History of Suresnes

Suresnes historian René Sordes describes the town as situated “on a small alluvial plateau, sheltered from flooding, at the foot of Mont Valérien, on the banks of the tranquil Seine, opposite the beautiful Rouvray forest, of which all that remains today is our Bois de Boulogne.” Suresnes is located on the “Gennevilliers peninsula,” a meander of the Seine 15 km long and 5 km wide. Until the 19th century, this meant that Suresnes and the surrounding towns were geographically isolated. Bordered by the hills of Montretout, Garches, and La Celle-Saint-Cloud, the commune is dominated by Mont Valérien, a 162-metre high butte that bears witness to major deposits eroded during the Quaternary period. The mountain is located on the last spur of the Beauce plateau, on its northeastern edge. The Lutetian period also saw the formation of coarse-grained limestone in the region, which was used in the construction of Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, the Louvre, and some of the houses in Suresnes. During the same period, when many lagoons were spreading out, seawater evaporated, forming gypsum, giving Suresnes large gypsum quarries. Toponymy has preserved this memory, as evidenced by the presence of a "rue des Carrières". Until the 19th century, plaster furnaces were located in the "Fécheray" area, which is said to have been used in the construction of the Château de Versailles and the Château de Bagatelle. During the Sannois period, the sea covered these lagoons, and green clays (marls) were deposited: they were later used to make roof tiles, as evidenced by the surviving "rue de la Tuilerie". In the 16th century, sculptor Girolamo della Robbia used these clays to create artistic coverings for the Château de Madrid, built in the Bois de Boulogne. == Prehistory and Antiquity ==

There is evidence of human presence on the Gennevilliers peninsula during the Neolithic period. Archaeological remains dating from this period have been found in Suresnes, including a carved and polished axe at the Croix-du-Roy crossroads, blades at the foot of the American cemetery, and a deer horn used as a pick at Fécheray. During Protohistory, the Mont Valérien site was considered important by the Gallic Parisii people, with the Gennevilliers peninsula forming part of their domain. Gallic druids may have worshipped here. The creation of a land register under Emperor Diocletian, and the absence of any new names or divisions of the estate, suggest that during the Gallo-Roman period, and indeed until the 6th century, this territory remained unchanged. Proof that Gallo-Romans once resided within the perimeter of present-day Suresnes is provided by the exhumation of a tomb on what is now Place Henri-IV, containing a classical-type lamp. Pieces of pottery and glass, as well as two coins (representing Hadrian), were also unearthed by diggers in a garden on rue Pierre-Dupont, while a coin representing Faustina Augusta was found during work on rue des Carrières. However, until the end of Antiquity, this area was of minor importance, and it was the site of the neighboring town of Nanterre, which was considered the spiritual center of the peninsula. The name Mont Valérien (Mons Valerianus or Mons Valeriani in the earliest mentions) is said to derive from Valerian, a Roman emperor who had a villa there. However, there is no certainty as to the origin of this term, which may also have a military origin. == Early and Middle Middle Ages ==

First mention of Suresnes , owner of the lands of Suresnes for almost a millennium. In October 1885, during the construction of a section of the railway line from Moulineaux to Suresnes, earth workers unearthed fifteen plaster coffins with funerary furnishings, part of an ancient Frankish-Pagan cemetery. Around 1900, at the same time as the above-mentioned find in rue Pierre-Dupont, two coffins were discovered, probably dating from the end of the 5th century. According to René Sordes, it is therefore possible that Mont Valérien was once occupied by a Frankish military post designed to keep watch over the Seine valley. For René Sordes, it was at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries that Suresnes “entered the history books.” Indeed, in 884, Carloman donated vast estates to the abbey of Saint-Leufroy (Normandy), which his grandfather, Charles le Chauve, had already promised them. This donation includes "Surisna [Suresnes] in its entirety", the first historical mention of the village. However, continued Viking invasions at the end of the century led the monks to flee to the Parisian abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. After being admitted to their community, the abbey of Saint-Leufroy de facto disappeared, rendering Carloman's donation moot. Robert, the brother of Count Eudes of Paris, then obtained from King Charles III the Simple (who owed him his crown) the charter of May 14, 918, which, repeating the terms of Carloman's donation, formalized the transfer of the estate to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Sources de Suresnes According to local historians, the word "Surisnas, Surisnae, or Surisna" is of Celtic hydronym origin, i.e., derived from the word "source". Indeed, numerous springs were gushing out of Mont Valérien, both on the Suresnes side and on the Nanterre side. As the Gauls worshipped the forces of nature, associated with deities, it's conceivable that they worshipped the goddess Surisna here. As Christianization did not completely eradicate Gallic saints from the countryside, substitutions were often made, with the Christian saint taking the place of the Gallic god, as probably happened to Surisna. , ''L'enfance de Sainte Geneviève'' (between 1874 and 1876), depicting the saint as a child on Mont Valérien, in homage to the legend that she grazed her sheep there. At the end of the 19th century, there were still several springs in Suresnes, the best-known of which was the Fontaine du Tertre, which was destroyed in 1907. The nearby Avenue de la Fontaine-du-Tertre is a reminder of this fountain. The fountain was said to have curative powers for the eyes, in connection with a legend according to which Saint Geneviève came to Mont Valérien to give her sheep a drink and restored her mother's sight thanks to the water from the well serving the family home. Much later, in 1131, when Parisians were suffering from "mal des ardents", an inflammation of the skin, only the procession of the saint's shrine could cure the sick. Pilgrims would later flock to the Tertre fountain to have their eyes cured, and still do several centuries later. Domaine de Suresnes In Gaulish times, only loggers would have frequented the marshy banks of this area, which gradually dried out. The Romans may then have cleared the land and planted vines. The higher parts of Mont Valérien were used for livestock farming. Soldiers and settlers must have moved in later, and a small hamlet developed between the 7th and 10th centuries. By that time, its boundaries were probably similar to those drawn up in the 17th century: to the north, towards Puteaux, the rue des Bas-Rogers separated the Saint-Germain-des-Prés estate from that of Saint-Denis; to the west, several paths (des Chênes, des Traineaux and the sente des Bartoux) delimited the territory, passing over the grounds of the American cemetery, the sentier de la Motte, the boulevard du Maréchal-de-Lattre-de-Tassigny, the rue des Bons-Raisins and the Chemin du Syndicat-des-Cultivateurs, the ''sente du Val d'Or marking the boundary of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés estate, and to the south the Chemin du Val d'Or separating Suresnes from Saint-Cloud. However, there is little information on the evolution of the estate. The terms Val d'Or, Vaux d'Or, or sometimes Veaux d'Or'' are commonly used, meaning a rich, fertile valley. The large estate of La-Celle-Saint-Cloud (567 hectares in the 9th century) had a major influence on the neighboring estate of Suresnes (300 hectares). Also owned by Saint-Germain-des-Prés, it was home to some 320 inhabitants, vineyards, arable land, and acres of woodland (as evidenced by the name of Rue des Chênes). In Suresnes, the hillsides were covered with vines (as were many of the hills and plateaus in the Paris region), while a fifth of the territory was planted with a variety of crops. It is likely that in 918, Suresnes was under the tutelage of the neighboring domain in terms of farming and administration. The vintages of Beaujolais and Burgundy were reserved for aristocratic tables, while those of the Île-de-France region, including Suresnes, were prized by the people of Paris. The marshy lands along the Seine were then drained once and for all, and the clearing of the land around Suresnes was also completed. In addition to vines, Suresnois winegrowers also raise poultry, cattle, and pigs. Saint-Leufroy church . Before Charles le Chauve's donation, the parish of Saint-Maurice de Nanterre served the faithful of Suresnes, but the journey was long and arduous. The abbots of Saint-Germain therefore asked their bishop for permission to build a chapel in Suresnes, in accordance with an 803 capitulary. The chapel was built around 910. An agreement signed in 1070 between the abbot of Saint-Germain and bishop Geoffroy de Boulogne unreservedly recognized that Suresnes belonged to the abbey, and no longer to the episcopal authority. Although the neighboring village of Puteaux had belonged to the Abbey of Saint-Denis since 875, it had no church, so its faithful came to pray in Suresnes, forming the parish of Suresnes-Puteaux, where the Abbey of Saint-Germain also collected tithes. It wasn't until 1509 that Puteaux was able to build a chapel, and only in 1717 that it was able to constitute an independent parish from that of Suresnes. However, certain practices and marks of superiority remained imposed on Puteaux. There are no architectural references to the 10th-century chapel. It is possible that the passage under the authority of Saint-Germain-des-Prés led to the construction of a larger building and that, in the 12th century, the chapel became a church in the Gothic style. It was damaged during the Hundred Years' War and destroyed in 1590 by the Huguenots during the Wars of Religion. Still, certain architectural elements were preserved, giving the renovated building a heterogeneous style. The church was demolished in 1905-1906. On January 22, 1222, the church received a portion of Saint Leufroy's ashes, which led to the building being named after the saint. A fire at the end of the 16th century damaged the relics, and the shrine (which had been modified several times) was finally sold during the French Revolution to a woodcutter for use as a rabbit cage. Discarded, the relics were picked up by a devotee, who later gave them to the parish priest of Suresnes, after which they were no longer mentioned. Although ecclesiastics preserved a small bone, its authenticity is doubtful. After the church's demolition in 1906, its successor changed its name to Église du Cœur-Immaculé-de-Marie de Suresnes, although St. Leufroy remains theoretically the patron saint of Suresnes, and a small chapel erected in 1947 on rue du Chemin-Vert is dedicated to him. In 1977, students from the Paul-Langevin High School carried out excavations on the site of the former Saint-Leufroy church (now the Suresnes 2 shopping center), revealing that it was originally a rectangular chapel, to which an apsidal chapel was later added, creating a Gothic church, “flanked by a flamboyant aisle and chevet,” which was rebuilt after the Hundred Years' War. This church was to resemble Notre-Dame-de-Pitié in Puteaux, with almost identical apses. Early developments The first mayor of Suresnes whose name has been preserved is "Gui", who appeared in court in 1161 for insubordination to the abbey. The judicial text, which confirms that the village was administered by a mayor and his subordinates, all of whom came under the jurisdiction of the abbey, mentions the existence of several small civil servants and artisans, who, in addition to the winegrowers, made up the population of Suresnes at the time. In France, however, the mayor was considered inefficient, and the public prosecutor was born, appointed from among the notables, approved by the seigneur, and entrusted with some thankless maintenance and management tasks in the service of the community. The evolution of property rights and freedoms in the 13th century remained advantageous to the abbots: the estate remained theirs. Still, outsiders from Suresnes could acquire shares and dispose of them, provided they paid a substantial fee. Several Parisian bourgeois thus acquired the Suresnes vineyards, to make good investments and own modest or comfortable country houses near Paris. Their land was cultivated by laborers, often from Brittany, Normandy, or Picardy. The emancipation of the serfs on the estates surrounding Suresnes during this same century suggests that the village had already done away with serfdom for some time. Also in the 13th century, the prior of La Celle-Saint-Cloud still retained certain prerogatives over Suresnes, including receiving royalties owed by his winegrowers. From the 13th to the 16th century, certain knights bore the title "de Suresnes" (Sorenis or Syrenis), lending credence to the hypothesis that the monastery may have ceded them a portion of territory and that "seigneurs de Suresnes" may have existed. In reality, these were only modest individuals to whom certain lands may have been temporarily granted as a reward for protection or legal aid, but who never used this title except to specify their identity. There were also fiefs in Suresnes, a word which at the time did not designate noble property as it would later, but land owned by commoners, even servile personalities. == Late Middle Ages ==

