1. IDENTITY OF BUILDING OR GROUP OF BUILDINGS

current name of building:
variant or former name:
number and name of street:
town:
country:

Église paroissiale Saint-Joseph [Saint Joseph Parrish Church]
Block V51
Boulevard François Ier
Le Havre                     code : 76600
France

CURRENT OWNER

name:
address :
telephone:
fax:

Municipality of Le Havre
57, place de l'Hôtel de Ville, 76600 Le Havre
(011.33) ( 0)2 35 19 45 45
02 35 19 46 15

CONSERVATION/PROTECTION

type :

Historic Monument

date :

ISMH 11 October 1965 (inventory number 279)

AGENCY RESPONSIBLE FOR PROTECTION

name:

address:
telephone:
fax :

DRAC Haute-Normandie
(service régional de l'inventaire général [regional service of the general inventory] )
29, rue Verte, 76000 Rouen
(011.33) ( 0)2 32 08 19 80

2. HISTORY OF BUILDING

commission brief:
The new church was supposed to be both a memorial to war victims and a sanctuary to Saint Joseph. During a consultation meeting on the architecture of this future religious building, Jacques Tournant showed the parish priest, Abbot Marie, some pre-war drawings prepared by Auguste Perret for the votive church of Sainte-Jeanne d’Arc. The abbot was moved by the majestic soaring of the central lantern above the transept of this unexecuted basilical project (intended for Rue de la Chapelle, Paris, 18th arrondissement). Given the clergy’s approval and having obtained support from the Minister of Reconstruction, Perret and his team aimed to build this monumental project. Their 1951 preliminary design set forth a church whose skeleton took up the Sainte-Jeanne d’Arc proposal.
During the course of construction, war damages funds proved insufficient, but Perret, emphasizing the double character of the building, as church and ex-voto, obtained supplementary credits. Upon Perret’s death in February 1954, the church was terminated by Georges Brochard who attempted to translate his master’s expressed desires for the bell tower form.

architectural designer:   Auguste Perret

other designers :
Georges Brochard et Raymond Audigier, architecte havrais. Vitraux de Marguerite Huré.

consulting engineers:

contractors :
Reinforced concrete: Société des Grands travaux en béton armé (Paris) and contractors Thireau-Morel (Le Havre); Structure, grading, fondations, masonry: contractor André Robert, Société Nouvelle de Construction et de Travaux; roofing, plumbing, plumbing fixtures: contractor Marcel Gaquerel; glazing: contractor Garel and entreprise Henry; electricity: contractor Joly Hugget and Leroy; central heating: contractor Thoumyre; carpentry Thireau-Morel.

CHRONOLOGY

competition date:
commission date:
design period:
duration of site work:
opening:

start: 21 October 1951
June 1957

PRESENT STATE OF BUILDING

current use: church

current condition: Good general condition of the structure and infill panels.
Mediocre condition of cornices and upper elements subjected to prevailing winds.
Mediocre condition of stained-glass windows and claustras.
Church under restoration.

summary of restoration and other works carried out, with dates:
- 1997: Building illumination funded by the City of Le Havre, assisted by private sponsors.
Designer: Louis Clair.
Operational costs: 1,300,000 French francs
- November-December 2000: work to change the heating installation system.
- 2003-2005: high technology restoration work undertaken by contractor Lanfry (Rouen) with the advice of Jean-Pierre Aury, international restoration expert on reinforced concrete, using products from Société Sika:
Restoration of practically all the original concrete partitions, greatly damaged by salty air and sea storms (also in the bell tower interior). The steel frameworks cast into the concrete having corroded in an ad hoc manner, the concrete split in certain spots.
Execution of the terrace waterproofing.
Standardization of the electrical system.
Renovation of certain stained-glass windows (aging of metal settings)
Architect of Historic Monuments: M. Mirc.
Provisional costs: 1,662 million Euros

