Pont Neuf

“ The mass of public buildings and houses, as seen from the Pont Neuf, rises around you on either hand, whether you look up or down the river, in huge, aspiring, tortuous ridges, and produces a solidity of impression and a fantastic confusion not easy to reconcile. The clearness of the air, the glittering sunshine, and the cool shadows add to the enchantment of the scene. In a bright day, it dazzles the eye like a steel mirror. ”

“ The Pont Neuf, is in the city of Paris what the heart is in the human body, the centre of motion and circulation: the flux and reflux of inhabitants and strangers crowd this passage in such a manner, that, in order to meet persons one is looking for, it is sufficient to walk here for an hour every day. Here, the mouchards, or spies of the police, take their station; and, when at the expiration of a few days, they see not their man, they positively affirm that he is not in Paris. ”

“ On the Pont-Neuf an unceasing stream of vehicles rolled in each direction—fine carriages, richly decorated and gilded, drawn by two or four prancing horses, with lackeys in brilliant liveries clinging on behind, and stately coachmen on the box; less pretentious carriages with more quiet steeds and fewer servants; heavy carts laden with stone, wood, or wine-barrels, whose drivers swore loudly at the detentions they were frequently obliged to submit to, and which were unavoidable in such a crush of vehicles ”

“ STATUE OF HENRI IV. ON THE PONT-NEUF.
Mercier, in his “Tableau de Paris,” published at London in 1780 (its publication would not have been permitted at Paris) , gives an interesting account of the Pont-Neuf as it existed in his time. “This,” he says, “is the greatest thoroughfare in Paris. If you are in quest of anyone, native or foreigner, there is a moral certainty of your meeting with him there in the space of two hours, at the outside. The police-runners are convinced of this truth ”

“ The numerous places and things in and around Paris that call for remarks are legion, but I must forbear, only to give one passing reference to the river Seine and its many bridges. Pont Notre Dame or the bridge of Our Lady, dates from the fifteenth century; a bridge of later date, we were told, was made of wood, and fell into the river taking sixty houses with it. This is a fine bridge built of solid masonry. The Pont d’Arcole is a suspension bridge for foot passengers only. The Pont Neuf was built by Henry IV. There is a bronze horse on the bridge which was cast in Tuscany. ”

“ On the right bank of the river stands the old feudal city, with its ancient castle and its irregularly built houses whose slate roofs and pointed gables peep from the groves of trees which clothe the hill. On the left bank the regularly built new town extends far into the plain. The river, here 80 yds. broad, is crossed by the handsome railway viaduct, a beautiful stone bridge called Pont Neuf, and the Pont Vieux with three pointed arches, built in the 16th century. There is communication by steamer as far as Angers. Laval may justly claim to be one of the loveliest of French towns. ”

“ If the city on the left side of the river neither extended its circuit nor increased its population, it began in the 16th century to be filled with large mansions (hôtels) , and its communications with the right bank were rendered easier and more direct when Henry IV. constructed across the lower end of the island of La Cité the Pont Neuf, which, though retaining its original name, is now the oldest bridge in Paris. ”

“ The carriage approached the Pont-Neuf. They stepped out. A dry cold made vivid the sombre January weather. Under her veil Therese joyfully inhaled the wind which swept on the hardened soil a dust white as salt. She was glad to wander freely among unknown things. She liked to see the stony landscape which the clearness of the air made distinct; to walk quickly and firmly on the quay where the trees displayed the black tracery of their branches on the horizon reddened by the smoke of the city; to look at the Seine. ”

“ On the embankment below the Pont Neuf stands the equestrian statue of Henry IV. Between La Cité and the left bank the width of the lesser channel is reduced to 95 ft. The river has a width of 540 ft. as it enters Paris and of 446 ft. as it leaves it. After its entrance to the city it passes under the bridges of Tolbiac, Bercy and Austerlitz, that of Sully, those of Marie and Louis Philippe between the Île St Louis and the right bank; that of La Tournelle between the lie St Louis and the left bank; that of St Louis between the Île St Louis and La Cité. ”

“ Brotteaux who feared its effects on his marionettes, quickened his pace. As he crossed the Pont-Neuf and was turning the corner of the Place de Thionville, he saw by the light of a street-lamp, sitting on a stone post, a lean old man who seemed utterly exhausted with fatigue and hunger, but still preserved his venerable appearance. ”