From the 14th to the 19th century, Suresnes remained largely unchanged. By the end of the Middle Ages, however, the built-up area had expanded: the church district was joined by the “four banal” district, ''Rue d'En-Bas and Rue d'En-Haut''. Bourgeois country houses for Parisian officials and magistrates were built around the village, sometimes including large gardens where these notables came to enjoy the peace of Suresnes while looking after their property. Urbanization was limited, however, and the push north towards Puteaux was not yet on the agenda. The Hundred Years' War disrupted the tranquility of Suresnes. In 1346, King Edward III of England set foot in France and his troops pillaged the area around Paris. No sources mention Suresnes in these destructions, but these events likely had repercussions on the town. Later, the English king Henry VI confiscated many of Suresnes' lands and gave them to his secretary, Étienne Bruneau, until the victory of Formigny in 1450. Because of the destruction suffered by La Celle-Saint-Cloud during the war, the Abbey of Saint-Germain installed a provost-monk in Suresnes to manage the "provostry of La-Celle-Suresnes". The administrative center of the estate thus moved to Suresnes, in premises owned by the abbey on the banks of the Seine. At the time, Suresnes was linked spiritually to Puteaux (parish of Saint-Leufroy) and administratively to La Celle-Saint-Cloud. Financially, its inhabitants remained destitute and bore crushing burdens, with the syndic trying in vain over the following centuries to challenge the religious tax. However, in a decree issued in September 1406, Charles VI, King of France, eased these burdens, noting the “such degree of poverty and indigence” of the Suresnois. Other sources from the late Middle Ages mention various controversies and conflicts linked to taxation and the use of the communal oven. The end of the Hundred Years' War was synonymous with ruin, pillage, and wasteland in the Paris region, with René Sordes noting that “Suresnes, surrounded as it was, could not be spared.” Once the war was over, the village returned to its wine-growing vocation. The winegrowers also devoted themselves to growing cereals and fodder (wheat, oats, and hay), useful for paying royalties and various taxes. On June 8, 1575, the Benedictines of the Abbey finally took control of the provostry, putting an end to what had been a priory for some time. Suresnes had 350 inhabitants in 1460, rising to 500 by the end of the century. During the Wars of Religion, the abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Prés paid little heed to the miserable conditions of the Suresnes winegrowers, who were victims of looting in particular, and the village had to defend itself on its own. In 1569, a protective wall was finally built, with seven gates and three posterns. Once peace had returned, these walls - which had become useless - were sometimes moved or destroyed: the Puteaux gate was demolished in 1788, the ''Dessus-l'Eau gate in 1818, and the last gate, towards Saint-Cloud, in 1906. Although vineyards still dominated in Suresnes, sainfoin, and peas were also beginning to be grown, as were cherry trees (as evidenced by the name of rue de la Cerisaie'') and apple trees on the northern plateau. A text from 1710 also indicates that barley was being grown in Suresnes, in response to demand that may have come from Parisian breweries. On October 14, 1590, clashes broke out in Suresnes. Jean de Poutrincourt, a Ligueur, had come to the village to supply wine to the army of the Sieur du Maine. Henri de Navarre (the future Henri IV) sent a large force to Suresnes, forcing Poutrincourt's soldiers to take refuge in the church, where fighting ensued, and the church was burnt to the ground. Suresnes, a small village able to house many people, was chosen after the conflict to host a peace conference. This took place between the end of April and the end of May 1593, under military guard and presided over by the Archbishop of Bourges. On May 8, Henri IV wrote to the Duke of Mayenne: "I have resolved to move away from Paris because of the Conference and to go to Senlis and Compiègne during the Conference, which is being held in the village of Surèsne. It prepares Henri's abjuration to Protestantism. For René Sordes, it was “the only event in history to bear the name” of Suresnes. The conference took place on a property between Rue de la Seine and Rue de Saint-Cloud, the site of the future Château de la Source, where the Coty factory was built in the early 20th century. In Paris, Rue de Surène may have been named in tribute to this event. abjuring Protestantism. A local legend has it that Henri IV owned property in Suresnes and liked to come here to rest, linking the king's memory to love and wine; he is also said to have climbed Mont Valérien to meet a hermit who predicted his tragic death. These stories are unfounded but persist in the collective memory. As proof of this, in 1816, at the start of the Restoration, Place de la Croix was renamed Place Henri-IV, while the neighboring Quai was renamed Quai de Bourbon. was appointed parish priest of Suresnes. He inaugurated the writing of baptismal and marriage registers in French. In 1530, he was appointed professor of Hebrew by François I, then superior of the Abbey of Bellozane in 1543, before he died in 1547. In the 16th century, Suresnes saw little development, even though a growing number of Parisian personalities, attracted by its pastoral atmosphere, the charm of the Seine, and proximity to Paris, acquired property here, including vineyards. == 17th century ==

