Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Colombes water lift plant, located on Rue Paul-Bert, was designed to overcome a technical challenge: raising the wastewater of Paris at an altitude of 40 metres in order to bring them to the slopes of Argenteuil, thus avoiding excessive pressure in a siphon under the Seine. The original factory, inaugurated in 1895 by Prefect Eugène Poubelle, included a large hall with steam pumps operated by coal boilers, and a small adjoining hall. Its role was crucial in the Parisian sanitation system, linking the sewers of Clichy to the Colombes water bridge.

Enlarged in 1901 under the direction of engineer André Loewy, the factory incorporated a remarkable metal structure, with triangular farms and lattice beams, as well as bichrome brick facades and terracotta friezes. The "B" factory, built that year, survived World War II, unlike the "A" factory of 1893, which was destroyed in 1944. The electropumps installed in 1931 modernized the site, while the small boiler hall was converted into offices in 1995 for the Interdepartmental Research Centre for Wastewater Treatment.

Ranked a Historical Monument in 1992 for its facades, roofs and changing rooms (former office), the factory illustrates the hydraulic engineering of the early twentieth century. Its halls, with metal frames signed Moisant-Laurent and Savey, and its decorative motifs in polychrome bricks, testify to a careful industrial architecture. Owned by the department of Hauts-de-Seine, it remains a functional vestige of the history of the French sanitation, originally linked to the fields of application ofAchères.

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