Before long, and as was happening in many other European cities of the time, a rising bourgeoisie avid for metropolitan settings in which to represent itself, enthusiastically took over the Sønder Boulevard as a place to promenade and forge social relations. Over a century later, however, the pleasurable and leisurely spirit of its origins had completely disappeared. In the 1990s, Dutch elm disease, a fungal affliction that attacks the Common Elm, killed all the trees in the central grove. By the turn of the millennium, the daily traffic consisting of some 2,700 cars and over 1,600 motorcycles drastically segregated the devastated central parterre, and practically the only people who used it were those who saw it as a public lavatory for their dogs.