Wealthy estates and famous owners was a landowner in Suresnes. In terms of urban layout, Suresnes has always been structured around two roads running parallel to the Seine, delimiting three groups of houses: The first to the south, with the church and the seigneurial house, the second with the communal oven, the presbytery and the school, and the third to the north; this historic Suresnes largely disappeared with the industrial and real estate construction of the 19th and 20th centuries (for example, the property of Étienne de Sain, attorney to the Parliament, which was located at 24, rue de Verdun, near the town gate, and which was demolished after the Second World War to make way for modern buildings). Surrounding the modest winegrowers' village was a belt of bourgeois and aristocratic residences. In the 17th century, Suresnes had around 210 houses, 36 of which were estates with gardens and parks, 24 with stables, and 3 with stables. lived for some time in a house on Mont Valérien. Between the 17th and 18th centuries, the high aristocracy built beautiful residences here: This episode may have inspired a scene in the film Angélique et le Roy (1966), supposedly set during the reign of Louis XIV, in which the Persian ambassador Batchiary Bey welcomes the heroine to Suresnes. However, the scene was not filmed there. In addition to the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, Parisian religious congregations had also long appreciated the hillsides of Suresnes, investments that ensured a good income, in kind or cash. Certain lands, however, gave rise to legal disputes between institutions, while the Saint-Germain monks continued to have problems with the local vicar and certain villagers. Other personalities linked to Suresnes at the time included actress Armande Béjart, who retired in 1675 with her granddaughter Esprit-Madeleine to a house on Mont Valérien. She later remarried and moved to Meudon. One of the most famous properties in Suresnes is the “Château de Suresnes” or “Château de Bel-Air,” located between the rue de Saint-Cloud and the Seine. Originally, it was a simple place. The land was purchased in 1638 by André Bourret, the King's Treasurer, who transformed and enlarged the estate. During the Revolution, it was acquired by Étienne Clavière and then Paul Barras, who welcomed Napoléon Bonaparte and his wife Joséphine. The Princess of Vaudémont bought the estate in 1803, enlarging the site and creating an English-style park. Louis-Marc Chabrier, director of the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris, followed. In 1904, the Coty perfume company set up a factory in the northern part of the estate, on the site of the adjoining Château de la Source. The Château de Suresnes is also home to a foundation for neurotics, created in 1875 by physician Valentin Magnan, where Adèle Hugo was admitted as a patient after the death of her father. The Magnan Foundation remained in existence until 1975, when the château was sold to a real estate group. Disused, the château was demolished and the site subdivided, but the park was redeveloped and opened to the public in 1988 as "Parc du Château". In 1647, the monks of Saint-Germain asked the King to clarify their property, to avoid the risks associated with confused inheritances and territorial mutations. In the second half of the 17th century, they also took it upon themselves to assemble the estate, manage it themselves, and receive the revenues, thus doing away with the practice of tenant farming. Between 1644 and 1693, several acquisitions were made to create a vast estate known as the "Clos des Seigneurs", stretching from today's rue Merlin-de-Thionville to Boulevard Washington. Its wine production was reserved for the aristocracy and important prelates. Sold as national property during the French Revolution, the land became known as sente des Seigneurs and was subdivided in the 19th century, notably with middle-class villas, after being cut through by the Paris-Versailles railway line in 1839: its lower part became the property of fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth, and later the Foch hospital. Daily activities and links with the capital To secure the surroundings of royal residences, King Louis XIV had Swiss Guards stationed in several towns around Paris, including Suresnes, which welcomed them in the early 1640s and would do so for the next century. On the contrary, Francis Prévost, another historian of Suresnes, asserts that the village was devastated and pillaged, in particular the vineyards and the seigniorial house. At the time, the two centers of activity in Suresnes were the Saint-Leufroy church and the provost's office (or seigneury). The former had been remodeled several times and therefore offered little of artistic interest, apart from two stained-glass windows depicting the arms of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and those of the king, and a more modest one dedicated to Saint Leufroy. The nave included seven chapels, which were the object of attention of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, who paid to occupy them during ceremonies or sometimes to be buried in them. Since the 16th century, the parish priest had also been responsible for teaching the children of Suresnes. However, this instruction had to be simple and poorly attended, with parents complaining, for example, about the irregularity of the lessons given to their children. In 1683, 11 of the parish's 31 notables could not write. The manor house (including gardens, prison, praetorium, stables, barn, wine press, dovecote, cellars, oratory, etc.) underwent several modifications over the centuries; it remained based at rue du Pont level, with the Hewittic company occupying part of the preserved buildings until they were demolished in 1974. The vaulted cellars of this building were used as a shelter during the Second World War. Patibular forks, owned by the abbey, were also used to punish many misdeeds: the murderers of a cart driver were condemned to death in 1648, with a scaffold erected in rue de la Barre (now rue du Pont); in 1657, two false moneylenders were "beaten and fustigated" at the crossroads of la Barre (between rue des Bourets and rue du Pont), with fleur-de-lis on their right shoulder, fined and banished from Suresnes for three years. , located on the other side of the Seine, in the current Bois de Boulogne, maintained very close links with Suresnes (in the background, Mont Valérien). As Mont Valérien has several springs, there are numerous wells in gardens, courtyards, and cellars, some of which are exploited. For example, Sieur Laporte (who owns a plot of land where the Fontaine du Tertre spring flows) is contractually obliged to deliver 530 liters of water daily to the seigneurial house. The second most important spring was the ''Vaux d'Or''. Conflicts arose over the use of this water, notably with the nuns of the Royal Abbey of Longchamp, which was located on the other side of the Seine in what is now the Bois de Boulogne but owned several properties and vineyards in Suresnes. The Abbey of Saint-Denis, the Abbey of Saint-Victor, the House of the Dames de Saint-Cyr, and the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris also owned land in the village, which enabled them to levy fees until the French Revolution. In 1691, 64 winegrowers declared that they owned property in Suresnes: they cultivated 20 hectares of vines and 1.5 hectares of arable land. 13 owned a house, 7 a half-house, 2 a third of a house, and 40 were tenants. There were also 51 bourgeois (of the robe or royal officers), who owned 40 hectares of vines (employing Breton or Picard laborers to do so), all of whom owned one or more houses, around 20 merchants (few but representing all the guilds), around ten commensaux (servants of the royal family) and salpétriers (royal civil servants), giving a total of around 250 heads of household and around 1,150 inhabitants, as confirmed by the censuses of the following century. The “port aux vins” (wine port) enabled winegrowers to transport their production from Suresnes to the capital. As in Paris, the problem of waste and manure disposal was a recurring one. Living in a modest village, the people of Suresnes led peaceful country lives, punctuated by a few family and Christian festivals. Saint Vincent, the patron saint of winegrowers, is particularly celebrated here. It takes place on January 22: the wooden press of Saint Vincent, kept each year by a different winegrower, is carried to the church and placed in front of the choir, before the start of mass. The winegrowers donate bread, which is then distributed to the public. A meal and a ball follow this. Every inhabitant had to have a framed engraving of the saint near the hearth. The Musée de Suresnes conserves one of these wine presses, dating from 1867. The beginnings of the Mont Valérien pilgrimage . The original is kept at the Suresnes museum. A street also pays homage to the first female hermit of the mountain. Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, recounts that an anchorite, Antoine, was on the mountain and had a chapel built, dedicated to Notre-Dame-de-la-Bonne-Nouvelle, around 1400. The civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians put an end to this cult. Guillemette Faussart took over the tradition. Orphaned when her fiancé was killed at the siege of Siena during the reign of Henri II, she retired as a hermit to Mont Valérien, where her family is buried. There, in 1556, she built the chapel of Saint-Sauveur (rebuilt in 1611) and died in 1561. Another local legend has it that Henri IV came to seek the advice of the mount's hermits. Pierre Séguin, a follower of Jean du Houssay, helped create the hermits' rule. However, their way of life was hardly formalized, mixing lay and religious, women and men, recluses and cenobites. This was the hermitage period. In February 1634, Louis XIII authorized the construction of a pilgrimage “to the three crosses” (calvary) on the mountain, near the chapel of Guillemette Faussart, The Prince de Conti's generosity helped finance the work. Founder of the Congregation of the Priests of Calvary (thirteen clergymen following strict rules) with the authorization of the King and the Archbishop of Paris Jean-François de Gondi, theology professor Hubert Charpentier (to whom a street in Suresnes pays homage) built a monumental place of worship on the summit of the mountain (the Church of the Holy Cross), eleven chapels with statues depicting the Stations of the Cross along the way, and a house to house missionaries, who cohabited with the hermits already present. They created the Congregation du Calvaire, dependent on the chapter of Notre-Dame-de-Paris. To support themselves, the hermits made stockings and cultivated small gardens. In response to the influx of pilgrims, walls were built to create the “Clos des Ermites,” the memory of which has been preserved on a street in Suresnes ever since. In 1641, Anne of Austria commissioned a Suresnes man to create the Chemin du Calvaire, of which today's Rue du Calvaire is a remnant. From then on, Parisian pilgrims flocked to the site, passing through the Rouvray forest, Longchamp, and taking a ferry across the Seine. René Sordes notes that this pilgrimage was an important event that changed relations between Suresnes and Paris: “The era of Suresnes as a welcoming suburb of Paris had begun.” For historian Philippe Castagnetti, its popularity is due to its proximity to Paris, with the mountain representing a “Golgotha” near the capital (likened to Jerusalem), but also because it represents a religious response to the corruption of the big city and the risks of sedition against royalty that can develop there. He also compares Mount Valerian, or Mount Calvary, to the Italian sacri monti. and the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the writer Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who made the journey together. As pilgrims came to Suresnes, the town's inhabitants also took part in pilgrimages. The town's museum holds a gouache on paper by Pierre Renard, Les chemins du calvaire, a naïve painting by a winegrower fascinated by the traditions of Suresnes, which shows the pilgrimage routes taken by the people of Suresnes to Val-Saint-Germain (Essonne), where there is a relic of Sainte-Julienne, then the secondary patron saint of Saint-Leufroy church. This pilgrimage against the plague originated in the 16th century and disappeared after the 1870 war. In the 19th century, during two major cholera epidemics, it was revived. == XVIIIth century ==

Religious life : we can make out the Longchamp abbey at the bottom right, the Saint-Leufroy church and the village of Suresnes at the bottom left and the Calvary, with the three crosses, on the mount. In the 18th century, the monks of Saint-Germain, who had been under Benedictine rule since the previous century, continued to come to Suresnes only on solemn Christian feast days, when they would exceptionally conduct mass. They did, however, have access to the seigneurial house of the village, where they could stay at any time of the year, and where they certainly extended their stay: the food, however, must not have been famous, as evidenced by the expression of the time "à portion de Suresnes" ("a portion of Suresnes"). Several archives give an account of daily religious life in Suresnes, from bourgeois donations to the church and the parish priest's salary, to the establishment of fixed burial fees, with one priest lamenting that "it is unpleasant to be frustrated by inhabitants who go to cabarets to spend what they owe the parish priest". In the opinion of the sources, the wine-growing nature of the town was indeed a cause of dissipation among its inhabitants, so much so that the priest was obliged to renew regulations established in 1728, punishing with a fine those who drank wine, played cards or formed assemblies at mass time. However, the Suresnes hostelry not only welcomed drinkers, but also libertines - who were sometimes offered discreet rooms - as evoked by the title of one of the little blue books distributed throughout the country by peddlers at the time, La Femme mal conseillée et le mari prudent, or the guinguette de Suresnes, or these verses composed in 1696: "''À l'autre bord de la Seine, Faisons rester les maris / Aucun fâcheux n'est admis / Dans les plaisirs de Surène''". During the 18th century, the ecclesiastics of Mont Valérien experienced financial difficulties, and the religious buildings were poorly maintained. In 1780, construction began on a staircase known as the "Hundred Steps". It served the various stations of the Stations of the Cross. Following the Revolution, the ruins of the Royal Abbey of Longchamp were also used to build the staircase. The original length was 150, but during construction work under the First Empire, a section was amputated. The Saint-Leufroy church was renovated in 1760. The archives also record legal disputes between the people of Suresnes and the authorities (over judicial assizes, roads, and the communal oven), as well as between the community and private individuals (including contractors). Urban development (1756). In 1731, a cadastral map of Suresnes was drawn up at the request of the Abbey of Saint-Germain to review its property holdings. It has since been preserved in the National Archives. The village is still made up of three old districts with dirty, poorly maintained streets, surrounded by middle-class estates and, further out, aristocratic residences towards Saint-Cloud and Puteaux. The question of sanitation was therefore always problematic, even if in the 1780s some village houses had toilets with pits, and some interiors (of notables, winegrowers, or shopkeepers) had a certain level of comfort. However, living conditions and hygiene left much to be desired. The urban planning of the period set the tone for the future development of Suresnes, as the gardens of the middle-class residences would later become undeveloped land, making it possible to build the Jules-Ferry school and municipal warehouse (to the west), the boulevard Henri-Sellier (to the south) and the town hall and its annexes (to the north) at the end of the 19th century. Each year, the urban community continues to elect its syndic, who is not very efficient given the arduous nature of the task, and who often leaves the problems he encounters to his successor. For several centuries, the village has owned meadows in the area of Puteaux, from which it sells its hay. This trade, in addition to the land it owns (particularly in Val d'Or), brings Suresnes a modest income. Still, it does enable it to maintain certain buildings at community expense (such as the presbytery and the school), guard the farmland, employ the carillonneur, and pay for the town's defense in trials in which it is involved. Compared to the previous century, land ownership in Suresnes was changing: there was an increase in the number of winegrowers, the result of a new appropriation of the land, in a context where the bourgeoisie was now investing more of its money in speculative businesses to acquire more profits (e.g., Law's system) than in agricultural land, which was developing slowly. Like the merchants, the winegrowers lived in the town, more than half of them either renting or living in a home they did not own; on average, they had between four and five children, many of whom died in infancy, and they generally married within the community. Some families took in children from the bourgeoisie as foster children, but the mortality rate among these children was also high. Daily life Despite bans on indecent behavior and dissolute living, the villagers of Suresnes enjoyed some distractions, notably on religious feast days and royal birthdays, as well as local games such as the boatmen's and fishermen's game: a cable was stretched across the Seine, with a goose hanging in the middle; a young Suresnois had to cut off the goose's head with his teeth, in full view of the public, at the risk of falling into the water. Jousting on boats also took place in Suresnes until the early 20th century. The vineyards, around which social life is organized (particularly the grape harvest), are highly dependent on the seasons: the harsh winter of 1709, for example, led to their destruction, and everything had to be replanted. Although such disasters are rare, there are other recurring problems (birds, marauders, pilgrims crossing the vines to climb the calvary, etc.). In any case, the business grew thanks to the attraction of the guinguettes in Suresnes, linked to the influx of pilgrims, while cabaretiers also catered to the hotel trade. In addition to numerous wine merchants (particularly for establishments at the gateway to Paris), in 1766-1768, there were several shops. Dependent on the provostship and viscounty of Paris, Suresnes was then located in an electoral area, with a royal officer (intendant) in charge. The syndic of Suresnes depended on the election of Corbeil. In 1711, the Duc de Chaulnes agreed to establish an annual annuity of 200 livres for the upkeep of a schoolmaster in Suresnes, in exchange for permission to extend his estate. Until then, only the parish priest had provided basic, even precarious, teaching. Subsequent regulations stipulated that parents were obliged to send their children to school and catechism classes up to the age of 14 and to pay some maintenance costs. However, it is likely that these rules were hardly ever followed, with the curate or mistress complaining of their lack of means. In 1784, the curate also complained about the promiscuity between the boys' and girls' schools, which had led to tensions. In 1788, new schools were built in the southern part of the Place du Marché and on Rue Émile-Zola. They remained in this building for a century, holding communal assemblies during the Revolution, then serving as the town hall and guardrooms until 1876, when they were demolished to make way for a market. Between 1768 and 1788, Suresnes had more businesses. Despite its isolation, the village gradually became urbanized: in 1788, there were six contractors, fourteen masons, one stonemason, four carpenters, one painter, one carpenter, and two locksmiths, reflecting the need for workforce. and the future Archbishop of Bourges, Monsieur de Puységur, then, after being interrupted by the Revolution, Suspended in 1793, the prize was revived in 1805 by Countess Desbassyns, in memory of her daughter Camille, who had died in a carriage accident a year earlier. She wanted to thank the people of Suresnes who had supported her through her ordeal and to perpetuate the memory of her child. The rosières are now elected every Sunday before the anniversary of her death. After the First World War, a patronage committee supported by the town council was set up to replace the Countess's dowry, which had become insufficient. Bourgeois and aristocrats in Suresnes The first perfumer to settle in Suresnes was Jean-Louis Fargeon, who supplied Queen Marie Antoinette. His property was located near where the Coty company established its factory in the early 20th century. After the Revolution, the Fargeon perfumery (on rue du Roule) was bought by Jean-Baptiste Gellé, supplier to the Duchess of Berry. Among the personalities associated with Suresnes at the time were Antoine François Fremin, a lawyer at Parliament and director of the Saint-Louis glassworks, and Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, a Suresnes-born engineer who designed the Neuilly bridge and founded the École nationale des ponts et chaussées. In 1858, a street was dedicated to him. A statue of him was even erected, the oldest in Suresnes, but it has not been preserved; it was a plaster model of another statue of the engineer on the Île de Puteaux. Around 1786, “bourgeois de Suresnes” appeared in the catholicity books, and several personalities called themselves “bourgeois de Suresnes.” Unlike the bourgeoisie, who were able to maintain relations with the inhabitants of Suresnes, the aristocracy, whose residences were far away, were much more aloof. The archives preserve the memory of a trial between two powerful lords, the Duc de Gramont, Antoine de Guiche, and the Duc de Chaulnes, Louis d'Albert d'Ailly, captain of the king's guard, over the delimitation of their properties. Other aristocrats to own property in Suresnes include the Colbert family, the de Frileuse family, the Count of Middelbourg Baltazar de Gand, Camille de Grimaldi de Monaco, the Princess of Isenghien Pauline de Gand de Mérode de Montmorency and the son of Louis XV and the Demoiselle de Romans, Monseigneur de Bourbon. he lived there until his arrest during the Revolution. == French Revolution ==

