The architects to whom Louis XIV. entrusted his planning went far beyond the compact walled city of their day. In the open fields which the growth of Paris must sooner or later transform into streets and avenues they drew the central axis of the city. Straight, vast in width, and without limit of length, this avenue passed entirely through open country, with scarcely a dozen buildings throughout its great extent. To the noted city-builders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—Louis XIV., Colbert, Le Nôtre, Blondel, and the Academy of Architects,—Paris owes those vast reaches of avenue and boulevard which to-day are the crowning features of the most beautiful of cities. The Paris of their day was indeed a crowded, congested city; but the Paris which they conceived and laid out in the deserts and waste places was the widespreading, well-adorned, and convenient city in which to-day all the world takes delight. The Madeleine, the Place de la Concorde, the Invalides, and the great axial avenue from the garden of the Tuileries to the Place de l’Etoile,—all existed on paper decades before they were finally realized in the progress of city building. The point of interest to us is, that as Paris increased in population, the city grew according to a well-devised, symmetrical, highly developed plan; and that the greater portion of the beauty and convenience recognized to-day was attained at no money cost whatever. Artistic sense and foresight were the only price paid. It is unnecessary to do more than point out the fact that a similar opportunity is open to Chicago. [Illustration: 1740] [Illustration: 1841] [Illustration: 1878. XVI. CHRONOLOGICAL VIEWS OF THE PLACE DE LA BASTILLE, PARIS. The evolution of the castle and moat to its present form of plaza and boulevard is shown]