Here Jongkind records a scene he witnessed, even inscribing the painting with the actual day, April 17, 1868. A year earlier, the American artist Henry Tuckerman, staggered by the changes wrote how those 'parts of the city which are in a state of demolition, present enormous high walls with the irregular smoke-stains of the dismantled chimneys, moving zig-zag higher and higher, and looking ready to topple over as you slowly pass through a crush of vehicles and debris of mortar and stones'. The Dutch artist Jongkind spent many years in Paris where, like Manet, he witnessed the radical building programme carried out by Baron Haussmann during the Second Empire. Hundreds of old narrow Parisian streets were destroyed or widened, and many historic buildings were lost.