Beginnings In 1787, Louis XVI created communal assemblies, comprising members by right (seigneur, parish priest) and members elected by the inhabitants (nobles or commoners). This reform aroused criticism and resistance from all quarters, and the assemblies were given no additional financial resources. Suresnes was entitled to nine elected members, known as municipal officers. The town was part of the provincial assembly of Île-de-France, the department of Corbeil, and the arrondissement of Bourg-la-Reine. The elections were immediately contested in Suresnes, notably by the former syndics, and the Count of Clermont-Tonnerre had to come in person to have the ballot confirmed. On April 11, 1789, posters were posted in Suresnes, announcing the convening of the Estates General. The Suresnois' grievances are limited to a statement of the inhabitants' assets, i.e. only 582 arpents and 1 perch under cultivation, the total product of their properties amounting to 25,565 pounds, while the total of their communal charges is 50,976 pounds and 16 sols; their charges, therefore, exceed the product of their properties (a discrepancy they may have exaggerated), which is in line with similar protests observed in many villages concerning the overwhelming weight of taxes and the misery they engender. The Suresnois also demanded freedom from the shackles of banality, and from the abuses to which they were subjected (for example, they could sell or buy bread only on two days a week, and they criticized too many levels of jurisdiction in trials). Three notables from Suresnes (including Martin-François Bougault, who played an important role in the commune during this period) are appointed to elect deputies to the Estates General for the department of Paris. On July 16, 1789, just as the "Great Fear" was beginning, the Suresnes municipal assembly decided to patrol the town all night, "because of the brigandage that is taking place in various parts of the kingdom, in connection with the constitutional revolutions", without however saying a word about the storming of the Bastille. The following day, it declared that the village gates would henceforth be guarded. On August 2, the council created a flag for Suresnes: a red cross with a white hexagon in the middle, bearing the letters S. L. (Saint-Leufroy), with four blue squares in the corners charged with a golden fleur-de-lys. Suresnes is inscribed at the top, "1789" at the bottom. The coat of arms was definitively adopted by the municipality in 1962. The flag is blessed on August 15. Eight military companies (initially without arms or uniforms) were also formed in the village, making Suresnes one of the first communes around the capital to set up a National Guard. Paris was short of weapons, so the village ordered some from the Charleville factory. The guard was then reorganized into four companies, and the decision was taken to affiliate it with the Paris National Guard. On October 25, a tricolor uniform was created, bearing the initials "S. L.". With the provost's office soon to disappear, the first town hall took up residence until 1792 in a house on the corner of Rue du Moutier and Place de la Croix. The assemblies of 1787 were replaced in early 1790 by new ones, with six municipal officers and twelve notables (elected by just under 80 voters). On January 31, Bougault was elected mayor. On February 21, 1790, the municipal officers swore loyalty to the king, the nation, and the law in the Place de la Croix. Revolutionary reforms led to the end of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés abbey's guardianship of Suresnes: its former possessions were later sold as national property to benefit the commune. Various owners, such as Deslandes and Lebeau, purchased the property. However, taxes, even when requested under the seal of civic-mindedness, remained a problem, with the Receveur des Finances complaining several times about the Suresnois' slowness to pay them. Privileges having been abolished, municipal officers took the place of the former lords in the pews reserved for them in the church, putting an end to what had caused a great deal of tension under the Ancien Régime. Between 1790 and 1792, the municipal council paved the streets (on Place de la Croix, the future Place Henri-IV, a lead plaque was engraved: “First paving stone laid by Bougault, first mayor, 1790”), indicating the names of the roads and numbered the houses. The municipality also took over responsibility for the needy from the parish priest. A year later, to commemorate July 14, 1789, Bougault had a commemorative plaque installed on the Place de la Croix (it was broken on the night of August 17, without the culprit being identified). The coat of arms on the church pew was modified, with the Saint-Germain coat of arms replaced by the letters "S. L.", with a Phrygian cap on the crown. In mid-1790, the National Guard was reformed and clashed with the municipality. '' held on July 14, 1790, in Paris, where part of the authorities of Suresnes went. In relative calm, Suresnes lived through the events of the Revolution. On January 16, 1791, the town's parish priest took the oath of allegiance to the Republic. On March 27, to celebrate the restoration of the King, the municipal body and the National Guard attended the Te Deum in the church, with the cannons sounding several times. On April 12, a mass was celebrated for Mirabeau's death. On learning of the King's flight on June 21, Bougault was dismayed, placed the weapons under guard, and had suspicious persons arrested. On July 14, half the town council and guard went to the Champ-de-Mars for the Fête de la Fédération, while the other half organized a ceremony in the commune. The national property belonging to religious communities (land, buildings, etc.) was sold in two stages (for a total of 151,400 pounds), on September 22 and October 21, 1791, all buyers being Suresnois (the commune also made purchases, including the communal oven). The archives of the seigniorial house were transferred to Saint-Denis. In September 1791, following the proclamation of the Constitution, a Te Deum was sung in the church. On October 23, 1791, the prison and dungeon doors, the iron bars of the arrest chamber, and the justice post were moved to the cemetery, to bury the memory of the abbey symbolically. Although popular, Bougault resigned and, on May 27, 1792, Marc-Antoine Breton was elected mayor. On August 28, the Assembly requisitioned 30,000 equipped men to fight on the frontiers; on September 3, 84 young Suresnois signed up. On August 10, the King is deposed, and on September 21, the Convention replaces the Assembly, and the Republic is proclaimed. On December 9, the municipality was ordered to place the National Guard on alert to monitor strangers in the village and carry out patrols. After the King's execution on January 21, 1793, the district of Saint-Denis asked the municipality to convene the commune's general council and make it sit permanently, also recommending an imposing public force and surveillance of the roads. On January 26, the municipality decided that it was necessary to acquire 200 pikes, pursuant to the authorization granted by the National Assembly the previous year, which allowed towns to distribute pikes to citizens able to bear arms. On April 21, the municipal officers became administrators of the parish's revenues, with the parish priest no longer having a say. On March 17, Pierre Lemoine was elected mayor, and his new municipal team was tasked with equipping the volunteers who joined the Franciade battalion and the Armée du Nord. Following the law of September 10, 1792, on April 11, 1793, the municipality took the objects of worship to the district, not without some delay. Also, after a delay, members of the district came to seize three surplus bells from the Saint-Leufroy church to produce iron, leaving only one. In 1792, Suresnes suffered a famine, going twenty days without bread. Terror With the Terror came the closing of the gates of Paris, making it difficult for Suresnois to travel to the capital. On August 11, 1793, Jean-Jacques Désiriez, who had recently moved to the village, created the Société Populaire de Suresnes. Affiliated with the Jacobin Club, it came to the aid of low-income families and those with enlisted soldiers, distributing allowances with the municipality. On October 6, under the law of March 21, 1793, citizens elected a surveillance committee, tasked with receiving declarations from foreigners residing in Suresnes and keeping an eye on them. The law of July 26, which obliges holders of goods to declare them to the municipalities to combat hoarders, leads the Suresnes winegrowers to sell their harvest at the price set by the administration and to deliver no more than four pieces to their resellers. An angry riot broke out on October 30. With the life of priests becoming more complicated, the vicar of Saint-Leufroy renounced his ecclesiastical status on November 24. To remove all references to feudalism, and at the same time as some communes changed their names, streets in Suresnes were renamed: rue de Saint-Cloud became rue Brutus, rue Moutier became rue Marat, and rue du Calvaire became rue de la Montagne. Until the French Revolution, today's Place Henri-IV was divided into two areas: its eastern part was called Place du Hansy, from the German “Hanse,” about the water merchant's society, probably a meeting place for Suresnes boatmen; it was renamed Place de la Liberté. In 1793, it was renamed Place de Montagne, as a monument had been erected there to the Montagnards Marat and Lepeletier. . Toulon, having just been recaptured from the English, a celebration was held by the municipality on January 9, 1794. The Saint-Leufroy church was closed to worship at the time and bore the inscription “temple of reason” on its pediment. The parish priest also renounced his priesthood. The Société Populaire then temporarily held its meetings there, the former place of worship also hosting the mayor's reading of the laws and decrees of the Convention. The mayor was summoned to Nanterre, the canton's capital, to organize the purging and reorganization of municipal authorities, with a supervisory committee subsequently taking charge. Citizen Rolin, observer commissioner for the Paris department, declared Suresnes a "very good patriot". The elementary school was reorganized, with gold and silver objects handed over to the district, along with the church linen. However, the mayor hoped that the latter would be returned, as they had subsequently been assigned to the school. After moving out of Bougault's home, the municipality took up precarious residence in the communal oven house, then, for a year, in the presbytery. By decree of May 12, 1794, the inscription on the church pediment was changed to "''Le Peuple français reconnaît l'Être suprême et l'immortalité de l'âme''" ("The French People recognize the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul"). In 1793 (Brumaire 28, Year II), the Société Populaire encouraged the municipality to erect a stone monument (obelisk) engraved with the names of volunteers who had died for their country, on the ''Place d'Armes, then the “commercial lung of Suresnes.” The first mention of this square dates back to 1406, when it was known as Place des Courtieux; it then became Place d'Armes, with old houses still standing on its south side; in 1791, it became Place de la Fédération, then Place d'Armes again, renamed Place Trarieux in 1906 after a minister, then Place du Général-Leclerc in 1948. The Esplanade des Courtieux'' remains next to the square. Forgotten, the 1793 monument was destroyed in 1868, the mayor of the time stating that it "had no historical value". (to the left of the military building) on Mount Valérien. Engraving from 1830. On December 10, 1793, the municipality organized a celebration in honor of Marat and Lepeletier, attended by representatives of popular societies from neighboring towns; a brazier was built, where symbols of feudalism were burned, and a tree of liberty was planted in ''Place de l'Église. With the bell no longer ringing in the mornings to wake the inhabitants, a carillon was reinstated and renamed "le réveil des sans-culottes". The municipality defended certain citizens from the death penalty but remained merciless towards those who did not wear the tricolor cockade, demanding their incarceration. On May 14, 1794, La Marseillaise'' was sung for the first time in Suresnes, at a meeting of the Société Populaire. On July 28, the announcement of the 9th Thermidor was read out at the meeting, provoking neither emotion nor anger, as the Société went along with the Convention, perhaps out of absolute confidence or opportunism. Nevertheless, the Société disappeared in November of the same year. It was destroyed by the Germans during the Second World War. == Directory ==

