Salle d'oeuvres paroissiales Saint-Pierre de la cité n° 11 de la compagnie des mines de Lens, située à l'angle de la rue du Saint-Esprit et de la rue du Béarn

English translation

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History

The drilling in 1891 of wells 11 and 12 away from any built-up area obliged the company to plan the construction of housing. The Cité Saint-Pierre was built near the pit from 1894 onwards. It consisted of a series of 300 houses grouped in pairs in the middle of a vast garden. In 1899, a series of 104 houses was begun. In 1900, the church was completed. To finish the development of the city, a large festive hall was inaugurated in 1907. All these installations were destroyed during the First World War and reconstruction lasted until 1925. At that date, the city had approximately 1600 houses, which made it one of the most important of the company. The old city is exemplary of a coherent set of collective mining facilities. The ensemble of schools and their annexes, the dwellings of the school director and the sisters, the old presbytery, are concentrated in a quadrilateral dedicated to instruction and religion. A neo-regional style is evident in the roofs with wide overhangs, in the great variety of implementation of the different architectural elements.