The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1891-07-28
Paris Has No Overhead Wires and in
Many Other Ways Sur
passes Us.
The French Capital the Unrivaled
Leader in Appointments
and Conveniences.
American Cities Five Years Behind CONT
mental Towns-FiGurcs That Make
Very Interesting Contrast

Paris is the typical modern city, says a
writer in the Century. In the work of
Transforming the lsbyrinthine Of narrow,
dark snd foul medieval alleys into broad
modern t~horoushfares, and of providing
those appointments and conveniences that
distinguish the we'll ordered city of our
day from the old time cities which had
grown up formless and organizes by centu-
ries of accretion-in this brilliant nine
teenth century task of reconst. uoting cities
in their physical characters. dealing with
them as organic entities n endeayoring
to give such form to the visible body as
will best accommodate tho expanding
life within-Paris has been the unrivaled
leader.
Berlin and Vienna have accomplished
magnificent results in city making, and
great British towns-Glasgow. Birming-
ham, Manchester and others-havs in a less
ambitious way wrought no less useful re-
form, but Paris was the pioneer. French
public authorities, architects and
Rineers were the first to conceive ~effectually
the idea of symmetry and spaciousness, of
order and convenience, of wholesomeness
and cleanliness in urban arrangements.
Paris is now on the eve of a revolution in
her lighting system. Gas lighting was first
introduced in England, but Paris followed
in good time and with a splendor unequaled
elsewhere.
Within one year. or within two years at
the farthest. it is confidently claimed that
Paris will be incomparably the best lighted
city in the world, and that electricity will
have superseded gas in public use.
1t should be noted that the question how
to dispose Of wires-a question that makes
SO vast and SO continually recurring an
agitation in all American cities-neyer
comes up at all in Paris, and is seldom
mentioned in any European city. There
are absolutely no obstructive wires in Paris.
The government has purchased the tele-
phone as we'll as tho telegraph system, and
all the wires for these services are placed in
the subway of sewers. The wires of the
electric companies are buried under the side
walks. Armored cables are laid in simple
conduits, or even in the bare soil, without
the slightest difficulty from any point of
view. In crossing streets it is forbidden to
break the paving, and underground con-
nection is made from the manholes of the
sewers
The whole city of Paris will have been
laid with a network of electric lighting
cables a few months hence, and traffic on
the sidewalks and in the streets will have
suffered a minimum of obstruction, while
no injury whatsoever Will have Deen done to
pavemeuts.
In our own field of electrical methods a
prominent American electrician assured me
in Paris last December we are now fve
years behind the continent. He declared
that the difficulties our American corpora
tions still complain about when asked to
bury their telegraph. telephone and light
ing wires were all met and vanquished in
Europe several years ago, and that our fell
low countrymen insist upon remaining in a
state of inyincible ignorance rather than
learn anything from the eohnica and
scientific achievements of Europe. But per-
haps he stated the case too strongly. Doubt
less we shall in time learn to be ashamed
when We come to a realizing sense of the fact
that the one city of Paris has at is COM
mand a larger and more brilliant array OF
engineering and architectural talent than
all the important cities of the United States
taken together can show, and that many q
small European town is better supplied in
this respect than many a large American
city.
The existing Paris covers 49, 75 acres, or
about thirty square miles, while metropoli-
tan London, with 4,O00,0 coo population, con- 1
tains 11S square miles. and Chicago. as re-
Gently enlarged, provides an area about as
extensive for l. 100, 900.
The average distance from the center of
Paris to the circumference is only three
miles. Minneapolis, will only 165, 900 peo-
pie, has a municipal area more than twice
as large as that of Paris.
Almost the entire population of Paris is |
housed in the flats or tenement structures
averaging from four to five stories in height.
According to the revised figures of the cen |
SUE OF 1856, there were nearly $4,000 houses
in Paris, and the average number of people |
in a house was about thirty. In the old ar |
rondissements of the inner Paris there are
probably aboot 10000 houses, accommo-
dating about 100000 people.
For a total contrast in the plan of honse
construction we have only to cross the
channel and to examine London, where We |
find an average about eight persons to a |
house for the whole metropolis, But the
people of Paris are better housed, all things
considered. than those of London. A pop
ulation OF 1900, 600 within a circle whose
radius is only three miles is certainty very
dt nse, but it must ba remembered that
Paris is a many stored city.
10 Set Stray Letters Alright.