The end of the Convention allowed hitherto hounded citizens to reappear, while modest celebrations were held to mark the victories of the Republic's armies. On April 13, 1795, Charles Descoins was appointed mayor by the Legislation Committee, replacing Lemoine, who was certainly suspect in the eyes of the new authorities. Following the law of Prairial 11 (May 30), which once again facilitated freedom of worship, religious activity resumed in the Saint-Leufroy church. For some time, the Suresnes church depended on the parish of Nanterre. A survey carried out in mid-1795 showed that Suresnes had a population of 1,500, no industries, jewelers, pharmacists, or markets, but five wine merchants, seven seed merchants, three butchers, three bakers, and seven grocers. The law of 21 Fructidor, year III (September 7, 1795), abolished the municipal system for towns and villages with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants. Like Puteaux, Suresnes no longer had a mayor or municipal officers, but had a single “municipal agent” (Jean Nicolas Lebeau was elected) and was attached to the cantonal municipality of Nanterre. As the Directory had instituted a national holiday on August 10 (in commemoration of the law of 1789), Suresnes schoolteachers were instructed to bring their children to the festivities in front of the Tree of Liberty. On February 5, 1797, the canton delegate took possession of Suresnes' birth, marriage, and death registers, which were later returned under the Consulate: covering the period from 1597 to 1795, they are among the most complete sets of records for the communes around Paris. The archives of the time continue to report the poor condition and dirtiness of the roads in Suresnes, not least because of the volume of manure piling up in the squares and near the river. Ironically, the perfume rose was grown in Suresnes at this time, as it was in Puteaux, Fontenay, and L'Haye. At the end of the regime, Suresnes also became famous for its “vendange baths,” recommended by many Parisian doctors, including Jean-Joseph Sue: In the same year, the cross was raised and two chapels were restored. == Consulate and First Empire ==

The law of 28 pluviôse, year VIII (February 17, 1800), abolished cantonal municipalities and re-established mayors and municipal councilors in each commune, appointed by the prefect. Due to the town's size, Suresnes had 10 municipal councilors. On May 5 of the same year, Martin Bougault was re-elected mayor, replacing Bidard. In particular, he had to deal with the problem of manure heaps, which continued to overflow into certain streets. In March 1801, at the request of the Prefect of Paris, who required a list of bourgeois-owned houses in each town, Bougault passed on nine names, including the surgeon Jean-Joseph Sue (his son, the writer Eugène Sue, spent part of his childhood there), the brother of the Merlin de Thionville conventionalist, and a former solicitor who owned Château de la Source, soon sold to the Princess de Vaudémont, who entertained Madame de Staël and the Marquis de Custine there. In the same year, Bougault is said to have tried to re-establish the Suresnes National Guard. As elsewhere, Suresnes celebrated the anniversary of July 14 and, in 1802, the signing of the Peace of Amiens and the Concordat. The mayor also asked the prefect several times to rehabilitate the Chemin de Rueil, so that Suresnois could go to the Saint-Germain market. On April 26, 1802, he sent a letter to First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, asking him to set up a seminary on Mont Valérien, as the commune's resources had diminished (although he downplayed their size) after the removal of the calvary; he had the agreement of the site's owner, Merlin de Thionville, for the sale, but the deal fell through. Bougault was relieved of his duties on February 5, 1803, and replaced again by Bidard. From 1808 onwards, the Trappists supervised the calvary, which had finally been returned to worship three years earlier. However, in 1811, upon learning that a conspiracy led by religious dignitaries was being discussed at Mont Valérien, the Emperor sent a battalion of grenadiers from Courbevoie to the site, had certain buildings razed, and sent the Trappist monks to Vincennes. On December 2 of the same year, he signed a decree to create on this site one of his six Legion of Honor houses, intended for poor or orphaned officers' daughters. The architect Vestier was commissioned to carry out the work: whereas the old calvary faced east, the new building faced Saint-Cloud, a symbolic site of the Empire. Napoleon even came to visit the site, but, suddenly realizing its strategic interest, put an end to his initial project and had the place converted into barracks. This horseshoe-shaped construction has since been nicknamed the “1812 building” (although it was completed later) and houses the headquarters and museum of the 8th Signal Regiment. A few years later, while the main building was being renovated, the municipality set up a temporary girls' school in the house. Under the Restoration, poor children were housed here, as well as the schoolmistress's lodgings and those of two Sisters of Charity, who assisted the needy. On January 16, 1813, during the Russian campaign, the mayors of Puteaux, Courbevoie, Nanterre, Asnières, Gennevilliers, Colombes, and Suresnes, outraged by the treachery of General d'Yorck, who had defected to the enemy, met and decided to equip three mounted cavalrymen to join the army, in support of the imperial government, and to call up the conscripts of the years 1809 to 1812, inviting them to join the cavalry. After the first fall of the Empire, France was occupied. A statement dated April 1, 1814, shows that 36 Suresnois delivered 5,503 francs worth of goods to the occupying troops, with the mayor also receiving 500 francs for requisitioned fodder. After the defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Prussian troops entered Suresnes in July, began new requisitions, and set up a small garrison in the town. English soldiers stationed in Puteaux also occupied Suresnes from November, carrying out requisitions; Hanoverian troops followed them. The Allies left Suresnes for good on January 27, 1816, and compensation for requisitions and damaged property was not paid until 1820. == Restoration ==

