Ateliers Célestin Gérard, devenus Société française de matériel agricole et industriel, puis usine Case

English translation

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History

On 15 October 1848, Célestin Gérard, son of Vosgian farmers and a companion carpenter, opened a workshop for the repair and construction of various agricultural instruments and machines. As the revolution of 1848 had halted the economic activity of the country, he then had the idea of building machines at his own expense with which he went from farm to farm threshing crops on a contract basis. The success of this first itinerant enterprise enabled him to give his workshops the expansion and equipment necessary to construct the engine now inseparable from the threshing machine, the steam-powered locomobile. In 1861 came out of his workshops the first locomobile intended to replace the horse-powered gear. Five years later, he constructed the first mobile threshing machine, the ancestor of all those which worked in France until the 1950s-1960s. The prosperity of the enterprise due to the personal qualities of its founder but also to the excellent geographical situation of the town chosen for its establishment, obliged it to expand by seeking capital. Thus was born in 1879 the Société Française de Matériel Agricole, which became in 1889 the Société Française de Matériel Agricole et Industriel. Its threshing machines and tractors earned it very great renown. Until its takeover in 1959 by the American company Case, it was one of the most important factories for the construction of agricultural machinery in France. Célestin Gérard's workshops were installed in the new railway station district, between the station and the national road from Nevers to Tours. The acquisition by the Société Française was the starting point for a multitude of successive purchases, at the end of which the factory covered an area of approximately seven hectares in the centre of the town. The main buildings of this important factory remain. The protection dossier presents three emblematic buildings, which are preserved in the project for the redevelopment of the site: the house of Célestin Gérard, founder of the factory, built between 1867 and 1879. Of modest architectural interest, only its geographical situation, within the factory, and the decoration of its street façade, in keeping with the company's activities, distinguish it from other bourgeois houses in the town. It is the reflection of the professional success of its builder and it is the only remaining building from Célestin Gérard's workshops. The manufacturing halls, rue Maxime Gorki, constitute an essential element of the Société Française factory: these covered workshops, following common practice at the time, with metal roof structures featuring lattice girders, occupy a vast rectangle between rue Maxime-Gorki and rue du Bas-de-Grange. The large courtyard of this main factory is monumentalised by the gables of the halls with metal and glass structure, arranged in a threefold rhythm: three large halls frame two groups of lower halls. The concern for quality presentation is expressed in the decorative details of the iron gables and the patterns drawn by the coloured brick of the walls of the smaller halls. These workshops affirmed, with the large store, the prestige of the factory. Their historical and architectural interest justifies their registration, in their entirety, on the supplementary inventory of historic monuments, all the more so as their integrity is compromised by the redevelopment project which disembowels them to permit a pedestrian link between the north and south of the site, and plans to demolish the wings returning, notably the one to the west which presents the same elevation as the lower halls. The large exhibition hall, built between 1898 and 1902 on the site of Célestin Gérard's exhibition store, was the window of the enterprise. Since Case's installation in 1959, it has lost its ornamental façade, with metal and glass structure. It was recently restored to house the Maison des Cultures Professionnelles. Its plan consisting of four halls arranged in a cross is interesting. These halls are covered by a metal roof structure presenting a certain complexity at the crossing. The volume of this Grand Pavillon has been preserved. The thermal workshop was constructed from 1881; its preservation is planned to create a conference room which will be linked to the Maison des Cultures Professionnelles, to the west, and to the projected car park, to the east, by the metal footbridge on rue Bernard-Palissy. This footbridge, constructed in the 1880s-1890s, will be the only preserved of the three that existed on the site in 1998. The other two stood above rue Maxime-Gorki.