An urban vision: Saint-Dié-des-Vosges

Saint-Dié was rebuilt without delay on the best conceived of plans, with the wide, clean, spacious, strictly aligned streets that we see today. The layout reproduces the regular beauty of Nancy and, with its modern pavements and  continually flowing fountains, makes this one of the most attractive town in the Vosges.  

Charleton, Les Vosges pittoresques et historiques (1841), p.225. 

A search for traces of  King Stanislas in Lorraine takes us, rather unexpectedly, to Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, ninety kilometres to the south-east of Nancy.  Under Stanislas's benevolent gaze, after a devastating fire in 1757,  this little town deep in the Vosges Mountains became the site of a noteworthy essay in Enlightenment urban planning.

Today an isolated reminder of Saint-Dié's "first reconstruction" still survives in this battered fountain, erected in 1807, on the 50th anniversary of the fire. The monument once stood in the centre of the town, on the place Stanislas / place Jules Ferry, but was moved further east in 1961 to a site on the crossroads at the end of the rue Dauphine. 

The inscription reads: 

27th July 1807. The town of Saint-Dié erected this monument of thanks to Stanislas King of Poland whose generosity rebuilt the houses destroyed by fire on 27th July 1757. 

 

An 18th-century town

The ancient province of Lorraine (Wikimedia)

In 1750 Saint-Dié was a prosperous town with  more than 3,400 inhabitants.  It benefitted from its strategic position between Alsace and the Duchy of Le Bar - on a well-established route for troops, but also for merchants and their trade.  Historically the town had been the fief of the ancient Chapter of Saint-Dié but in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, its civic and judicial powers were progressively eroded: a bourgeois town council had been created in 1628 and, in the time of Duke Leopold, a municipal administration with officeholders salaried by the commune. Under La Galaizière, Saint-Dié, with the rest of Lorraine, was progressively integrated into the French administrative model: in 1734 the town became the seat of one of 36 Subdelegations, and in 1751 the capital of a newly formed Bailliage. In 1758 the Canons were to be formally confined to ecclesiastical functions.

The Chapter continued to be generously endowed by Stanislas who conceded the domain of Saint-Dié to the Grand-Prévôt in perpetuity with the title of comte; in 1777 the Canons were  major landowners, with revenues of 75,000 livres. Here too the ultimate aim was integration, this time by the elevation of Saint-Dié into a bishopric.   The Grand-Prévôt  already had the insignia of a bishop and enjoyed quasi-episcopal jurisdiction over the town and the eighteen parishes of the vale.   From 1753, the position was held by the Chancellor's brother the l'abbé Dieudonné de Chaumont de Mareil and, from 1768 by his son Barthélemy Chaumont de la Galaizière who, as the culmination of a century-long campaign, was to be inaugurated as first bishop of Saint-Dié on 21st September 1777. 

View of the collegiate church/cathedral and the maison canoniale prior to 1780.
Musée Lorrain, Nancy.  Tassin (2017), fig.5

Left: The abbé de Chaumont de Mareil painted by Joseph Aved in 1738 [Wikimedia]
Right: Barthélemy Chaumont de la Galaizière, first Bishop of Saint-Dié, portrait in the Musée Charles de Bruyères,  Remiremont [Wikimedia]

Saint-Dié before its destruction

At the mid century the town more or less retained its medieval appearance. After the ravages of French wars the fortifications had been knocked down, and the defensive ditches replaced by gardens. In 1748 the remains of the walls were finally ceded officially by to Lorraine.

Saint-Dié, c,1710 (Wikimedia)

To the north of the town was the "island of the Canons" with its two ancient churches and the canonical houses. Below this, the main thoroughfare, the Grande-rue or rue Ducale, ran from north to south.

A branch of the Meurthe skirted the town walls to the south having first powered a series of mills - for paper,  textiles and flour.  These type of establishments, together with sawmills, represented the main industry of the town.  By the Porte du Beffroy at the south a channel, the "ruisseau des fontaines", flowed into the Grande-rue which it divided into two. To the east  was the area historically under the jurisdiction of the Chapter; to the west the domain of the princes of Lorraine.

 The Grande-rue  was wide enough at this time to accommodate a market, with stalls on both sides. It was bordered along its entire length by wooden arcades supported by stone pillars, creating shaded gallery where goods could be laid out.  A market hall, the Hall of the Chapter, provided a storehouse. 

To the West of the town, on the site of the former château, was the Convent of the Capuchins and the houses belonging to the ducal domain.