“ The duty of defence does not lie on tourists, who are at best hardly able to understand what it matters whether a wall is buttressed without or within, and whether a roof is single or double. No one objects to the dome of Saint Peter's. No one finds fault with the Pont Neuf. Yet it is true that the Gothic architect showed contempt for facts. Since he could not support a heavy stone vault on his light columns, he built the lightest possible stone vault and protected it with a wooden shelter-roof which constantly burned. ”

“ Arriving by the railway, the station is left, and the town entered by a wide handsome street or boulevard called the Avenue de Longchamps. This leads straight down to the Place Massena and the Pont Neuf, where are the public gardens, the Promenade des Anglais, the Boulevard du Midi, and other noted parts. The river Paillon passes through Nice, and is crossed near its mouth by the Pont Neuf.
Nice is a very lively place, and in some respects is attractive. The town is well laid out, and it has many good shops, though none of them large. ”

“ It was the love of a man, a very good man, the sort of love which all the most expert psychologizing in the world can neither account for nor explain out of existence, and he watched over the Marquis de Chabot-Perhoet as the police kiosque near the Pont Neuf watches over the dusty shop windows of the Quai des Grands-Augustins.
Day after day it was the same tale.
A ring at the bell, angry, short, jerky, hectic—a square-shoed foot thrust in to keep the door from being slammed—and the butcher’s purple face, the butcher’s raucous voice:
“I want my money! I want to speak to the Marquis!” ”

“ It stands so low, that it wou'd be continually in danger of being drown'd, were not the Water kept out by Dykes as high as the Waves. The River Amstel, so gentle that one can hardly perceive which way it runs, passes thro' the whole City, and forms the great Canal over which there are two Bridges. That which is at the Mouth of the Sea, call'd the Pont-neuf, is one of the finest of the kind, not only for its Sluices, but for the noble View there is from thence of the Harbor, where Ships are continually going out or coming in from all parts of the World. ”

“ Emiland Gauthey’s “Traité de la Construction des Ponts,” 127; Colonel Emy’s “Traité de l’Art de la Charpenterie,” 143 footnote; Professor Fleeming Jenkin’s “Bridges,” see “Jenkin”; E. Degrand’s “Ponts en Maçonnerie,” 88. Booths or Shops on Chinese bridges, 210 footnote; [Pg 380] on European bridges, 210. Bordeaux, Pont de, its length and its cost, 356. Boughs, Forked, in primitive bridge-building, 135, 148. Bower Birds, Australian, their architecture is a model to all primitive men, 112.
Brackets, below the parapet of the Pont Neuf at Paris, 321. ”

“ You’re as strong as the Pont Neuf. You’ll live to bury us all!” ”

“ For a pontist never need be idle; not only has he a thousand problems to reconsider, but in all his walks and rides he is a wayfarer with his hobby. When he feels cocksure he can visit a detestable railway bridge and drink the wormwood of pessimism; and when for a whole week he has tried in vain to follow a devious fact through all its golf-ball antics from bunker to bunker, let him go to a [Pg 6] classic bridge such as the Puente Trajan over the Tagus at Alcántara; or let him be as a delighted pupil to Turner’s Walton Bridges or to Brangwyn’s magnificent vision of the Pont St. ”

“ In the wizard country of the French Pyrenees there are some very notable bridges, such as the Pont Napoléon, near Saint-Sauveur, the Pont d’Espagne, beyond Cauterets, and the Vieux Pont at Orthez. To study these three works, side by side, is to learn that modern bridge-building has achieved in stone a few great works as daring as any that the Middle Ages produced. The Pont d’Orthez has a graceful distinction, and for nearly six hundred years it has borne the formidable spates of the Gav-de-Pau. In the tierce-point arches, and particularly in the largest one, there is good drawing ”

“ The profits of this establishment in 1839 to the government were 66,001,841 francs, upwards of 2,500,000£. We will now proceed along the quai, and notice the bridges; first the Pont de Iena, terminated in 1813, it is completely in a horizontal line, and is certainly a perfect structure, uniting elegance, beauty, and simplicity.
The Pont des Invalides is a handsome suspension bridge for carriages as well as foot passengers; a toll is paid in passing over it. ”

“ The most beautiful aqueduct bridge in the world, on the course of the aqueduct which supplied the ancient Nemaucus, now Nismes, still stands, and is called, from the name of the department in which it is, the Pont du Gard. It consists of a row of large arches crossing the valley over which the water had to be carried, surmounted by a series of smaller arches, and these again by a series of still smaller ones, carrying the specus of the aqueduct. ”

