Abstract
A RECENT article in La Nature describes the new buildings of the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. The school was founded in 1829 for 200 pupils by Dumas, Lavallée, Pćelet, and Olivier. The buildings remained from that date until quite recently in the rue de Thorigny, but the want of space became more and more perceptible as the scheme prospered, and in 1874 the Council proposed that the old buildings should be abandoned, and new ones erected on a vacant plot of ground 6300 square metres in extent, the site of the old St. Martin's Market, which abutted on four streets. The principal advantage of this situation was that it faced the garden of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, and was therefore within reach of the immense technical treasures of that establishment. The new buildings have a frontage of 99.60 m. and a depth of 60.90 m. They are rectangular, and inclose a large central court. The first floor is reserved for the administration and for the use of the first year's students, the second for the second year's, the third for the third year's, while the fourth and highest storey is reserved for the large laboratories. The basement and ground floor are used for the mechanical appliances, the kitchen, dining halls, the collections, and small laboratories for special purposes. Taking the building more in detail, and starting with the basement, we find that its galleries contain a line of rails with small trucks, presented to the school. It is used for conveying fuel to the furnaces, and vessels full of acid to the lifts, by which they are conveyed to the laboratories. The offices of the administration are heated by hot air on the Perret-Olivier system, the apparatus being presented by the makers, while the rest of the building is heated by hot-water pipes. The basement also contains the kitchens of the rival restaurants, which are farmed out, the gas-meters, and three large Geneste and Herscher generators for heat and ventilation. The boilers also work the engines necessary for the generation of the electricity employed for lighting purposes. The electrical works of the school are very remarkable. They include two engines, each of forty horse-power, which were presented by the makers. These work an Edison dynamo of 200 lamps, and three Gramme machines. The latter are each used alternately, and work six ventilators, which act over the whole building. Next to the electrical machines are two pumps which pump up water from a well; the school is also supplied with town water. Near the boilers is an Egrot alembic for distilling water for use in the laboratories. The steam from the water is conveyed by pipes into the laboratories, where it is employed in heating the water for washing, the stores, &c. In the basement are the cellars, store-rooms for glass, rooms for the study of stereotomy, for the construction of models, for stone-cutting, &c. The ground-floor includes a large courtyard, in the centre of which has been left the old fountain of St. Martin's Square. To the right of the entrance from the Rue Montgolfier is a staircase leading to a large vestibule, where the busts of the founders are placed. On this floor are the Mineralogical Museum, the dining-room of the Inspectors, stationery room, and the laboratory of industrial physics, the restaurants, the laboratory of industrial chemistry, and other special first year's laboratories, all opening on the court, the students working in the open air when dealing with noxious gases. The offices of the administrative body are on the first floor, and include director's and secretary's rooms, committee-rooms, steward's offices, and the like. These are lighted both by gas and electric light. The remaining rooms on the floor are devoted to students in their first year. Each storey has its large amphitheatre, capable of holding 250 students. These are formed at angles of the building, and are lit both by gas and electricity. The large blackboards behind the professors are raised and lowered by hydraulic machinery. The halls of study are ranged in two rows on one side of the building, with a corridor or passage between the rows for purpose of superintendence. Twelve pupils can occupy each room, and there are twenty-two rooms on each floor. The second and third stories are arranged on the same principle, except that on the former are the library and cabinets of collections. The fourth storey contains the large laboratories of the second and third year. The laboratory of the third year, of which an illustration is given, is the most important one in the school. Its appliances are of the most convenient and useful kind. Each student has all that he wants for his experiments at his hand.
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The Paris Central School of Arts and Manufactures . Nature 31, 584–586 (1885). https://doi.org/10.1038/031584a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/031584a0