Plan of 1739 from the archives in Épinal, published by  Francis de Chanteau in 
Annales de la Société d'émulation du département des Vosges (1875), p.135.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k333631/f134.item

The fire

The fire started at about two o'clock in the heat of the afternoon of 27th July 1757. It  was reported to have originated in the bell foundry belonging to Nicolas Ferry (ancestor of the statesman Jules Ferry), situated at the southern end of the Grande-rue, not far from the Porte du Beffroy.  In the space of four hours, the conflagration destroyed 116 houses, with 288 separate households.  The wooden roofs caught fire almost immediately and a north-east wind fanned the flames. The wooden arcades in the Grande-rue were transformed into a terrifying vault of fire which made it impossible for anyone to enter or to bring help. Panic was increased when a barrel of gunpowder,  rolled out from one of the houses, exploded, causing the thunderous collapse of further buildings already undermined by the fire.  Everyone fled from the horrible scene and abandoned their blazing homes in fear of their lives. 

The fire finally halted a few hours later in the rue du Chapitre to the north and, to the east, in an open space near a house which was under construction: in the 19th century a plaque, on no.68 rue Thiers, marked the spot:

AU PREMIER ÉTAGE J'ÉTOIS

QUAND LE FEU J'ARRÊTAI

EN MDCCLVII

LE 27 DE JUILLET

M.P.D.

At  6 rue Point du Jour, an inscription attached to a votive statue of the Virgin, confirmed that the adjoining Quartier du Puit had also been saved by the gardens that separated it from the Grande-rue.  

A further, unexplained outbreak of fire occurred on 6th September, causing the destruction of a nine houses and making a further 22 households homeless.

The damage to public buildings was considerable.  The canonical quarter, with its stone buildings, was largely spared, but the church and house of the Capuchins, and the adjacent windmill had fallen victim to the fire.  The Hôtel de Ville, the prison next to it and the business premises around, were completely destroyed, and the town archives severely damaged by the smoke.  All had to be rebuilt.

A pledge of aid

Two days after the fire, on 29th July, representatives from the stricken town reached Stanislas at  Commercy; they returned on 2nd August with generous assurances of aid.  On 6th August the Jesuit Father Menoux arrived with 1,000 thousand livres in "charities from the Royal Missions".  The Royal Council of Finance and Commerce stepped in rapidly to suspend taxes on grain and foodstuffs. Two night town criers were instituted to do the rounds of the streets. The Chancellor, above all, watched over the situation.  

Only three months later, an order of the Royal Council of Finance, dated  27th October,  published a plan for reconstruction. 100,000 francs, raised by summary levy, was be paid in instalments over the following three years "for the provision of new buildings, the acquisition of land, and the replacement of properties destroyed by the fire". 

The goodwill of King Stanislas has been contested, especially since 19th-century writers erroneously imagined that he financed the work from his privy purse and visited Saint-Dié personally (in reality he was already almost eighty and had never ventured into this part of Lorraine).  Modern historians, however, acknowledge that, as nominal sovereign, he was no position to make more than "a benevolent, if somewhat symbolic, announcement." (Albert Olh des Marais, quoted in Wikipedia)  The measures enacted by the Royal Council were generous, for these were difficult times financially in Lorraine; in September 1757 a second vingtième had been levied to support France's new war in Europe and La Galaizière found himself in open conflict with the Sovereign Court.

A model for urban reconstruction

Oversight of the reconstruction project was entrusted to the experienced hands of Jean-Jacques Baligand (1697-1762), Chief Engineer of the Ponts-et-chaussées for Lorraine and Bar since 1750, who was on the spot in Saint-Dié  by the end of August.  The plan for the new building work, signed by the surveyors Robin and François, was drawn up by on his orders, ready to be published by the Royal Council of Finance on 27th October.

It is clear from the Council's ordonnance that intentions went well beyond mere rebuilding.  The opportunity was to be taken to modernise the town, improve economic infrastructure and, at least implicitly, prepare for future reunion with France. 

The plan was said to indicate only "new alignments for the  reconstruction of the destroyed buildings" but also "various dispositions to improve the appearance of the town and promote the convenience of the inhabitants".

Among the specific objectives listed were: 

- Imposition of uniformity of design: victims of the fire were to be obliged to reconstruct their houses "on regular alignments", with restrictions as to size and materials.
- The undertaking of structural works intended to "revive commerce in the town and improve the approaches and communications". These included the suppression of a useless canal  […], the creation of a new town gate and the provision of squares where fairs and markets could conveniently be held. 
- The establishment of "a standard of appearance appropriate to a principal town in [His Majesty's] States, the position of which furnishes opportunity for trade with neighbouring provinces"

Text of the ordonnance of October 1757:

François Dinago, "Donation faite par Stanislas en faveur des habitants de Saint-Dié, avec Notice historique" Bulletin de la Société philomatique vosgienne (1884), p. 165-168.

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k33440n/f166.item

Official plan of October 1757, reproduced  in Tassin (2017), fig.1.  
Note that the Grande-rue runs left to right.