, now overlooks a military building. Because of his attachment to the former emperor, Mayor Bidard was forced to resign and, under the royal decree of January 13, 1815, was replaced by the owner Lefébure. On April 15, 1816, the commander of the Seine National Guard, Baudron d'Issencourt, came to Suresnes to attend the blessing of the French flag and the inauguration of the bust of King Louis XVIII in the town hall. Ill-equipped and understaffed (two companies of 34 and 39 men), the Suresnes National Guard remained modest until Louis-Philippe I reassured its operation on a national level. Mont Valérien regained its religious vocation, with the Fathers of Mercy (Missionaries of France) taking possession of the site in 1822, thanks to the King's approval, and relaunching pilgrimages around the Napoleonic-era building. The château de Forbin-Janson had also been built on the hill in the previous century. It first belonged to the Marquise de Rochegude, then to her daughter, the Marquise de Forbin-Janson. The ultra-royalist bishop of Nancy, abbot, and primate of Lorraine, Charles de Forbin-Janson, inherited it during the Restoration and made it his country home. Around it, he created a park “planted with rare species” and a neo-Gothic chapel (now known as the "Chapelle des fusillés"). Having brought back relics from the Holy Land and rebuilt a calvary (facing east) and a Way of the Cross in 1828, he planned to build a neo-Byzantine church, reusing a pediment erected in 1812 for the building commissioned by Napoleon, with a Christ sculpted by Jean-Pierre Cortot, who appears to Roman soldiers after the Resurrection. For Philippe Castagnetti, the reinstatement of the Calvary is an “expiatory monument to the crimes of a godless capital,” particularly those committed against the Church during the Revolution. In return for payment, Suresnes residents renovated the roads, making them passable again. In May 1820, after the unrest of recent decades had led to several changes in signage, street names, and numbers were repainted, and the Place de la Croix (which no longer had a cross) was renamed Place Henri-IV, because “there still exists a room where conferences were held” in Suresnes. On November 11, 1820, the municipality took out fire insurance for several public buildings, a recent social innovation. On January 1, 1821, the municipal council decided to donate 200 francs to the fund set up to donate the Château de Chambord to the young Prince de Berry, whose father had just been assassinated; on May 1, 120 francs were also distributed to the poor by the municipality in honor of the Prince's christening, and Suresnois were invited to illuminate the windowsills of their homes that evening. In 1819, two Sisters of Charity opened a private school for girls. In 1822, a seminal event in Suresnes' urban development for the rest of the 19th century took place: its transformation, says René Sordes, “in less than a century from a small winegrowers' village [to] a major industrial and residential city.” Until then, the only proto-industrial activities included laundries, a few plasterers, and a manufacturer of pottery, bricks, and tiles who exploited the gypsum and clay quarries on Mont Valérien. On January 4, Rouques, a Paris dyer, acquired a property in Suresnes, on a parcel of land that had once belonged to the Duc de Noirmoutier (near the Rue du Bac and the Seine), and became the first major industrial estate. The water from Rouques was then discharged into the river. In 1823, he had a chimney built for his factory, and in 1830, he obtained the right to acquire a steam engine. In 1827, Mr. Byerley, a Parisian, applied for permission to set up a steel factory at 26 Rue de Neuilly, on land that would later become a cycle and automobile factory. Despite protests from the neighbors, he obtained authorization the following year but closed in 1829 for financial reasons. On the night of October 31 to November 1, 1824, the Saint-Leufroy church was the victim of a burglary, with thieves breaking into the tabernacle and scattering the hosts. On November 7, the Archbishop of Paris, Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen, came in person to Suresnes to attend an expiatory ceremony. In 1827, two new bells were inaugurated. Following complaints from residents in 1823 about stagnant water escaping from the laundries, the commune decided to create a small stream, 1.33 m wide, to drain the water, as it could not afford to redo the disjointed cobblestones in the roadway. In 1825, the municipality decided for the first time to have the mud and garbage invading the streets removed every Sunday and on public holidays. However, the streets continued to suffer from storms, with rain pouring down from Mont Valérien in torrents, turning the heart of the village into a swamp. == July Monarchy ==

As is often the case with most political events in Paris, the Revolution of 1830 had no direct impact on rural life in Suresnes, apart from a brief visit by the royal guard on July 30 and 31. On September 7, the town's notables appointed Pagès as mayor, a decision confirmed by the prefect the same day. He replaced Lefébure, who held Legitimist views and came in for strong criticism from the Suresnois. Conflicts between Carlists and pro-Louis-Philippe liberals remained latent, however, with the parish priest making no secret of his opposition to the new regime. With 1,367 inhabitants, the village was entitled to twelve municipal councilors. The National Guard was also recreated, with 240 men. On September 14, 1831, 15 men from the Suresnes company guarded the Château de Neuilly, residence of the new king. In 1832, as elsewhere in the Paris region, Suresnes was hit by a cholera epidemic, which affected 161 people and killed 70; the insalubrity of some of the dwellings contributed to its spread (while at the same time, the school was dilapidated and damp). Another less violent epidemic occurred in 1849-1850. Pagès resigned as mayor on August 9 and was replaced by the owner René Sentou. Industrial expansion continued: in December 1835, Maheu and Geoffroy applied for permission to set up a cloth-printing factory in the old seigneurial house, which the authorities granted, despite the neighbors' fears. By this time, the idea was growing that outside workers would be needed to keep these industries running, and that the winegrowers could not ensure Suresnes' development on their own. Transport development As far as transport was concerned, Suresnes had always been a small rural town, far from the capital, and was generally reached on foot. In the 18th century, however, hired carriages began to appear, which could take a maximum of eight people per carriage within a radius of three leagues, although their price limited their use to the bourgeoisie. In 1777, a regular transport service to the suburbs was created (every hour of the day, serving Suresnes, Place Courqueux), which became more liberal after the Revolution. In 1788, Suresnes artisans and merchants owned a total of 31 carriages and 52 draught horses. Until the end of the 19th century and the invention of the automobile, military personnel traveled mainly on horseback, and workers on bicycles. In 1828, omnibus companies were created, including one passing through Suresnes called “Les Accélérées,” which made eight trips a day. In 1855, all the companies were merged into the Compagnie Générale des Omnibus. On November 26, 1874, the omnibus was replaced by a horse-drawn tramway that ran from Suresnes along the Seine to Courbevoie; to reach Paris, passengers had to take another tramway from Courbevoie to ''Place de l'Étoile'', leaving them far from the center of the capital. Running on poor quality tracks, to the point where it could sometimes derail, and able to carry only around 30 passengers, it was extended to Saint-Cloud around 1878. The horse then disappeared, replaced by a pneumatic system that suffered serious setbacks and rapidly collapsed, paving the way for mechanical traction transport. Until the Great War, horse-drawn carriages were also used, both by the community and by private individuals, to go to the Longchamp station, to guinguettes, or for weddings at the town hall and church. In 1836, plans were announced for the construction of a railroad line that would cross Suresnes at mid-slope from north to south, symbolically separating the village from the high hills. The route would also encroach on cultivated land, making it difficult for winegrowers on both sides to access their vineyards. Following tough negotiations, a financial agreement was reached to compensate the landowners. Of the fifteen footpaths that existed at this location, only five remain, profoundly altering the centuries-old habits of pedestrian traffic. The cultivation of cereals and vines began to give way to market gardening, which was more lucrative for the farmers. The first train was launched on August 2, 1839, running every 1.5 hours from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.. In 1855, it took 35 minutes from Suresnes station to Saint-Lazare station, and 25 minutes in 1866, for a fare of 60 centimes in first class and 40 in second. The line was electrified in 1928, reducing journey time to 18 minutes. In the end, the line helped to open up and develop Suresnes, as the number of industries grew, transporting workers and wine merchants, even though most of the population remained rural. Suresnes evolved from a simple village to a large town. The construction of the Boulevard de Versailles (since 1944, Boulevard Henri-Sellier) destroyed many middle-class homes with beautiful gardens on the outskirts of the village. Mont Valérien fortress , with Suresnes and the Calvary of Mont Valérien in the background, before its conversion into a fortress. The revolution of 1830 had ousted Father de Forbin-Janson and dispersed the missionaries who had set up on the Calvary, supporting the Legitimists, and the buildings had since fallen into ruin. This marked the definitive end of pilgrimages to Mont Valérien. The three crosses, which had already been broken during the First Republic, were sent to the cemetery of Saint-Pierre church, near today's Sacré-Coeur basilica in Paris. The paintings in the Calvaire church were sold, with the Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Saint-Symphorien churches in Versailles acquiring them. The Mont-Valérien cemetery, created by Forbin-Janson in 1823, is also located here. It was intended for the counter-revolutionary aristocratic elite, who did not wish to be buried in the large Parisian cemeteries built during the Napoleonic period, which were open to all, regardless of social origin or religion, and therefore preferred this sacred site. The closure of the Calvary and cemetery was a blow to Suresnes' commercial activity (particularly the ferry), prompting the mayor to complain. But in 1841, Adolphe Thiers decided to surround Paris with fortifications, and Mont Valérien was chosen as the site for a military structure, completed in 1844 for 4.5 million francs. General Dode de la Brunerie supervised the work. The religious remains were definitively destroyed to make mortar, and a barracks was built on a 23-hectare site. At the time, the fortress was located on the territories of the communes of Rueil-Malmaison, Nanterre, and Suresnes, but following a request, Suresnes obtained that the perimeter of the fortress should be solely under its jurisdiction, insofar as the building replaced land that was predominantly Suresnois, strategic roads passed through it and the postern belonged to Suresnes. The decision was ratified by a law passed by the National Assembly on July 31, 1850, and promulgated on August 9, 1850. This was the second major annexation of Suresnes, after the "pas Saint-Maurice" under the Convention. On June 10, M. de Laurencin applied to have a road on his property recognized as a Rue de Suresnes: initially Rue Sainte-Apolline, it became Rue Berthelot. Baron de Rothschild offers 5,000 francs to buy the last meadows that Suresnes owns on the Île de Puteaux. This marked the end of the town's “communal property” in this area. To enable military convoys to reach the fort, a strategic road was built between 1844 and 1855: today's Boulevard Washington and Boulevard De-Lattre-de-Tassigny. While the fortress was being built, the Château de Forbin-Janson, located on the hill, housed the engineers in charge of supervising the work, then, once the work was completed, the staff and finally the officers' mess. There were also several "guinguettes" (dance halls) for the workers. In May 1844, a man named Blanchet requested authorization to install a gas plant in Suresnes, a further sign of the village's transformation into an urban city. In return, he agreed to install six lanterns in the town, a lighting system that was later extended to other areas. At the request of residents, the municipal council re-established the fire department on June 9, 1845. Until then, only the pump had been maintained for use in the event of disasters. It was abolished by a prefectural decision in 1939 and replaced in 1951 by the Paris fire department regiment, whose headquarters are at Puteaux town hall. Incidents broke out in Suresnes after the 1846 elections, and the mayor, Jeanne, was forced to step down. The prefect appointed Lamarre to replace him on June 21, 1846, with Sentou succeeding him in February 1847 under the same conditions. On May 27, 1847, the notary de Saint-Andrieu was appointed mayor. Under the July Monarchy, Suresnes remained a village bearing heavy burdens, its charity office noting “the high cost of food, growing unemployment and the increasing number of destitute families.” == Second Republic ==