3. DOCUMENTATION / ARCHIVES

written records, correspondence, etc.:

 drawings, photographs, etc.:
- Municipal archives of the city of Le Havre:
Documentary dossier 35/3.
Contemporary collection: 1944-1950 reconstruction of the church of Saint-Joseph (A.M. Le Havre FC M2 2/11).
Contemporary collection, construction permit request : PC 88/51, sacristy: 89/51.
Raymond Audigier collection, numerous documents concerning the church (written items, plans, correspondence, press cuttings), 220 W 2 to 11:
220 W 2: foundations; war damages; stained-glass windows; plans; special foundations; press reviews and photographs of the architect; shots of the infrastructure.
220 W 3: estimates; tendering; technical dossiers (reinforced concrete calculations by various contractors); 1951 technical proposal.
220 W 4: prices; site reports 1951-1956; execution of contracts 1951-1957; disputes with contractors 1955; note on the structure SGTBA 1953.
220 W 5: correspondence (Auguste Perret 1951-1956; Pierre Dalloz 1956; Poirrier 1954; P. Tournon 1956; H. Vidal 1953; Mayer 1954-1955; P. Lebourgeois 1957; Abbot Marie 1951-1957; Michel Dubosc 1957; Pierre Courant; Bureau Veritas 1951-1957; banks and insurance companies).
220 W 6: correspondence with joint owners of the reconstruction of churches, 1949-1957.
220 W 7: correspondence with the mayor and city architect 1949-1957; MRL/MRU 1951-1957; contractors 1950-1957).
220 W 8: SGTBA 1951-1957; Thireau-Morel 1951-1957; Marguerite Huré 1951-1956; Bridges and Public Works 1954-1957; SOGETI (heating) 1954-1955.
220 W 9 to 11: series of architects’ and contractors’ plans.
Jacques Tournant collection: photographs and press cuttings, 80 W box 35 file 2 and box 15.
340 W 47: ‘visite du chantier du 4 novembre 1955 au Havre’ [site visit to Le Havre, 4 November 1955], Institut technique du bâtiment et des travaux publics [Technical building institute and public works].
Technical services dossiers, correspondence, plans.

- Archives of Institut français d’Architecture (IFA):
Perret collection: elevation of 25 June 1951 535 AP 86/4 n° CNAM 51.4.64; elevation of 24 September 1951 535 AP95; elevation of 2 June 1954 535 AP 86/4 n° CNAM 51.4.68; perspective 535 AP 86/4 n° CNAM 51.4.66; longitudinal section of 26 April 1952 535 AP 95; plan of 5 January 1951 535 AP 86/4 n° CNAM 51.4.62; view of an interior pillar, church under construction and interior view of the tower 535 AP 661/2.

- Centre de Documentation de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (CDAP), DRAC de Haute-Normandie (Rouen) or Mérimée base on site www.culture.gouv.fr: information cards on dossiers studied by the Inventory.
Mérimée numbers IA00130242; IM76002681 (stained-glass windows); IM76004345 (confessionnal); IM76004346 (mural tabernacle by Marcel Adam); IM76004347 (armchairs); IM76004348 (benches).

other sources, films, videos, etc.:

