Maison à lucarne de type compagnonnique

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

History

The railway quarter, south of the town, constitutes by its structure, its layout, its architecture, a testimony to the commercial, industrial and demographic development of Châteauroux in the second half of the 19th century. Three houses currently located at 12, 50 to 58 and 72, rue de la Gare, an artery opened from 1873, present roofs adorned with complex dormers executed at the end of his life by the Fellow Travelling Carpenter of the Duty Bon Drille of the Tour de France Hippolyte Moreau, called Berry-la-Conscience, carpentry contractor in Châteauroux (1822-1900). Associated with his son-in-law, Armand Viraud, public works contractor, he had worked on the major building sites opened in Châteauroux in the last decades of the 19th century. The works that Hippolyte Moreau installed as a sign on the family houses of rue de la Gare display all the fantasies and difficulties of his trade, and condense, like a sort of testament, all his knowledge of geometrical drawing, that is to say the tracing of interpenetrating volumes, learned on the Tour de France. The building at 50, rue de la Gare, rises over three levels, above a basement. Its very long façade which develops along the street is regularly pierced by a series of rectangular windows arranged on either side of the central passage. The interest of this building lies in the carpentry works which ornament its roof. The dormer of no. 50 is a slanted capucine with two circular barrel vaults linked by a straight crossbeam. It is topped by three pyramidal roof structures joined together, surmounted by a ridge cresting. The mansard roof covering the entrance passage bears a large dormer of very particular form which can be compared to a double capucine. In the vault surfaces appear the symbolic letters of the Duty Fellowship: U.V.G.T. (Union, Virtue, Geometry, Work). The large roof structure of the dormer is covered by a roof in the shape of a pyramid with curved hips (pagoda type), polygonal at the ridge. Above a polygonal wooden crest, adorned with triangular pediments, rises a small twisted spire with a circular base and inclining to the right. It is covered in zinc imitating slates. On each of the three sides of this large roof structure there is attached a smaller pyramidal roof structure, with curved hips. At the angles, two conical roof structures toward the exterior, with straight slope toward the interior, are assembled with the lateral pyramids. The coloured decoration is obtained by the combination of polychrome slates (or sheets of zinc imitating them) cut in different ways. The flashing strips and ridge cresting contribute to the aesthetics of the roof structure.