, whose Suresnes castle was destroyed during the revolution of 1848. During the Revolution of 1848, on February 25, men gathered at Place de Puteaux, shouting hostile abuse at the Rothschild family and expressing their intention to collect arms and ammunition from Mont Valérien, where only 30 men of the Suresnes National Guard (with rifles without cartridges) were stationed. In front of the Rothschild château, they make threats. The mayor of Suresnes gave them weapons in the hope that this would calm them, but they continued to grow bolder as they made their way to the fort, with the national guards not intervening to maintain order. Once on the hill, the rioters seized uniforms and weapons and returned to the village at Place Henri-IV. Some of them then managed to break into the Rothschilds' park, slaughtering rare animals and looting the mansion before setting it on fire. A trial followed, and 22 rioters were convicted. The Château Royal de Neuilly was set on fire at the same time, and the vandals were also under the influence of drink. Rothschild's lawsuit against the commune was unsuccessful, and his estate was abandoned: all that remained was a park with a Swiss chalet, a lake surrounded by willows, an orangery, a greenhouse, and a sheepfold, the château having disappeared. The rare plants were transported to his brother James de Rothschild's property in Boulogne. The park then became a regular playground for the children of Suresnes before being replaced by factories at the end of the 19th century. The Suresnes National Guard joined that of Paris during the violent days of June 23–27, but without loss of life. However, the mayor was required to report the house numbers where the insurrection had taken hold, with the sub-prefect noting that this information must not be lost for the future". For the rest of the revolution, the commune had to pay for the food of the men guarding the fort, as well as the bread of the workers employed in the national workshops. A year after its establishment, the anniversary of the Second Republic was celebrated in Suresnes with a ceremony, during which the government allocated 150 francs to be distributed to people in poverty. On February 21, 1850, a similar ceremony took place, this time in memory of the citizens who had died during the revolt. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's desire for a well-trained professional army competed with the gendarmerie, considered safer, while the National Guard, including that of Suresnes, lost importance. When the 1853 budget was presented, provision was made for a roadmender to be assigned to the regular maintenance of the Suresnes roads, a further step towards cleaner streets. A suspension bridge, the first in Suresnes' history, was inaugurated in 1842. At the time, there were many complaints about the difficulty for cars passing through Suresnes to reach Rueil and then Saint-Germain, notably because of the steep slope of the Rue de la Tuilerie, as the Boulevard de Versailles had still not been built. In 1853, Mrs. Fluteaux, Dansac et Cie replaced Blanchet to supply gas to Suresnes, whose plant was located on the banks of the Seine, on the border with Saint-Cloud. == Second Empire ==

With the ''coup d'état'' of December 2, 1851, Prince Louis Napoleon granted himself greater powers. On October 10, the Suresnes town council sent him "the expression of its eternal gratitude for the services he rendered to France on December 2, 1851, by saving her from the misfortunes she was threatened with". For the proclamation of the Empire on the following December 2, bleachers with canopies and tapestries were erected for a ceremony attended by the fort's officers, and money and food were distributed to people experiencing poverty. At the time, many homes had wells drilled into their cellars or gardens, although some were viewed with suspicion, with some Suresnois taking advantage of the opportunity to have their sewage drained into them. For large-scale needs, a system of distributing water from the Seine had been set up by merchants, who filled barrels and then passed them through the village, each inhabitant using an earthenware filter to purify it. In 1853, a project was proposed to the mayor to create drains, sewers, and standpipes, but no further action was taken. Citizen Tournemire, who owned a well-known bathhouse with a steam boiler, obtained authorization to install a pipe to draw water from the river. The urban structure of Suresnes continued to change: in addition to the destruction of the Rothschild estate, in 1854, Pagès gave up his neighboring property, whose park was parcelled out, with the northern part of the commune becoming constructible (a request for the establishment of a candle factory was made as early as December). Near the railway line, built in 1839, landowners and winegrowers began to sell off their plots, on which middle-class Parisians built villas with beautiful views of the capital and cleaner air. This attraction was reinforced by the development of “guinguettes” (dance halls), frequented by the capital's inhabitants and the fort's garrison, sometimes leading to drunken disturbances. In 1849, his son, the scientist Hippolyte Fizeau, made the first terrestrial measurement of the speed of light: he had installed a device emitting light rays in a bell tower at the top of the building, to reflect them in a mirror placed more than 8 km away, on the Butte Montmartre. The acquisition of this house by the municipality freed up the former town hall building, thus increasing the space available for the school's pupils. Given the high financial cost of the project, a ten-year food tax was introduced in 1855. The state of conservation of the Saint-Leufroy church was also alarming, and there were already plans, 50 years before this took place, to demolish it and rebuild it elsewhere. In October 1855, the mayor issued a decree requiring street sweeping five times a week. The municipality also had the roads widened, and in 1857, tarmac was laid on several streets. The mayor also plans major town-planning works costing around 216,000 francs, hoping to finance part of the cost with a grant, as well as changes to octroi taxes. Given the growing number of workers and the insalubrious dwellings they often inhabited, coupled with illness and job instability, a mutual aid society was created on October 20, 1863. Evening classes for workers (imitating the Association Philotechnique) were also set up, along with a municipal library in a room at the town hall. On February 13, 1865, Suresnes' first market was opened on Rue du Bac. Operating on Wednesdays and Saturdays, it was an important innovation in the commune's development. In 1864, an agreement was reached to create a pumping station at the bottom of Rue Pagès. In 1865, the Fluteau et Danzac gas company went into liquidation, its supply being taken over for 25 years by Shopper. The same year, a private telegraph office was set up in an annex to the town hall. In 1868, the cemetery was enlarged. In 1860, Paris annexed the villages of the former suburbs. A large number of industrialists moved their businesses to outlying villages, increasing their expenditure on education and social policy for people in need, leading Suresnes to raise the question of creating a cantonal hospice. A street development plan was also drawn up, including ''Rue des Sceaux d'Eau, Rue des Clos, and what is now Place Edgar-Fournier'', a teacher at the Jules-Ferry school and Suresnes' first historian. At the end of 1868, Baroness Betty de Rothschild, who had inherited the land from her father, had four lanes opened in the grounds of the former château, including the present-day rue Salomon-de-Rothschild (with the mayor's approval, "as a tribute to the memory of this character who, during his stay in Suresnes, was constantly the providence of the poor of this commune") and Rue Benoit-Malon (then Rue du Cèdre). In the last years of the Empire, the project to build a road leading more easily to Rueil (the future Boulevard de Versailles) was approved, leading to the destruction of roads in poor condition and a large part of the presbytery. Work began before the war, was interrupted, and then resumed. == War of 1870-1871 and the Paris Commune ==

In 1870, Suresnes already had 5,000 inhabitants, including the garrison of the fort. On April 7, Jacques Lecourt was appointed mayor, inviting the population to "relieve the misery of our troops and let our generosity match the heroism of our soldiers". A patriotic cause was therefore created to help the relatives of mobilized soldiers and build up a reserve for the sick and wounded. On August 7, Sentou succeeded him as mayor. The Mont Valérien garrison having moved to eastern France, the fort is occupied by Versailles mobile guards. A law requires all citizens who are not members of the army to join the sedentary National Guard: in Suresnes, this mainly concerns workers, who are provided with clothing thanks to a subsidy from the mayor's office. On a larger scale, it gave the impression of improvised, unconnected, and undisciplined troops. After the defeat at Sedan, the Prussians swept into Paris. The National Guards of Suresnes, Nanterre, and Puteaux formed the 37th Battalion, responsible for occupying the Ternes sector, under the orders of Rear-Admiral Quillet, where they remained until the armistice. The fort was occupied by mobile units from the Saint-Maur camps, soon replaced by the Nantes and Saint-Nazaire mobile regiments due to their indiscipline. The arrival of the Germans and the routed French troops had a very tangible impact on Suresnes: “In carts, disarmed, disheveled and discouraged, the survivors of Sedan made their way to Versailles, where the sad debris of our fine regiments was being collected,” wrote G. Moussoir, author of Six mois au Mont Valérien. At the same time, many Suresnois moved to Paris, believing they would be protected by Thiers' fortifications. The municipality encouraged this exodus, even encouraging the evacuation of fodder and grain. A temporary refugee town hall was set up at 31 ''Rue d'Anjou (near the Madeleine and Rue de Surène'', a strange coincidence noted by René Sordes), in an apartment rented by the town hall from Madame d'Andrezel (for civil status records, relief, passes, etc.). From September 10, Suresnes is occupied by soldiers. They camped at the Château de la Source and in a dye factory. On the 18th, the engineers blew up the Château des Landes, as it was located on the military terrain of Mont Valérien, and interfered with the fort's batteries' view of the Château de Saint-Cloud, where the Prussian headquarters were located. 108 artillery pieces were placed in front of the fort. On October 9, a detachment of the Suresnes National Guard, then at Les Ternes, came to town to collect wood and potatoes for the battalion. 50 men were also seconded to the municipality after properties were looted. The next day, cannon shells destroy the “Lanterne de Démosthène” in the Parc de Saint-Cloud, as it could have served as an observatory for the Prussians. On the 17th, the mayor decided to have two of the church's three bells melted down to build a cannon bearing the name of Suresnes; however, this did not happen, and traces of the bells were lost. On October 21, on the other side of the mountain, the Battle of Buzenval took place, with the participation of General Louis Jules Trochu, who had earlier observed the battlefield from the fortress. On October 26, the majority of the municipal council decided that the running of the schools and the asylum would henceforth be entrusted to laypeople rather than clerics. Shortly afterward, the mayor expressed his satisfaction with Suresnes' financial health - the first time this optimism appeared in the archives. On November 10, the fort received a 24-mm naval gun with a range of 7.5–8 km and a projectile weight of 144 kg; it was christened Valérie. It fired as far as the Saint-Germain terrace, near the Henri IV pavilion (then the Prussian officers' mess), at boats built on the Île de la Loge, the Château de Beauregard, the Breteuil battery, and the Meudon battery. After 1871, the Valerie was exhibited in a Berlin square, returned to Paris after the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, made its way back to Germany after Hitler's victory, then returned to France again in 1945, being installed in the courtyard of honor of the Invalides and finally permanently in the fortress. The archives do not allow us to determine whether the famous projectile that hit William I's motorcade at the Marly aqueduct was fired from the Valérie. This artillery piece had a “sister”, the Joséphine. renamed after this general of the Commune, born in Suresnes. The "moblots", mobile troops, marauded in the fields of Suresnes to gather the few remaining potatoes. Parisians with homes in Suresnes also came to bring back victuals. On November 24, a mobile battalion from Ille-et-Vilaine was stationed in Suresnes, occupying several houses. In December, the fort's guard was reinforced. The Croix-du-Roy brickyard (now the entrance to the cité-jardin) was used as a base by artillerymen, who used the vine stakes to keep warm. As Narcisse Meunier recounts: “We lived in Suresnes during the siege, and we can't recall without a twinge of sadness the pitiful state of our poor country." The people of Suresnes also witnessed the sorties organized by the Parisian general staff to break the Prussian embrace. On January 27, 1871, France capitulated, and two days later, the fort was occupied by the enemy. On March 1, Wilhelm of Prussia crossed the Seine, acclaimed by his army, on a mobile bridge built in Suresnes to reach Paris, the old suspension bridge having been burnt down during the conflict. German troops then occupied Suresnes, with officers staying in private homes and soldiers in factories. On March 3, Suresnes received 5,500 francs and seeds from English Quakers. On March 12, the octroi was re-established and refugees began to return, with the municipality assuming responsibility for housing people in need. The town council also reimbursed part of the costs of the German occupation. On March 7, German troops evacuated the fort, soon to be replaced by the 113th Line Regiment, which was ordered to withdraw to Versailles, leaving the fort empty until the 119th arrived from Versailles. At the same time, the Paris Commune began. In April, the Suresnes National Guard was disarmed. On April 2, troops from the fort intervened to stop a column of federates attempting to reach Versailles. On April 7 and May 20, federate batteries at Porte Maillot, Trocadéro, and Point-du-Jour were bombarded by the fort, while Federate shells landed on the hillsides and in the city. The municipality set up a fire department for emergencies. No one was killed in Suresnes, but fearful residents asked factories to extinguish their fires at night so the smoke would not serve as a landmark. The old Mont-Valérien cemetery, however, suffered from the bombs. One resident even wrote to General Cluseret, who had rallied to the Commune, because his projectiles “did not fall on the fort, but on the cemetery where his parents' graves were” (those of the general, in the Carnot cemetery, where he has since been buried). At a time when the workers were out of work, the town council came to their assistance. At the end of May, after the battle of Buzenval, which took place not far from Suresnes, hostilities came to an end and activity resumed. The painter Henri Regnault died during this last confrontation, and the municipality decided to name a street in Suresnes after him. The Prussians occupied the fort until March 7, 1871. == Disappearance of traditions ==

