But centuries after the first pissoirs were installed in Paris, women are still not being adequately catered for, said Martin.
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One can easily imagine how such a technique could lead to police expeditions to clubs or neighborhoods where snitch-pissoirs have revealed drugs are being used.
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The city government first tried to discourage people from peeing in the streets with the installation of public toilets, or "pissoirs," on major boulevards in the 1830s.
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Going back to the 19th century, it has tried public pissoirs and vespasiennes that had places for as many as five or six men at a time.
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Inside 15 minutes near the open-air pissoirs, I witnessed actual mudslinging, a brief comradely fight, an apparent fainting, some nonchalant, almost stylish puking, and men and women in multiple modes of non-latrine-related undress.
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A centuries-old tradition Public urinals, or pissoirs as they're known in French, have a long history in Paris, dating back to the late 1800s when they were installed for men traveling to and from work.
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Rectangular pissoirs, with elaborate patterned cast-iron panels, similar in design to some of the UK ones, were installed in the city of Melbourne, Australia, in the period 1903-1918. Of at least 40 that were made, nine remain in place and in use on the streets in and around the central city, and have been classified by the National Trust since 1998. In recent years, temporary pissoirs with multiple unscreened urinals around a central column have been introduced in the UK."The Pee Pod - the place to pee in Milton Keynes!". BBC News, 15 June 2010.
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The company quickly expanded to other cities. In 1980, Decaux personally designed the Sanisette public toilet, a self-cleaning public toilet, as a replacement for the pissoirs of Paris. In January 2015, according to Forbes, he had a net worth of $6.2 billion.
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Some of his fountains in Paris parks still function. He developed gas lighting and the planting of trees along the avenues. At the beginning of his administration the city had 69 gas jets; at his departure it had 8,600 gas jets. He also commenced the construction of the famous pissoirs (public urinals) along the roads of Paris.
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Paris pissoir c1865 A pissoir (also known as a vespasienne in French) is a French invention common in Europe that provides a urinal in public space with a lightweight structure. The availability of pissoirs is likely to reduce urination onto buildings, sidewalks, or streets. They can be freestanding and without screening, with partial screening, or fully enclosed.
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In 2009, the city of Paris upgraded all Sanisettes to a newer version with a number of new features and changes (pictured in this article). Sanisettes have replaced vespasiennes (street urinals) also known as pissoirs, of which there were more than 1200 in Paris back in the 1930s. The only surviving vespasienne in Paris is on the Boulevard Arago, close to the intersection with Rue de la Santé. It is still regularly used.
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Though the design first emerged in the 1870s, an updated design by Joan van der Mey dates from 1916. All the remaining examples were restored in 2008. Pissoirs of various sizes and designs, but mostly in patterned cast-iron, can still be found dotted across the UK, with a few in London, but especially in Birmingham and Bristol. A number have been restored and relocated to the grounds of various open-air museums and heritage railway lines.
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When she left, she stole the dilapidated letter box from Duchamp's former apartment and exhibited it later, recalling his Readymade works. Lublin's interactions with Duchamp continued when she deconstructed the Rose advertising as well as his famous pissoirs in several of her own works, shifting them into a dispute with feminist statements. One of these was titled Le corps amer (à mère), l'objet perdu de M.D., shown at Femininmasculin at Beauborg in Paris. This piece consisted of a large, transparent skirt, stomach, and breasts with a urinal inside.
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In the summer of 1911, the plan was developed, headed by the special commission constituted specifically for this purpose and headed by architect Édouard Léger. Most of the provisions envisioned by the project were built: new wide paved sidewalks, formation of the square, a fountain, change in tram tracks for better and faster traffic and removal of the public pissoirs. A monument to Dositej Obradović, which was projected, was erected in a different neighborhood. The changes in 1911-1913 were significant and the square was completely re-arranged.
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While still in his teens he became the protégé of a fashion designer, who paid for two years of study at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He later worked there in fashion illustration and commercial art, a career that brought him to London and Paris in the late 1960s, while maintaining an apartment on Saint Mark's Place in Manhattan's East Village. In Paris and London, "his fondest memories ... [were] the 'Cottages', the t-rooms, the public pissoirs, temples conceived and existing solely to bring relief to the male member, not distinguishing between straight or gay, and unconcerned with superficial conditions like color or religion, or how old or young, how pretty or ugly, how rich or poor the cock is."Anacabe, p. [2].
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Cast iron, a durable material that take on any shape, was also popular from the mid 19th Century for street furniture. Not only park and building fences, often with elaborate gates, but also street lamps, bollards, tree grates and guards, as well as the UK red post box, and in Paris it was used for the elaborate advertising columns, newspaper kiosks and pissoirs the city is known for (though almost all are now contemporary reproductions in other materials). In the 1870s philanthropist Charles Wallace funded the installation of numerous ornate drinking fountains across Paris, and over 100 Wallace Fountains are still in use. Decorative street lamps in cast iron were used all over the world, from gas lamps in the second half of the 19th Century to electric ones in the first decades of the 20th - a collection of examples used in California in the 1920s and 30s now form a display outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, called Urban Light.
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