principal publications (chronological order):
Champigneulle (Bernard), Perret, Paris, Arts et métiers graphiques, 1959.
Collins (Peter), Concrete: The Vision of a New Architecture. A study of Auguste Perret and his precursors, New York, Horizon Press, 1959 (French trans., Splendeur du béton, les prédécesseurs et l’œuvre de Auguste Perret, Paris, Hazan, 1995).
Giard (Roger), Catalogue des médailles des villes du Havre, de Dieppe et de leur arrondissements, Le Havre, 1979.
Robin (Suzanne), Églises modernes, évolution des édifices religieux en France depuis 1955, 1980.
Monuments, monuments … Le Havre et sa reconstruction , Musée des Beaux-Arts André Malraux, Le Havre, 1984.
Abram (Joseph), Perret et l’école du classicisme structurel, 1910-1960, École d’Architecture de Nancy, Service de la Recherche Architecturale, 1985.
---, L’équipe Perret au Havre. Utopie et compromis d’une reconstruction, École d’Architecture de Nancy, Paris, Bureau de la recherche architecturale, 1989.
---, Auguste et Gustave Perret, une monographie, Ière partie: architecture, entreprise et expérimentation, École d’architecture de Nancy, Paris, Bureau de la recherche architecturale, 1989.
Midant (Jean-Pierre), Royan, Le Havre, Toulon, les grandes ordonnances dans l’architecture française des années 1950, Paris, IFA, 1992.
Decultot (Gilbert), Le Havre, ses églises, Le Havre, Compo Photo Le Havre, 1992.
Blondel (Nicole), Vitrail, vocabulaire typologique et technique, Inventaire général des monuments et des richesses artistiques de la France, Editions du Patrimoine et de l’Imprimerie nationale, 1992.
Gargiani (Roberto), Auguste Perret, Paris, Gallimard/Electa, 1994.
Chevalier (Michel), La France des cathédrales du IVe au XXe siècle, Rennes, Editions Ouest-France, 1997.
Abram (Joseph), L’architecture moderne en France, tome 2 Du chaos à la croissance, 1940-1966, Paris, Picard, 1999.
Etienne-Steiner (Claire), Le Havre, Auguste Perret et la reconstruction, Images du Patrimoine, Inventaire général/AGAP, Rouen, 1999.
Toulier (Bernard), dir., Mille monuments du XXe siècle en France, Paris, Editions du Patrimoine.
Culot (Maurice), David Peycéré and Gilles Ragot, Les frères Perret. L’œuvre complète, Paris, Institut français d’architecture/Norma, 2000.
Abram (Joseph), Jean-Louis Cohen and Guy Lambert, L’Encyclopédie Perret, Paris, Monum, Éditions du Patrimoine/Le Moniteur, 2002.
Lebas (Antoine), Des sanctuaires hors des murs, églises de la proche banlieue parisienne 1801-1965, Paris, Editions du Patrimoine, 2002.
Abram (Joseph), Sylvie Barot and Elizabeth Chauvin, Les Bâtisseurs, l’album de la reconstruction du Havre, Le Havre, Point de vues, Musée Malraux, 2002.