A huge building site

The basic work was completed within the space of the three years 1758 to 1761. This was a remarkable feat of logistics, which mobilised the full organisational power of the Lorraine state. The Royal Council of Finances levied taxes, assigned corvées, commandeered wood from the domain forests.  In Saint-Dié Balingard was assisted by the  local architect Jean-Michel Carbonnar, whilst  his subordinate in the  Ponts-et-Chaussée, Jean-François Malbert, was responsible for the day-to-day organisation of the building sites, and the movement of workers and supplies.  The operation was also greatly facilitated by the close co-operation of Florent-Joseph Bazelaire de Lesseux, the bailli royal for Saint-Dié since 1751, and his town council..

The first problem was to source building materials. Local quarries were constrained to provide the stone, those at La Bolle and Foucharupt to the south of the town furnishing the fine Vosges granite for finishing.  The old ruined château of the duc Ferry, constructed in the 12th century was also dismantled and the stone reused. By the order of 27 October local wood supplies were requisitioned, and the felling of huge trees from the forests of the royal domain authorised to provide additional timber.  Corvées were imposed on the villages of the valley to provide transport.

Workmen were brought in from distant parts of the Vosges and the Rhineland.

 We learn that in the summer of 1758, in spite of continual rain, the streets were so full of building works that the traditional religious processions could not circulate. 

The new town 

In a short space of time Saint-Dié found itself metamorphosised into a modern city in the spirit of the major Enlightenment urban renewal projects then in progress  - in Bordeaux, Nantes and, above all, in Nancy. 

 A "classical" model, with regular road layout, was imposed.  The Grande-rue, renamed rue Royale after 1761, continued to provide the main axis of town, running north from the Meurthe to the island of the canons.  Proprietors were constrained by the ordonnance of October 1757 to follow a strict alignment of facades; each house was to have at least two stories, and a minimum height of 21 metres; all roofs to be slate or tiles.  The buildings of the Grande-rue, were thus given a new uniformity of height and style, an "urbanisme avant la lettre" [Tassin (2017), p.3]

To facilitated circulation and improved hygiene the stream which ran down the centre of the Grande-rue was canalised and covered, and the two fountains dismantled.  The old canal which crossed the north of the Grande-rue and provided water for beasts was filled in to make way for new urban development. In 1761 the town council ordered the construction of six new fountains to safeguard the water supply.

The Grande-rue/rue Thiers in the 1930s 

This postcard shows the intersection of the Grande-rue/rue Thiers and the old rue Point du Jour: in the foreground to the left is 68 rue Thiers, the house where the fire was stopped in 1757.

The will to integrate Saint-Dié into French Lorraine was manifested by the establishment of a new East-West axis, reorientating the town towards Nancy as the regional seat of power. West from the Grande-rue, Balingand created a grand new thoroughfare, the rue Saint-Stanislas.  This was to be a handsome boulevard, flanked by gardens and orchards.  To the east, it extended a small distance into the rue Dauphine, so as to cross the Grande-rue and form a new town centre.  To the west, an imposing  new town gate, the Porte Saint-Stanislas,  opened onto the route from Lunéville,  so as to allow traffic from Nancy directly into the heart of the town. The gate itself was in place by the end of 1757, and was a powerful statement; adorned with two 15-foot high pilasters and sculpted lions it bestrode the wide new roadway confidently, with arcades on either side to allow the passage of pedestrians. (Sadly, it was demolished in 1848, before the age of photography, and no image survives)

rue Stanislas, c.1900

Around the rue Saint-Stanislas grew up a whole new bourgeois quarter. Two new squares were constructed, the  place Stanislas and, at the top of the Grande-rue, the place Royale (place des Vosges/ place Jules Ferry in 1896).  These were to accommodate public buildings and provide space for markets, the old "Halle-au-Chapitre" having been demolished.  Along the south face of the place Stanislas, on the site of the old château, work had already begun in 1741 on the construction of a new church of Saint-Stanislas.  In accordance with the 1757 plan,  this was to be elevated into a parish church,  "where divine service can be held with propriety, with a priest's house and a cemetery in what are judged the best positions." The move seemed to have been welcomed by the Chapter as the Collegiate church was often crowded, with a less than select congregation.  The rest of the square was occupied by an orphanage on the east side and the presbytery on the west. In the Revolution the church was to be sold off and later became a textile mill;  in 1835 the site was bought by the municipality and used to accommodate the sous-préfecture and palais de justice.

The place Stanislas with the 1807 obelisk in its original position

One conspicuous victim of the 1757 fire had been the old town hall with its "prisons and butcheries", which had straddled the canal. A flamboyant new Hôtel de Ville was planned in August 1762 for a cost of 50,000 livres and built at the crossing of the Grande-rue and the  rue Saint-Stanislas/ rue Dauphine between 1765 and 1769 to the design of Carbonnar. It was subsequently flanked by a theatre, accessible from a staircase to the right.  In the old postcards, you can see the covered arcades, once intended to shelter market stalls, but in surviving shots often piled with sandbags and other wartime paraphernalia.  

