Leonard Pitt

Leonard Pitt is an actor and author. He has written two books on Paris, Walks Through Lost Paris and Paris Postcards: The Golden Age, plus A Small Moment of Great Illumination. He currently codirects The Flying Actor Studio, a conservatory for the study of physical theater located in San Francisco. He has performed and taught around the world and lives in Berkeley, California.

Books

Walks Through Lost Paris

A Journey Into the Heart of Historic Paris

When he discovered that the city he lived in for many years was actually entirely rebuilt during the mid–1800s, Leonard Pitt plunged into Paris's history and began photographing what he learned had changed. Eventually, he led tours and gave lectures on the demolition and reconstruction that changed the city forever. Walks Through Lost Paris chronicles Paris's great periods of urban reconstruction through four walking tours. With a special focus on the work of Georges–Eugene Haussmann, this book provides a history of each site along with the motives behind the urban redesign and the reactions of Parisians who witnessed it. Detailed maps take you through a city whose changes were captured by photographers and artists in each stage. Hundreds of color photos, diagrams, and engravings splendidly survey the massive transformation that resulted in the Paris of today.

Paris

A Journey Through Time

How would Paris look if images from its glorious past were placed side–by–side with photographs of the city today? In Paris: A Journey Through Time, Leonard Pitt does just this.

With a stunning array of archival and contemporary photos he peels away the many layers of old Paris to document the city's transformation with events such as the demolition of a section of rue Beaubourg in 1975 and its eventual reconstruction into modern condos and a shopping center, or the narrow cobblestoned rue du Four becoming the wide, paved street we know today bustling with automobiles and bicycles. Along with these photos from the past and present come detailed maps for walking tours with old schematics and plans for construction that may or may not have been carried out, illustrating the strange ways that a city can develop over hundreds of years.

Painstakingly researched, Paris: A Journey Through Time is a tour through Paris, seen through the lens of photographers who lived during each golden age of demolition and construction, and compiled into one tremendous account of the true hidden Paris.