articles
Rambosson (Yvanhoë), ‘La nouvelle église du Raincy’ , Art et Décoration, January 1924, pp. 1-7.
Varenne (Gaston), ‘Quelques aspects nouveaux de l’art du vitrail’ , Art et Décoration, June 1926, pp. 170-182.
‘Projet de Basilique Saint-Jeanne d’Arc’ , La Revue d’art, January 1927.
Clouzot (Henri), ‘Vitraux modernes’ , L’Illustration, 5 December 1936.
Lasseaux (Marcel), ‘Images de verre: le vitrail’ , Images de France, la revue des métiers d’art, December 1943, pp. 2-4.
Esdras-Gosse (B.), ‘Église pilote pour la reconstruction de tous les édifices religieux sinistrés de France. L’église Saint-Joseph du Havre’ , Paris Normandie, 23 February 1951.
Le Havre , 31 March-1 April 1951.
‘Première pierre de l’église Saint-Joseph’ , Le Havre, 21 October 1951.
L’Architecture Française, n°121-122, Architecture Religieuse, 1952.
Dalloz (Pierre), ‘Un hommage à Auguste Perret’ , L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, n°46, February-March 1953, pp. 10-11.
‘Bientôt le clocher de l’église Saint-Joseph va s’élancer vers le ciel’ , Le Havre Libre, 23 January 1954, p. 4.
‘Le Havre, église Saint-Joseph’ , Techniques et Architecture, n°3, September 1956, p. 68.
‘Le gros œuvre de l’église Saint-Joseph est terminé’ , Le Havre Libre, 31 October 1956, p. 2.
‘L’église Saint-Joseph achevée extérieurement’ , Paris-Normandie, 19 December 1956, p. 3.
Pichard (Joseph), ‘L’architecture religieuse contemporaine’ , La Construction moderne, n°12, December 1956, pp. 418-434.
‘La couleur à Saint-Joseph du Havre’ , L’Avenir du quartier Saint-Joseph. Vie paroissiale de Saint-Joseph, February 1957, pp. 1-2.
L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Architecture Religieuse , April 1957.
‘La nouvelle église Saint-Joseph’ , La Construction moderne, n°2, February 1958, pp. 52-59.
‘Tower of church in reconstructed Le Havre’ , Architectural Review, April 1958, p. 245.
Laborie (Jean), ‘L’église Saint-Joseph au Havre’ , La Technique des Travaux, n°7-8, July-August 1959, pp. 195-201.
Dalloz (Pierre), Dossier Le Havre, Techniques et Architecture, November 1960, pp. 70-77.
L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Architecture Religieuse, July 1961.
Pichard (Joseph), ‘Églises d’aujourd’hui’ , Jardin des arts, n°85, December 1961, pp. 24-33.
‘Perret’s Last Church’ , Progressive Architecture, n°11, 1963, pp. 144-147.
Architectures sacrées recherches structurales, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, n°108, June-July 1963.
‘Portrait de Perret par Tournant’ , Un siècle d’architecture, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, n°113-114, April-May 1964, pp. 11-15.
Remondet (A.), ‘Rencontres: Perret au Havre’ , La Construction moderne, n°44, December 1985, pp. 30-31.
‘L’église Saint-Joseph “ phare de la résurrection du Havre”’ , Le Havre Presse, 28 February 1992, p. 2.
‘Prix de la mise en lumière du patrimoine moderne pour l’église Saint-Joseph’ , Lux, n°204, September 1999.
Abram (Joseph), ‘Les frères Perret, le béton en pleine lumière’ , Notre Histoire, n°190, Summer 2001, pp. 28-31.
---, ‘Un patrimoine architectural et urbain exceptionnel: les grandes opérations de la reconstruction du Havre’ , Faces, n°42-43, Fall-Winter 1997-1998, pp. 10-15.

