Avenue Foch with chestnut trees along its full length. The Avenue was constructed during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III, as part of the grand plan for the reconstruction of Paris conducted by Napoleon's Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. It was designed to connect the Place d'Etoile with another important part of Haussmann's plan, the Bois de Boulogne, the new public park on the west end of the city. The original plan, by Jacques Hittorff, who had designed the Place de la Concorde decades earlier, called for an avenue forty meters wide between the modern Avenue Victor Hugo and the modern
Avenue Foch 140 meters wide. In addition to the four thousand trees that line that avenue, the garden was originally planted with 2,400 different species of trees and plants, making it, as Alphand wrote, "a kind of arboretum." Many of the original trees can still be found in the gardens, including a chestnut tree from India, 4.7 meters in circumference; from 1852, an elm tree from Siberia, 3.8 meters in circumference (1852); and a giant Catalpa tree 3.5 meters in circumference (1852). The gardens contain a monument to their creator, Jean-Charles Alphand, designed by architect Jules Formigé, with sculpture by Jules Dalou.