Outside the Hôtel-de-Ville, the first monument to Stanislas, a fountain by Carbonnar, with column and  giant fir cone, was erected in 1776.  (When it was demolished in the mid-19th century, the original lead inscription was re-found and published.)

 

The Hôtel-de -Ville in the 1930s

What remains today?

Sadly, one look at a map confirms that Saint-Dié would have been unlikely to have survived two centuries of Franco-German conflict intact!  In 1944 a combination of American bombing and destruction by the retreating Germans reduced the town, almost literally, to rubble.  Ten thousand of the fifteen thousand residents were left homeless, and almost all the city north of the Meurthe was totally ruined, including the commercial sector and the by then much-loved  town hall.  Of the major structures on the river's north side, only the shell of old medieval cathedral (with its eighteenth century facade) and its Gothic cloister remained standing.  Rather than rebuild on traditional lines, the "second reconstruction" of the 1950s was conceived as a showpiece of modernism.  In today's Saint-Dié the premier listed building is a Le Corbusier factory. (The Déodatiens, possibly wisely, resisted the visionary architect's plans to rehouse them in fifteen-story high-rise apartment blocks). 

Apart from the road layout (rue Thiers / rue Stanislas) the legacy of Stanislas amounts to little more than the odd fountain and a few pieces of scattered masonry.  In particular the whole area south of rue Stanislas has been radically reconfigured, to create a much enlarged place Jules Ferry,  since 1990 the home of  the splendid Tour de la Liberté, originally erected in the Tuileries for the Revolutionary bicentennial.

      The Tour de la Liberté, place Jules Ferry

Modern Saint-Dié (satellite view from Google Maps)

This map of 1896, published on Wikipedia, gives a clearer idea of the original placement of the two 18th -century squares and the old Town Hall:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Saint-Di%C3%A9_(Vosges)_in_1896.jpg

The 18th-century remains do not take that much listing:

The old quarter of the canons

The place Jules Ferry and cathedral quarter in the 1930s....

... and after the devastation of 1944

Cathedral photographed in 2006 (Wikimedia)

The facade and towers of the Cathedral, still quasi-intact, were constructed from 1710 by the Italian architect Giovan Betto, who was also responsible for the works at the Primatiale in Nancy. The adoption of an international Palladian style reflected the desire of Duke Leopold  to have Saint-Dié regularised as a bishopric. The church was eventually to be elevated into a cathedral by Pope Pius VI in July 1777. 

 

The former episcopal palace, again the design of Jean-Michel Carbonnar, was erected in 1782.  The remaining facade, with its seven arches,  three central columns and triangular pediment, are now incorporated into the buildings of the Musée Pierre-Noël.

Palais de la Galazière à Saint-Dié-des-Vosges dans les Vosges - Patrimoine de France

https://museedupatrimoine.fr/palais-de-la-galaziere-a-saint-die-des-vosges-vosges/15645.html

The Église Saint-Martin

The old church of Saint-Martin, on the place Saint-Martin, to the south of the river, was consecrated in 1728.  The original classical building burned down in 1895 and had to be replaced, but the site remains recognisable.

Église Saint-Martin de Saint-Dié-des-Vosges - Wikipedia.fr

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89glise_Saint-Martin_de_Saint-Di%C3%A9-des-Vosges

Pediment of the Hôtel-de-Ville

Photo by Marion Jacob, published in Vosges Matin, 14.07.2022

Finally, the one isolated remnant of the once splendid town of Stanislas:  salvaged and translated to the modern parc Jean Mansuy, this is the pediment from  the destroyed town hall.  The arms of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges and the cross of Lorraine, flanked by two angels, were once a statement of civic confidence, but now they appear rather forlorn, like some antique relic of a thousand years ago.

References

Articles from Vosges Martin:

Marion Jacob, "Stanislas, artisan de la première reconstruction" [21.08.2018] 

____, "Savez-vous pourquoi Saint-Dié a érigé un obélisque en remerciement à Stanislas?" [19.08.2024]

"Histoire de Saint-Dié-des-Vosges" - Wikipedia.fr

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_de_Saint-Di%C3%A9-des-Vosges

Fernand Baldensperger, « La reconstruction de Saint-Dié en 1757 », Bulletin de la Société philomatique vosgienne (1930), p.3-36
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k200462f/f4.item

Raphaël Tassin, "Saint Diez au XVIIIe siècle : une cité épiscopale en puissance", in Fastes & trésors de l’Église cathédrale de Saint-Dié (1777-2017).   (Catalogue of an exhibition held at the  Musée Pierre-Noël, Saint-Dié, 17th June-17th September  2017). Available on Academia.

Most of the photos in this post are from the regional archive IMAGE'EST.