Georges Eugene Haussmann, baron, a French politician, born in Paris, March 27, 1809. He is a grandson of the revolutionist Nicolas Haussmann of Colmar (1761-1846). He studied law, became an advocate at Paris, and was successively sub-prefect of Nerac (1833), St. Girons (1840), and Blaye (1842), and prefect of the departments of Var, Yonne, and Gi-ronde (1850-'52). In 1853 Napoleon III. appointed him prefect of the department of the Seine, in which office he became celebrated by his extensive operations for the improvement and embellishment of Paris, one of the many new boulevards constructed under his administration bearing his name. The demolition of some old quarters of the metropolis drove many of the indigent working classes to the suburbs, where they subsequently became the most turbulent promoters of the commune; while thousands, on the other hand, were saved from starvation by being employed on Haussmann's public works. The transformation of the Bois de Boulogne into an English park, the prefecture, the new and massive barracks, admirable water works, the restoration of the Hotel-Dieu, the completion of the Louvre, and many other memorable works were due to Haussmann's enterprise; but they involved an enormous expenditure, requiring repeated loans, and giving rise to much opposition in the press and in the corps legislatif, and to charges of mismanagement, which were exposed in 1868 with great success in Jules Ferry's Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann. The prefect succeeded nevertheless in contracting a new loan in 1869 for 260,000,000 francs; but he was obliged to retire after the accession of the Ollivier administration (January, 1870). - See Histoire generale de Paris, published under Haussmann's auspices (2 vols., 1866), and Parallels entre le marquis de Pombal et le baron Haussmann, by Lon (1869).