Aperçu sanitaire et architectural des bâtiments de transit pour les émigrants européens

• Main Author: Anne Bosser
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication 2017-02-01
• Series: In Situ : Revue de Patrimoines
• Subjects: transit buildings; emigration; architecture; hygienics; Europe
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/insitu/14030

From the end of the nineteenth century up to the inter-war period and, more generally, from 1849 to 1924, the episode of the ‘great European emigration’ saw a massive exodus of poor migrants leaving Europe for the United States. For transatlantic shipping companies, this migratory movement became a major commercial activity and the transport of indigent migrants a leading source of profits. These companies took over the regulation of emigration in the ports of departure in Europe. This new commercial opportunity led the companies to undertake the construction of specific buildings for accommodating the emigrants, whilst regulating the waiting period prior to obtaining an embarkation permit. In most of these port territories, then, special places of reception and accommodation were built. They were designed for the reception of the candidates for emigration, their selection, disinfection, control, export or repatriation. They dealt, in a word, with an abundant supply of human freight. The sanitary and social functions of these places evolved as issues of public health emerged and as hygiene preoccupations came to the fore. The collaboration between architects and the medical professions became essential, and architectural briefs were changed according to phyto-sanitary and technical innovations. These transit buildings present different and specific architectural forms which are by no means an architectural response to crisis or urgency, but which correspond, precisely, with the sanitary, political, commercial and financial objectives of these new commissioning clients.