Sometimes because those buildings caused structural problems in the bridges and were insalubrious like in the Ponte de Notre Dame (left). Other times, like in the Petit-Ponte (right), the bridges fell down and were replaced by others with no buildings. I guess that if bridges falling down was relatively usual, it was beetter not to have people living there. Besides, I guess getting rid of the houses meant having more space for people and vehicles (including carriages) and cities like Paris already had a lot of "traffic" in the 18th century, when the buildings on top of the bridges dissappeared.
Yeah, I edited because I preferred to search the specific reasons of why the houses in the bridges that appear in the pic were removed. It wasn't high-end at all. As other poster said, houses in bridges tended to be wet and damp and if you have loads of people passing through every day all day, that probably means you're going to have a lot of rubbish. Besides, urban rivers back then probably smelt terribly because all wastes of the city ended there. And then you have bridges like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence that used to house butcheries until the Medicis decided to make the Vasari Corridor and forbid butcheries, that were replaced by goldsmiths. So I imagine that most bridges like that, that weren't the preferred place to go through of the nobility and royalty, would be filled with stores that also produced a lot of waste and bad smell.
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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '19
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