At the same time, the Avenue was significantly widened to serve as an arterial route for automobile traffic, and the project marked the end of the Fête de Neuilly, a summer street carnival held for over a century in what had become a well-heeled urban district.

Initial planning in the early 1930s envisaged two stations between Porte Maillot and Pont de Neuilly, at Place du Marché and Rue St. Pierre,[2] but Les Sablons was built instead.

Prior to its urbanization, much of the area immediately to the north of the Bois de Boulogne was known as the Plaine des Sablons, for its sterile soil and sand pits whose output was much used in the construction of Paris.

In the 1780s, Louis XVI granted part of the Champs des Sablons, an area used for training by the King's Guards, to Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, who demonstrated the growing of potatoes, and promoted their acceptance in continental Europe as safe for human consumption.

These, in turn, were displaced in the 1950s in favor of an area "for walks and outdoor activities of an instructional, sporting, and family nature", and in the 1960s and '70s the Jardin featured popular, rural, and traditional French culture.