4. DESCRIPTION OF BUILDING

The building base, in the form of a Greek cross, is integrated through its height and moulding profiles and proportions into the new urban context designed by the Perret team. The volumes of the church are distributed on two terraces at 17 and 24 metres above ground level, forming a 35-metre-high pyramidal structure, itself dominated by a cylindrical bell tower culminating at 110 metres. As such, the central-plan church appears as a ‘lantern-tower’ incorporated with the nave. Its square plan (40.60 metres each side) is completed by two projecting sections, narrower to the east, with winter chapel and sacristy, and to the west, with main entry and tribune.
Adhering to Perret's architectural vocabulary, the primary order is here formed by four groups of four pillars supporting the bell tower whose plan section moves from square to octagonal to terminate in a crown of geometric cubes. The lower part of the church (the nave, side aisles, apse), surmounted by a cornice, makes up the secondary order. Some 15-metre-high fluted columns (with 0.60-metre diameters) support the covering (composed of an arrangement of beams with prefabricated slab), and some posts constitute the main skeletal frame of the facades. The church of Saint-Joseph is essentially composed of four groups of powerful pillars carrying the tower through the intermediary of four pendentives. At each corner of the square nave stand four groups of four square pillars (1.30 metres each side and 25 metres high), with 5-metres distance between each pillar, measured on the axes. Each group is separated from the other by a distance of 17 metres, axis to axis, from the closest pillars. These pillars at the summit are braced by herring-bone strutting. On the upper register of the pillars, on centre, the beams receive the ends of the small struts in V-formation (ribs); the other ends support the tower. The passage from square plan (22 metre each side) to plan is achieved by a transitional truncated pyramid. At its summit a beam-belt serves as a course for the frustrum of the tower. Above this platform, the belfry is composed of the assembly of posts extending the octagonal spindle with successive projections, progressively slimming its silhouette up toward the central lantern dominated by the terminal cross. From this level, the bell tower is hollow at 13.50 metres in diameter and 40 metres in height. A spiral staircase, which ascends on one of the bell tower's interior arris, leads to the bell chamber.
The church exterior partition wall is composed of nervure posts with infill alternating in solid and screened sections. On both the exterior and interior, all the concrete is left rough from decoffering moulds. The floor is covered simply in cement. The rough-gravel pink-toned cement panels are framed with posts and cornices, and pierced by claustras.
Preceded by a narthex, the entrance is slightly lower in relation to the outside ground level and, with its few steps, dominates the church ensemble whose floor slopes gently downward. From the threshold, one's gaze rises unhindered to the apex. Perret wanted this entrance to be bathed in golden light that becomes clearer toward the top. To accentuate the central plan adopted, there is a progression of light from the lower section to the summit, the tower being entirely pierced. The number of stained-glass windows increases proportionally to the height: the lower section has only one of two illuminated panels while the top is a single immense glass roof. The reticulated shape of the bell tower gives off an exceptional light within the tubular interior. The prefabricated claustras, without armature, are decorated with a white glass on the outer side and a coloured glass on the inner side. The stained-glass windows grouped vertically articulate the glass roofs: 12,768 coloured-glass pieces were required to cover a total surface of 378m².

5. REASONS FOR SELECTION AS A BUILDING OF OUTSTANDING VALUE

1. technical appraisal:
Perret’s idea was to push the resistance of concrete to its extreme limit, to disengage immense spaces without recourse to intermediary piers. The building mass has a base surface of 2000m² and an interior volume of 50,000m3. The construction necessitated the use of 4,200,000m3 of concrete (or 50,000 tons). After prospecting the deep ground layers and conducting various tests, a calculation defined the foundation system. The block base is supported on 71 ‘Franki-type’ piles, with 15-metre length piles. The 16 pillars are supported on the same number of ‘Bénoto-type’ foundation pits in reinforced concrete, 1,45 metres in diameter, descending 15 metres below ground. A footing of 6,50m² by 2m in height unites each group of four foundation pits at ground level. A considerable load is supported solely by these 16 points. The bell tower exerts a weight of 1,100 tons at each corner. Because of intense and diverse stresses to which the link between bell tower and frame is submitted, all the tie-rod units are prestressed through the Freyssinet system (STUP licence). At the base of the pyramid and on the four sides of the square, prestressed concrete tie rods are integrated. The structural ensemble is compressed on a variable rate according to the weather. Perret and his team achieved a very tall building, with a light, delicate appearance, but capable of resisting storms. An extremely complex schedule was set up to record the sequence of construction work.

2. social appraisal:
This building fulfils several roles as parish votive church raised in memory to World War II bombing victims. For navigators and ocean liner passengers, the church of Saint-Joseph is a symbol of renewed life: this is the last monument seen upon leaving the shores of France and the first one perceived upon returning. It is like the spiritual lighthouse of the city, as much for the boats as for the citizens of Le Havre. It plays an essential role in urban orientation. Its vertical soaring symbolizes the elevation of prayer, aesthetic and spiritual transcendence. Perret's architecture succeeds in creating a harmony between structural truth and religious sentiment. The symbolism of its stained-glass window colours is very strong, the ‘psychological’ character of these choices being representative of the spirit of the Fifties.

