User:Bangiomorpha/Brasserie des Alliés à Marchienne-au-Pont

The brasserie des Alliés in Marchienne-au-Pont, section of the Belgian city of Charleroi, is a vast industrial complex built in 1937-1938.

At its origin it was a brewery of the cooperative society « Brasserie des Alliés ». It is currently a warehouse of the Abetech company.

History
After the First World War, Fernard Lovrix noticed that many beer merchants in the Charleroi region were buying their beer from several small breweries and bottling it themselves. This is a waste of time and does not guarantee a constant quality of beer. A rationalization is necessary. For him, the ideal solution would be to group the merchants in a sales cooperative and to produce beer for them according to modern industrial methods. He managed to convince nine people, including Élie Delferrière, sales manager of one of the largest beer distributors in the region, and Joseph Tirou, an industrialist, who accepted responsibility for financial management. The cooperative company « Brasserie des Alliés » was created on April 9, 1920 with a starting capital of 40,000 belgian francs. This small amount encourages to start modestly by renting an old brewery located in Marcinelle. A few months were enough to show that the project had a bright future. On September 5, 1921, the company bought the buildings of the « Brasseries-Malterie de la Sambre » in Marchienne-au-Pont and in the first year production increased from 12,000 to 24,500 hectoliters.

The technical and commercial success is based on two main elements. First, there is the basic principle of the cooperative, which consists of redistributing profits in equal shares, after depreciation, in the form of dividends to the share capital and rebates to the retailers, in proportion to the quantity of beer sold. Then there is the investment in an efficient production tool. For example, the purchase in 1928 of a machine that allows the filling of three thousand bottles per hour and the replacement of the mechanical cork by the crown cap.

The rate of growth was steady, and production rose from 12,000 hectoliters in 1920 to 150,000 hectoliters in 1935, representing 10% of the beer produced in the province of Hainaut. That is nineteen million bottles and thirty-two thousand barrels. The same year, the "Brasserie des Alliés" was present at the International Exhibition in Brussels.

The production continues to grow and the tool reaches its limits. The Board of Directors decides to build new buildings along the road to Mons, behind the existing facilities. The project was assigned to René Dubois, a young architect from the town, who had designed the pavilion for the 1935 exhibition. He died in a car accident in November 1937 before the completion of the construction. Construction began in June 1937 and the inauguration took place on September 11, 1938.

From then on, the old building was used exclusively for production. It was connected to the new building by underground pipelines that sent the production to the filling and packaging sections.

The « Brasserie des Alliés » was taken over in 1979 by Piedbœuf Group and continued its activities until the 1980s. The oldest production buildings were demolished at the end of 1991 to make way for a large area.

In the late 1970s, Brasserie des Alliés was taken over by Interbrew, which centralized production in Liège and sold the building to a real estate company. The latter sold the old workshops to Colruyt and, after more than 15 years of neglect and vandalism, in early 1995, the main buildings (offices, bottling plant and tower) to Abetech and the rear shed to a contractor.

The facade, roof, low wall, railing, metal gate and its mechanism of the building of René Dubois were classified as Walloon heritage in 1995.

Architecture
The new buildings, arranged around a large covered courtyard, included an office wing, shipping department, barrel room, bottling plant, and docks. The main facade is 60 meters long, the facade on Rue de Nimal is 40 meters long, and the tower is over 40 meters high. More than 3,000 m³ of reinforced concrete and an equivalent volume of masonry were used for this construction. The former office building (500 m² on the ground) consists of a basement (connected to those in the rest of the building), a ground floor, a second floor, and a second floor (connected to the main building by a walkway) that includes the former brewery reception room.

The whole is served by an elevator and two stairwells. The concrete roof is arranged in a platform pattern, paved with Sarreguemines-style tiles. The main building (1,000 m² on the ground) consists of a basement floor equipped with large rainwater tanks, a second floor with the large hall of the former bottling plant, a third floor around the large hall, and the tower.

The large room of the bottling plant is covered by a single-span reinforced concrete vault, without anchors, reinforced on the outside by arches resting on piles connected to the building's carcass. This hall measures 33 by 22 meters and is 11.5 meters high at the top. The vault was covered on the outside with a layer of copper and on the inside with terracotta slabs. Its top is lined with six circular openings in translucent slabs, with a central chimney surmounted by a Cauchemont-type air intake device.One corner of the tower, which terminates the main body of the facade, rests on a span of the vault. This tower (formerly the brewery's water tower) supports, on the penultimate floor, two water tanks for washing bottles. The top floor, with its terrace, was a bar where one could admire the scenery while drinking an Extra-Alliés, a BAM (super pale-ale) or an Allied Stout.

External websites
https://docomomo.be/building/brasserie-des-allies/