58 years ago, Toulouse sacrificed its heritage to make room for the car
By David Saint-Sernin
Published on
It was almost 60 years ago… Place des Carmes, February 7, 1964, In Toulousethe journalist André Cros photographed the destruction of the Carmes market. The marquee of the hall was then literally on the ground.
Magnificent metal hall
The metal hall had allure, however. Pendant the first half of the XXand century, it was one of the main covered markets of the city with that of Victor-Hugo.
But, in the 1960s, the car had really taken off and he had to make room for it in the city center and in particular allow motorists to park. The halls are then razed.
“Covered markets are no longer really popular”
“At that time, mass distribution also took off and covered markets were no longer really popular”, also relates in 2020 Pierre Gastou, for the Municipal Archives of Toulouse, interviewed by Toulouse News.
In the mid-1960s, the Carmes market disappeared to make way for the market-parking lot that we now know.
“In the indifference”
“A demolition that took place in an indifference that surprises today given the quality of the architecture”, notes the geographer, Robert Marconisin his work Toulouse, a metro to change the century, released in 2008.
“Initially, the town hall at the time only wanted to build a car park. But under pressure from traders, the City finally decided to “couple market activity and parking on the same site”, continued Pierre Gastou.
Why the halls and then the Carmelite car park?
It is on the site of the former Carmelite convent, of which nothing remained (the monks had been driven out during the French Revolution and the place had been destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century, replaced by a tree-lined public square , editor’s note), that the Halle had been built in 1892 under the aegis of the architect Galinier, inspired by the model of the central halls of Paris.
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