it first on the list of “places to avoid.”

But this does not mean that the Champs-Elysees has suddenly become overwhelmingly ugly or deadly dangerous.

Indeed, practically nothing done to the avenue, first developed as a royal carriage path in the early 17th Century by Marie de Medici, wife of King Henry IV, makes much of a dent in its natural grandeur.

From its base in the Place de la Concorde, where the renowned obelisk from the Temple of Luxor was installed in 1836, the avenue rises along the gentle grade of Chaillot Hill to the magnificent, 162-foot-high Arc de Triomphe, commissioned by Napoleon in 1806 to glorify his military victories.

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The great width of the Champs-Elysees--more than 200 feet for its entire course--and Paris’ 24-meter (79-foot) limitation on building height gives it an ideal scale for the celebration of human triumph and military conquest. American troops paraded here at the end of World War I and World War II. As commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE) after the second war, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower kept his residence and office in the old Hotel Astoria at No. 133.

And the avenue remains a prestige address for any business, big or small. McDonald’s reportedly spent $6 million to win its spot on the sunny side of the Champs (buildings on the street’s northeast flank garner 20% more rent because of the increased exposure to light). Office rent can reach an annual rate in excess of $450 per square foot.

The famed Tour de France bicycle race ends here every summer, concluding with several laps up and down the avenue.

At the same time, the Champs-Elysees is minor league compared to the horrific urban crime rates in the United States.

“Crime on the Champs-Elysees is mainly the kind of minor delinquency and petty theft you find in congested public places--purse snatching and picking pockets,” said Jean-Claude Guardiola, police chief of the 8th arrondissement, which contains the avenue as well as the French presidential palace and the U.S. and British embassies.

Still, outrage over the trends along the Champs-Elysees has been bubbling for decades. In 1933, some Parisians complained that the street was going to the dogs when its first ready-to-wear clothing store, Prisunic, opened for business.

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In 1958, it was Bleustein-Blanchet’s turn to spark a controversy when he opened Le Drugstore, the American-inspired combination pharmacy, all-hours restaurant and gift store that now has branches at both ends of the avenue.

The main objection to Le Drugstore was the name, which many French officials found “too American.”

“The prime minister of the time, Michel Debre, proposed an alternate name, Bazaar,” remembered Claude Marcus, a business associate of Bleustein-Blanchet. “A member of the Academie Francaise proposed the name Pan. Monsieur Bleustein-Blanchet said that one word was Turkish and the other Greek, and an American name seemed just as good to him.”

So it was Le Drugstore, and when it opened the first day, 5,000 people waited outside to get in. Indeed, looking back, this may have been a turning point in popularization of the Champs-Elysees.

Steadily, the upscale boutiques gave way to more affordable shops and chains. Fashion leaders like Hermes and Lanvin and Vuitton moved out, while dozens of movie theaters and automobile display rooms were added to the scene.

“The Champs-Elysees,” French President Charles de Gaulle commented sarcastically in the early 1960s, “is the most beautiful avenue in the world if you disregard the buildings that line it.”

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Today, an estimated 60% to 80% of the buildings along the avenue are owned by foreigners, including oil-rich Arabs from the Persian Gulf and Japanese. The most recent shock to the system came this summer when Casanova, owner of the first-class restaurant Fouquet’s, learned that the absentee Kuwaiti landlords of the Fouquet’s building planned to sell.

Aided by dozens of celebrities who still frequent the restaurant, which remains the traditional location for the launching of any new film in town, Casanova appealed to French Culture Minister Jack Lang to declare the site a national monument. Any restaurant where James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Marilyn Monroe and Eleanor Roosevelt all dined at one time or another, he argued, should not be torn down.

Finally, in November, Casanova got his wish. Fouquet’s was identified as a piece of French heritage to be protected, like the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, in perpetuity.

“I have done my duty,” Casanova remarked proudly the other day in the rich wood-paneled, leather-cushioned Escadrille Bar of his restaurant. “If I never do anything else in my life, at least I know that no one will ever touch Fouquet’s.”

About the rest of the famous avenue, Casanova is not so certain, however. He has helped sponsor a committee to protect the street against further intrusions.

“It is not too late,” he said, looking skeptical as the hordes of pedestrians, some carrying paper cups and cornet de frites, walked past. “It is true that we have the fast-food shops. But at least we do not yet have the sex shops on the Champs-Elysees. There is time to save what can be saved.”

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The name, Champs-Elysees--in English, Elysian Fields--comes from the Greek name for the place at the end of the Earth, “the land of perfect happiness,” that was reserved for dead warriors and others favored by the gods. The area was first listed under that name on a map published in 1697.

About the same time, De Medici ordered the land planted and developed as an agreeable carriage trail for the nobility. Not everyone, however, shared her enthusiasm for the place.

The Marquis de Villette, a friend of the great French writer Voltaire, later described the Champs-Elysees as a “zone either torrid or glacial, a field of mud or dust, a terrain so rugged and uneven that even the strongest coaches are broken and the most robust horses exhausted. It is enough to annihilate the unfortunate walker who risks his life in the swamps if he nourishes the idea of a walk in the woods.”

Under Louis XV, the trail was improved slightly so that his mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, could make her way to his palace in Versailles.

In 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a feast for 10,000 men at shaded tables arranged along the Champs-Elysees.

But it was not until the mid-19th Century, under Emperor Napoleon III, that the avenue finally approached its full glory. The great Paris planner of the time, Baron George Eugene Haussmann, featured the street as a central fixture of his capital.

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During Haussmann’s era, the great mansions alongside the road, the private hotels particuliers, began to appear. Only two remain today at the foot of the avenue, including the palace of the Marquise de la Paiva that houses the private Travelers Club, where members can still dine on a bench atop the Marquise’s gold-plated bath.

As the avenue emerged as a banking and business center at the turn of the 20th Century, the hotels particuliers were replaced by big institutional structures. When Citibank of New York decided to build its Paris headquarters on the avenue, it had the mansion that was sitting on the land rebuilt, brick by brick, in a Paris park, where it still serves as a center for writers.

The New York bank announced the opening of its splendid new Art Deco building in 1931 as part of what it saw as a historic shift west, reflecting a very American, almost mystical concept rooted in the frontier experience.

”. . . Inside cities, business centers migrate periodically,” the bank asserted in a brochure produced for the occasion. “Style imposes its pressures and entire quarters of the city, once fashionable, see themselves abandoned without apparent reason.”

The American bank even provided a little map to show how the fashionable neighborhoods of Paris have shifted steadily west since the 15th Century, when business and life centered on the Ile de la Cite in the Seine; to the 17th Century, dominated by the Place des Vosges; to the 18th-Century Rue Quincampoix; to the 19th-Century Palais Royale, Opera and Madeleine, and, finally, to the Champs-Elysees.

“The heart of Paris has moved,” the bank pronounced, smugly confident of its new site. Today, the main office of Citibank is located west of Paris in the high-rise suburb of La Defense. And the old bank building on the Champs-Elysees has been divided into a discount department store and a giant, British-owned record shop.

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