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 of chestnut trees and decorated along its full length by ornamental lawns and gardens with exotic flowers and plants. It was, in fact, an extension of the Bois de Boulogne, and connected directly with the avenues and paths of the park. It opened in 1854, was immediately popular with Parisians, but it did not keep its name for long. After the downfall of Napoleon III in 1870, the name was changed from Avenue de l'Impératrice to avenue du Général-Uhrich, and then 1875 to Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. It was changed again in 1929 to Avenue Foch, after the hero