Rarely has a simple barn found itself at the heart of such a bitter battle. “It’s a file that has occupied us since 2001, something crazy! », exclaims Carine Petit. The mayor (Generation.s) of 14e The Parisian district therefore does not hide its joy: after more than twenty years of combat, controversy, innumerable appeals, series of lawsuits, duels between experts, the barn of the Montsouris farm is finally rehabilitated. The work carried out by the City of Paris for 1.7 million euros has just been completed, and the Circusnext association, which brings together young circus companies, has begun to take possession of the places reserved for it for five years. . The official opening is scheduled for the fall.
If the Saint-Jacques metro farm gave rise to such quarrels between a property developer, the City and a group of associations, it is because it is “both banal and unique”, notes Aurélien Masurel, one of the architects in charge of restoring it. Banal, because it is a farm with no particular architectural cachet, like Paris had more than 450 in 1895. The long barn, the only building still in good condition, has suffered a lot over the years. It is not classified as a historical monument. “When we started work in 2019, the walls were covered with cement, the windows were bricked up, and the large interior volumes had been compartmentalized into small rooms”, reports the architect. For lack of specific interest, the farm bought by a real estate developer almost disappeared entirely in the 2000s.
Great historical value
However, the barn of Montsouris has great historical value: it is the last in Paris, the last vestige of the small urban farms that have long fed the capital. It remained in operation until the end of the 1930s. No harvest here, of course. But in the neighborhood, the oldest residents remember going there to look for pears, vegetables, fresh milk. Built in the mid-nineteenthe century instead of a windmill and the miller’s house, the farm notably included a barn, a stable, a pigsty, a henhouse. As such, it deserved to be preserved.
A neo-Renaissance pavilion from 1840, in poor condition, also escaped demolition
Banal and unique at the same time: the result of this somewhat contradictory situation can be seen on the spot. Of the old farm there is not much left. The dairy was demolished in the 1950s, the house of cowherds in 2012. The Town Hall having mobilized a little late, a real estate program was born and the large courtyard was split. The facade of the barn now abuts a plastic fence put up by the promoter to delimit his plot. “Quite the opposite of carbon-free, biosourced construction that we want to develop”regrets Jacques Baudrier, the communist deputy in charge of the Parisian building sites.
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