Gerville-Réache High School

Museums of France

Miscellaneous

Crédit photo : Aristoi - Sous licence Creative Commons

Timeline

Temps modernes

Révolution/Empire

XIXe siècle

Époque contemporaine

1700

1800

1900

2000

1651

Foundation of the Carmelite convent

1819–1821

Construction of military hospital

1848

Addition of cast iron galleries

1931

Establishment of high school

1951

Moving to the old hospital

15 janvier 1979

Historical Monument

Aujourd'hui

Heritage classified

facades and roofs of the two entrance buildings; stairway and entrance gate in the main courtyard (Box AI 382): inscription by order of 15 January 1979

Key figures

Charles Houël - Governor and donor	Offer the land to the Carmelites in 1651.
Gouverneur Lardenoy - Initiator of the military hospital	Directs construction between 1819 and 1821.
Gaston Gerville-Réache - Guy of the Guadeloupeian politician	Metis deputy, the same name as high school since 1933.
Marie Anne Daverne - Superior of the Sisters of Chartres	44 years in the convent, buried on site.

Origin and history

Gerville-Reache High School occupies the buildings of a former military hospital built between 1819 and 1821 under the Restoration, on the site of a Carmelite convent founded in 1651. Governor Lardenoy runs a working hospital there until 1906, designed in the form of a "horse iron" with a hydraulic system and medicinal plant gardens. The facades, roofs and entrance stairs, dating from 1821, have been listed as historic monuments since 1979.

Originally, the site housed a Carmelite convent offered by Charles Houel in 1651, destroyed by fires in 1691 and 1703. It was transformed into a military hospital in 1819 to replace a previous establishment burned in 1794 and received 300 patients with separate rooms for officers and soldiers. Cast iron galleries were added in 1848 to protect against the weather, and a chapel was blessed in 1853.

The school became a high school in 1951 and was named after Gaston Gerville-Réache (1854–1908), a Métis member of Parliament for Guadeloupe and a disciple of Victor Schœlcher. First installed at the Palais d'Orléans in 1931, he moved to former hospital buildings, where concrete extensions were built in the 1960s for classrooms and boarding schools. Today, it combines secondary education with preparatory classes, while preserving its architectural heritage.

Among the remarkable elements remain the remains of the hydraulic network with aqueducts and fountains in the yard planted with mango trees, as well as the wall of enclosure and the stone entrance gate. The original tiles, replaced by plates, and the cast-iron columns of the galleries testify to the successive adaptations of the site, marked by its religious, medical and educational past.