3. artistic and aesthetic appraisal:
Faithful to the taste of the period as well as to the will of the architect and Abbot Marie, this building is left intentionally rough in appearance without any paintings to adorn it. Perret's design was intended to renounce ‘decorative’ art in order to attain an art of construction allying simplicity and nobility. Saint Joseph's stained-glass windows participate fully in the architecture. In the spirit desired by Perret, they were conceived by Marguerite Huré with whom the architect had already collaborated on the church of Raincy. The glass used is called ‘antique’, irregular in thickness (from 2 to 5mm), highly nuanced, and mouth-blown (a Medieval technique) in Saint-Just-sur-Loire. The windows are laid out in a strict geometric manner due to a selection of seven principal colours (orange, yellow, green, violet, red, greenish-blue, white) that produce fifty varieties of shades in all. As the strongest harmonization values have been applied to all the bases of the tower, the dark-toned glass thus creates an impression that the light arrives from above. Accordingly, the red and dead-wood brown tones are applied to the north side of the tower, the green and violet tones to the east, the golden tones to the south, and the pink and orange tones to the west.

4. evidence of canonic status (local, national, international):
This church was inscribed on the Historic Monuments list hardly ten years after its completion, an exceptional occurrence. Masterpiece of the Reconstruction, its celebrity goes beyond the region to represent the architectural successes of this period, one as a whole so disparaged. It is simultaneously a World War II memorial site, the final manifesto of Auguste Perret and the greatest technical achievement for a church.

5. evaluation as a reference point in architectural history and in relation to comparable buildings:
Certain historians consider Perret's architecture at Saint-Joseph as the 20th-century equivalent to Gothic art. Perret's 1924 design for the church campanile in Rancy, more modest but nonetheless pioneering, served as a prefiguration of the lantern tower in Le Havre.
After World War I, some intellectuals and artists proposed that the ruins of destroyed cathedrals be preserved as such, as testimonials. Such was, for example, the case for Rheims Cathedral. After World War II, Le Corbusier made a similar proposal for the cathedral of Saint-Dié, in whose proximity he would have constructed a new cathedral in concrete. His solution was rejected by the French but adopted by the English for Saint-Michel's Cathedral in Coventry (Sir Basil Spence, architect, Ove Arup and associates, engineers, 1951-1962) whose reconstruction attempts to revive the splendours of the flamboyant Middle Ages on the ruins of the martyred cathedral.
This period witnessed a considerable number of religious constructions: between 1945 and 1963, 635 places of worship were inaugurated in France, followed by 700 in the next ten years. Architects around the world combined functionalism and expressionism to emphasize purity of lines, volumetric compositions, overall building proportions and distribution of light. In France, the greatest transformation took place around 1950 with the appearance of the ‘revolutionary'sanctuaries in Assy (Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, architect Maurice Novarina, with Fernand Léger's mosaics) and in Vence (with Matisse's stained-glass and decors), mainly under the impetus of the Dominican Father Couturier, former collaborator with Maurice Denis and the Ateliers d’art sacré [Sacred Art Workshops]. It was Couturier who, immediately after World War II, appealed to the great abstract painters (Bazaine, Le Moal, Manessier) and figurative artists (Chagall, Gromaire, Matisse, Rouault) to renew the art of stained glass. From 1955, more and more religious buildings integrated abstract art. In general this abstraction was more lyrical than geometric.
Perret revelled in all this atmosphere of French spirituality, especially around Paris during the Thirties. With his magisterial church of Saint-Joseph, he culminated thirty years of research on the theme of religious architecture.

6. PHOTOGRAPHS AND VISUAL RECORDS

1. archives visuelles originales:
St Joseph 001: section of the upper register of the bell tower
St Joseph 002: plan
St Joseph 003: drawings of the transition between the square plan and octagonal plan

2. photographies et dessins récents:
digital photographs (Raphaëlle Saint-Pierre, 2004):
St Joseph 004: detail of the renovated facades
St Joseph 005: detail of the renovated facades

Reporter: Raphaëlle Saint-Pierre (under the direction of Fabienne Chevallier and Joseph Abram; June 2004)
Translator: Barbara Shapiro Comte (Summer 2006)