User:Bangiomorpha/Passage de la Bourse

The Passage de la Bourse is an arcade in the downtown of Charleroi, Belgium. It is located in a block of the Ville-Basse surrounded by the rue de Marchienne to the north, the rue Puissant d'Agimont to the east, the rue de Charleville to the south and the rue du Collège to the west.

It was built at the end of the 19th century by the architect Edmond Legraive. The exterior buildings are inspired by the Flemish neo-Renaissance style, while the interior facades of the gallery are in the neo-classical style. It has been protected since 1990, a classification that was modified in 2011.

Urbanisation of the Ville Basse
In June 1667, during the War of Devolution, the French army of Louis XIV took the unfinished and partially destroyed fortress of Charleroi, situated on the banks of the Sambre. The king decided to continue building it. In order to attract inhabitants, in August 1668, he granted privileges, including exemption from taxation. To extend the stronghold and defend the passage of the Sambre, the Ville-Basse was created in 1675 on the other bank of the river. Economic activity developed there. The exemptions granted by Louis XIV were extended several times in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Spanish and Austrian sovereigns on whom the area depended.

Ferraris' map from the end of the 18th century shows a relatively dense built-up area, except for the vast block to the west, which was largely occupied by the Capuchin convent, built in 1681, whose gardens extended as far as the ramparts.

During the French Revolution, the town became French again and, in 1796, the convent was sold as national property. The premises were bought in 1803 by the municipal administration, which set up the town hall and in 1845 a municipal school. The conventual church, which became a parish church in 1804, was replaced in 1830 by the Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue church, built by Jean Kuypers. A new road, the Rue du Collège, was built in 1837 through the former convent gardens.

After the rectification of the Sambre diversion canal, the creation of the railway line and the station south of the canal in 1843, the ramparts that had been established in this place gave way to new urbanised blocks located along the waterway. The business bourgeoisie, organised as a chamber of commerce from 1827, settled there. This intensified the commercial vocation of the Ville-Basse. The town was located at the heart of a region in full industrial revolution: coal mining, iron and steel, glassmaking and chemicals. It was therefore logical to consider establishing a trade exchange there.

The commodity market and the covered passage
The commodity market, established in 1875, was temporarily housed in the village hall of the former town hall, which was abandoned by the administration and moved to the Ville-Haute in 1887.

As early as 1888, the Charleroi town council examined several projects to develop the site of the old town hall. Octave Van Rysselberghe, a Brussels architect, also presented a project in 1889. In the end, a project by the architect Edmond Legraive from Ixelles (Brussels) was chosen in October 1890. The plans provided for the construction of a covered gallery to the north, with access from the rue de Marchienne, and a trade exchange to the south, overlooking the rue Léopold. The project also includes premises to be used for arbitration and conciliation offices, drawing lots for military service, an auditorium and meeting rooms, a police office, a fire pump shed, a guardhouse, etc. The covered gallery is intended for commercial use. Each house, consisting of a commercial ground floor and three storeys, is intended to be sold separately, with the City retaining ownership of the covered roadway. The name "Passage de la Bourse" was given in November 1890 by the municipal college. The complex was inaugurated on 10 April 1892.

From an urban planning point of view, its location, which duplicates the Rue du Collège, a commercial street important to the Ville-Basse, is not ideal. And a cross-shaped plan, like the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, would certainly have made the passage more lively.

However, the Passage de la Bourse quickly became a favourite place for art, music and other entertainment lovers, with shops, a music hall, a cinema, a bookshop and a printing works.

After the Second World War, the gallery lost its lustre. The trade exchange and the auditorium were demolished and replaced by a modern building, as the mayor Octave Pinkers wished, to compensate for the numerous works carried out in the Upper Town at that time. The modern building is the work of the architects A. Daloze and R. Baeyens. Between 1974 and 2011 it housed the Charleroi production centre of the Belgian Radio and Television of the French Community (RTBF).

Over time, various transformations, carried out without concern for the overall harmony, deteriorated the architectural quality of the passage. The restoration carried out in 2003 by the architect Philippe Dulière, a large-scale project involving in particular the listed façades and the glass roof, restored the building to its former glory.

The passage was classified on 6 October 1990 as a monument within the classified immovable cultural heritage of Wallonia. This classification included the glass roof and the facades of the gallery. This first classification was repealed and replaced on 14 December 2011. This latest classification includes the glass roof and the facades of the gallery, as well as the facades of the entrance building overlooking the rue de Marchienne.

As part of the construction of the Rive gauche shopping centre, the passageway and the entire neighbourhood underwent major transformations between the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2017, including the demolition of the building that housed the Belgian Radio and Television of the French Community.

Before the demolition, Charles Szymkowicz, a painter, asked that the 20 m2 mural by Gustave Camus in the building be saved at all costs. But the work, which was supposed to be a mural, i.e. painted directly on the wall, was valued at 300,000 euros. An analysis by the Royal Society for Archaeology, History and Palaeontology of Charleroi revealed that it was a marouflage. The society took off, recovered and became the owner of the work. However, the high cost of restoration seriously compromised the project. No solution was found by the end of 2021.

Architecture
On the rue de Marchienne side, to the left of the gallery entrance, there is a building that was for a long time occupied by the café "Aux Mille Colonnes". It comprises a vast four-storey rotunda crowned by a dome ending in a bell tower. On the right-hand side of the entrance are two shops with windows facing Rue du Collège and in the passage. On the rue du Collège there is a row of five shops, one of which has been altered, breaking the overall harmony. The gables on the rue du Collège side are in the spirit of the Flemish neo-Renaissance style.

The main entrance to the passage is flanked on the ground floor by stone columns and crowned by a pediment with a clock (now gone) and a stone cartouche bearing the year 1891. A metal lintel bearing the name "Passage de la Bourse" is surmounted by an ironwork balcony resting on two wrought metal brackets. A similar entrance gave access at the other end of the passage, on the Rue Léopold side, to the Bourse de Commerce.

The passage is designed as a monumental access road to the commodity market. It is a real pedestrian street serving its own buildings. The configuration of the site and the presence of the church of Saint-Antoine impose a curved layout, which is exceptional in the history of covered passages. This curved layout breaks the monotony of a straight line. Under the long transparent white glass cradle of the glass roof, the buildings are aligned along a corridor 6 metres wide.

The interior facades have an elevation of three neo-classical registers: Doric on the ground floor, Ionic on the first floor, and Corinthian on the second. On commercial ground floors with wooden fronts, the plastered floors are punctuated by colossal pilasters marking the bays and supporting the metal arches that carry the glass roof. The first floor has quadrangular windows with stacked jambs behind a balustrade. The second floor windows are round-headed with keystones on engaged columns. The inner end faces of the gallery are treated in the same manner.