When Prince Charles Louis stayed in Southport for 3 months in 1838 after Queen Victoria’s Coronation and before becoming Napoleon III, Emperor of France, in 1851, he was quite taken with our wide and straight tree-lined Lord Street – now regarded as the ‘First Boulevard in the World’
His visit to our town triggered a chain reaction that changed city planning for ever. This started with the redesign of Paris several years later, when the newly crowned French Emperor ordered 12 magnificent ‘Lord Street type’ boulevards to be built, radiating like the spokes of a wheel with the Arc de Triomphe at the hub.
This rebuilding of Paris was such a success that it became a ‘Mecca’ for city planners and visiting politicians of the day from around the world, who took the superb ideas back to their own countries. The Americans in particular started to rebuild Washington, Boston and parts of Philadelphia based on what they saw in Paris. These in turn were copied in many other towns and cities around the globe.
But our famous Lord Street, so splendidly spacious and tree-lined, was actually created by accident. Apparently all the street properties needed to be built well back from an existing central shallow lake, known locally as a ‘dune slack’. This, of course, has long since been piped underground and is now discharged into the sea. So, as a world leader for the best design of any spacious town or city, the early creation of our main street has set a fine international example.
This proud history should be exalted by our tourist officers who give little note to this world-beating historic fact, for, even in 1838, the future Emperor of France noticed we had already created a Classic Resort. So there is no need to reinvent it in 2005. The Party considers that in order to honour this occasion an annual pageant could be created and a re-enactment performed in full costume as a celebration and also as a superb tourist attraction for Southport during the summer season.