The Impasse de l'Essai at the Horse Market, Paris

This dead-end, cobblestone lane stood near the horse market in Paris. Urban planner Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann commissioned Charles Marville to document "old Paris" prior to Haussmann's redesign of the city's streets and public spaces. Beyond the stone wall, a quaint neighborhood of modest structures backs up on a dirt alley. The foreground trees, stripped by the winter of their foliage, arch across the photograph like rolled up theater curtains revealing some backstage scene. This neighborhood may have been demolished to make way for one of Haussman's grand boulevards, which have come to characterize modern Paris.