Grands Travaux de Marseille, Boulevard de l'Empereur, Percée du Fort St. Nicolas

1864

Not on view

To approach this seventeenth-century fort, photographer Adolphe Terris escorts us across a modern iron bridge, foregrounding an urban transformation in the making. In the 1860s, the municipal government of Marseille commissioned Terris—then the city’s leading photographer—to document a series of ambitious public works and engineering projects. Central to these plans was the construction of a new boulevard that would streamline traffic between the city’s historic and modern ports. Terris was tasked with recording the old streets and houses being demolished to make way for the thoroughfare (a project that displaced some 16,000 residents in the process). His 1864 view, produced for a larger album, finds the fort strewn with worksite rubble. But along the bridge, a neat grid of metal rail outlines the city’s new industrial image.

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Provenance

Title: Grands Travaux de Marseille, Boulevard de l'Empereur, Percée du Fort St. Nicolas
Artist: Adolphe Terris (French, Aix-en-Provence 1820–1900)
Date: 1864
Medium: Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions: Image: 14 1/4 × 15 3/4 in. (36.2 × 40 cm)
Mount: 20 1/2 × 27 3/4 in. (52.1 × 70.5 cm)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. John A. Moran Gift, in memory of Louise Chisholm Moran, 2014
Object Number: 2014.487
Curatorial Department: Photographs

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Architectural Elements in a Sculptor’s Studio, Marseille

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