When the industries started to get important during the 19th century, workers and their families suffered from bad housing. An important step was taken in the mid of the 19th century, when the “Société des Cités Ouvrières” (Society for Worker Cities) was created. This led to many projects outside Paris; industrial cities especially in the east and the north of France were growing. The first project to be realized in Paris – in 1851 - was to be called “Cité Napoléon”; Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (the nephew of Napoléon I) had been elected president in 1848, later to become emperor under the name Napoléon III in 1852.
The building is still there, rue Rochechouart, with its particular, especially interior, design. 194 one- or two-room flats with a small kitchen were built for some 500 inhabitants. The rent was modest, but it seems anyhow to around 1850 have corresponded to more or less 1/3 of an average worker’s income, close to what also seems to be the norm today.
Although bathing and laundry facilities, meeting-rooms, shops and a day-nursery were created, the project was never really successful, rejected by as well workers as moralists who warned for the risk of anarchy and “socialist contagion”, despite an inspector who checked the “good behaviour” of the occupants – the gate to the building was closed at 10 p.m.. A few decades later the building was rather occupied by the lower “bourgeoisie”. I don’t have the list of people who live here today.
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