“ This image is rather more pronounced in the case of the earlier bridge, for the length of Bénézet’s piers, in the direction of the current, is enormous, being not less than thirty metres.
For the rest, the Pont Saint-Esprit seems to have an enchanted size, his most confident historians giving neither the same dimensions nor the same number of arches. Men with tape measures have grown tired of their job, seemingly; and even in photographs some arches are omitted while others are blurred by distance. ”

“ Pont-au-Change, the Money-changers’ Bridge, was in olden days a wooden construction which went by the names Pont de la Marchandise and Pont-aux-Oiseaux. Jewellers as well as money-changers plied their trade along its planks, perhaps also bird merchants. It was a little higher up the river in its early twelfth century days and was often flooded. It was badly burnt, too, more than once; then in the seventeenth century was entirely rebuilt of stone, and bronze statues of the royal family, Louis XIII, Louis XIV as a child, and Anne d’Autriche, set up there. ”

“ Ce nouveau pont-tournant du chemin de fer de ceinture servira aussi de pont-route et aura deux passes de 21 mètres de largeur. En vue de rendre sa manœuvre aussi rapide que possible, il sera actionné par la force hydraulique ou par l’électricité. Ce pont livrera passage aux navires qui se rendront au bassin au Bois ou au bassin de Commerce. Le bassin au Bois se trouvera ainsi agrandi de tout l’espace compris entre le nouveau pont et le côté nord de ce bassin. ”

“ The celebrated Pont Transbordeur, while being essentially practical, is a weird exotic, not entitled to be classed with those masterpieces in stone built throughout France in the middle ages, many of which exist even to-day.
The first bridge at Rouen was probably not built before the year 1000, and the first document which makes mention of any bridge here is an acte de donation of Richard II. in favour of the Abbey of Jumièges, dated at Fécamp in 1024. Therein was conceded to the monks at Jumièges, the right to fish from Pont de l’Arche up to the Pont de Rouen. ”

“ Esprit over the Rhône, 293. Florence, the Ponte Vecchio, 211, 222; the Ponte della Trinità, Ammanati’s masterpiece, 316. Fo-Cheu, Pont De, a Chinese bridge described by Gauthey, 314-15. Footpaths, the earliest were made by quadrupeds, 3; human footpaths, their number, and what it has cost to make them, 17; they belong not to the illusion called peace but to the reality named strife, 17. Footways over Mediæval Bridges, usually they were narrow, very often they were steep, and sometimes, as in the Pont St. Esprit and the Pont St. Bénézet, they formed an elbow with the angle pointing up-stream. ”

“ We passed them to go nearer to the bridge: one of them followed us; his accent announced him to be an Irishman, and his uniform to be an officer in the French service. He conversed with us a few minutes, and promised to call on me at Nismes.
At the side of the lower part of the Pont du [Pg 290] Gard and forming part of it, is a bridge over the Gardon: this bridge has been widened in modern times, but the ancient wheel-track is still seen on the side nearest to the aqueduct. ”

“ Besides, sportsmen in a controversy should be fair. Yet a [Pg 92] good many books of reference say: “The Pont du Tarn at Albi, whose first construction goes back to the year 1035 or 1040, is thirteenth-century work”—a calumny on a very beautiful period in the evolution of Gothic architecture. We should have far too much admiration for the Valentré Bridge at Cahors to give the Pont du Tarn to the thirteenth century; and several other bridges in France do ample justice to the successors of Saint Bénézet. ”

“ The Pont des Trous at Tournai, for instance, guarded at each end by a huge round tower, has more to say to us about the turbulent old Flemish pride than have many chapters written by good historians. It is a bridge enlivened by art, yet blinded by an excess of warlike caution. ”

“ Reichenau, John Grubenmann’s Bridge at, 142.
Relief Bays for Flood Water, they were introduced by the Romans, 284, and were copied by mediæval bridgemen; witness the Pont des Consuls at Montauban, 255, 256, and the Pont St. Esprit, 293, 297. Pontists should note both the difference of shape in flood-water bays and the variation of their position in the architecture. At Mérida, for example, in the great squat Roman bridge, they are long and round-headed, and rise from the low and bold cutwaters, which are overgrown with grey-green mosses and grass. ”