(whose canvases are preserved in the Louvre, Orsay, and Limoges museums) having also practiced there. The urban modernization of the late 19th century meant that in the decades that followed, many of Suresnes' traditions disappeared, sometimes not completely but in large part. This was particularly true of vine-growing traditions. The town's heritage also lost localities, dwellings, languages, and festivals. On the subject of winegrowing in Suresnes, René Sordes notes some historical facts, notably that phylloxera had little effect on Suresnes, that purchased American plans did not acclimatize there, that powdery mildew or “blanc de la grappe” was probably first studied in France in Suresnes, and that it was in the greenhouses of the Château de Rothschild that a gardener found the remedy for a fungus using tar water (Hardy, from Versailles, found the sulfur treatment to destroy the catastrophic cryptogam once and for all). However, some customs had already disappeared, such as the so-called “Easter wine,” which meant that every year on this day, a pint of a clos belonging to the Benedictines was distributed to each inhabitant; this custom existed between the 16th and early 19th centuries. The quality of Suresnes wine goes back a long way, as testified by the actions of Nicolas de Hacqueville, head of the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in the 16th century, who had vines planted in Suresnes, believing that the wines from Suresnes, Gentilly, and Vanves were better than those from the Gâtinais and Champagne regions, to the point of banning the latter for his hospital's patients. It was also exported via the Seine to England, Denmark, and Holland. In 1889, there were still four wine presses in Suresnes. However, it declined after the terrible winter of 1709, when everything had to be replanted. Nevertheless, many Parisians flocked to the guinguettes that sprang up after the Revolution on Sundays and public holidays (under the names "Au bon vin de Suresnes,” “La Descente du fort," "Au rendez-vous des canotiers," etc.), Some critics, however, are critical of the "petit bleu" from Suresnes, a Piquette made from black grapes, cut with water and sugar, but popular with young revelers. An 18th-century abbot humorously wrote: "A good priest from Calvaire / Usually on feast days and Sundays / Recited mass at the château / Either by design or by adventure / One day, as we're told, / He was given new wine / Sour surene, flat rinse! / Eight days later: 'Monsieur Mathieu' / He said to the local sommelier, / 'Let's see the wine in the cruet / For you made me eat God / The other day with vinaigrette!'" Songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger wrote: “Farewell, Suresnes and its hillsides / Bordeaux and Meursault / The Aÿ that is sung about / Will finally be known to me / I have fifty écus / I have fifty écus in income!” or “In tavern gatherings at little cost / One warms up their muse: / To the Apollos of the cabarets / Buy a jug of Suresnes.” Rue du Clos-des-Seigneurs, Rue du Clos-des-Ermites, and Rue du Port-au-Vin. In 1965, René Sordes also noted some lieux-dits and cantons (privileged place names), referring to “a particular feature of the place, natural or otherwise, a time that has passed, a particular culture, the name of an owner or a family, a famous event among others,” such as Val d'Or, la Croix-du-Roy (a cross once stood at this crossroads), les Terres-Blanches (the soil in this canton was white at shallow depths), la Fontaine-du-Tertre (about a fountain that flowed down the side of Mont Valérien) or les Bas-Roger (the woods of Sieur Roger, on the border of Suresnes and Puteaux). Rue des Chèvremont, on the northern plateau, is a reminder that it was laid out on a former goat pasture. Houses built with stone from the Nanterre and Suresnes quarries were notorious for getting dirty, causing greenish leprosy at the base of the houses; walls covered with poor-quality plaster did not stand up well to the elements. Houses generally had a hall facing the street (kitchen and dining room), with a bedroom and storeroom behind, a courtyard with a hutch, a goat or mule (more rarely a horse), a second floor or attic, and a cellar. The houses' thresholds were relatively high to prevent flooding during storms. This is how most houses in Suresnes looked in the mid-19th century. Typical Suresnes dishes include gibelotte of rabbit in red wine, matelote of eels, Seine friture, petit salé with cabbage, and cherries, which were eaten at guinguettes, and moules-frites with petit bleu. The suburbs of Paris were long frequented by Normans and Picards, who came to Suresnes to work in the fields and harvest grapes, or to replace workers driven out by the war, thus influencing its accent and language: "Fontaine du Tertre" (originally "du Tartre," meaning "top of a mountain") In addition to the Saint-Vincent festival and traditional Christian feasts and weddings, Suresnes also had several customs, such as the period between 10 and 10:15 a.m. on Palm Sunday, when the direction of the wind was recorded to predict the weather for the rest of the year. From the mid-19th century onwards, there was also the patron saint's day of Saint Leufroy at the end of June, with bakery stalls, circuses, theaters, lotteries, billiards, and wooden horses, as well as a fireworks display that brought the festival to a close. Games were organized such as the mât de cocagne (a 4-5-meter mast erected in Place Henri-IV, coated with black soap, which had to be climbed to win prizes such as bottles of alcohol or hams), sack races (girls had to cut ribbons near the starting point, blindfolded, at the same time), the baquet game (which took place in Rue du Pont, near the crossroads with Rue des Bourets: you had to insert a pole into a hole and, if you missed, you were covered with the liquid filled in a baquet, which the dyers had turned blue, red, yellow or green), the joutes à la lance (which took place in the basin between the bridge and the dam, in front of a sometimes Parisian audience as well as the town councilors: Teams, sometimes from neighboring towns, would compete on boats to knock down their opponents 300 meters apart.) René Sordes also recalls the street cries of the small trades, for the sale of fish, for example (“Hereng qui glace, hareng nouveau”). Among the trades typical of Suresnes' bygone days were, in addition to winegrowers, laundry workers (between the end of the 18th century and 1914, they formed an important guild, with a clientele that was essentially Parisian) and feeders (fewer in number, they raised cows in enclosed cowsheds, or vacheries, until urbanization caused them to disappear). Suresnes' many urban transformations have also prevented it from preserving an architectural tradition, as Michel Guillot, secretary of the Société Historique de Suresnes, noted in 1995: "Unlike other towns, Suresnes has no ancient architectural heritage. The old church was destroyed in 1906; a château [that of La Source] was razed in 1986; and the seigniorial house and two "Grand siècle" townhouses were razed between 1963 and 1974 due to their dilapidation. What remains of the old buildings are the Mont Valérien fort and buildings from the Third Republic, the “Republican monument” (schools, town hall, and village hall), and the workers' buildings designed by Henri Sellier. == Third Republic (1871–1900) ==

Modernizations Years 1870-1880 It was during this period that the old village of Suresnes began to disappear, both architecturally and traditionally, giving rise to the industrial town. Winegrowers were also gradually dying out: by the end of the century, there were only a hundred or so out of 11,200 inhabitants, and seven or eight after the First World War, of whom only three or four still cultivated a few vines. . The construction of the Boulevard de Versailles (later Boulevard Henri-Sellier) played a major role in opening up the area. Once the war was over, work resumed on this road, then known as “Grande Route No. 3”, leading to the demolition of beautiful gardens and houses looted during the conflict. On September 1, 1871, half the presbytery was demolished, despite complaints from the municipality. A new presbytery was built on land acquired with state compensation and transformed into a library after the law separating church and state, which was given a square. Terraces were also built to stabilize the soil on the hillside. The bridge over the Seine, destroyed during the war, was rebuilt. The Boulevard de Versailles was completed in 1878, with a 10-meter-wide roadway lined with plane trees. Thanks to this road, which put an end to culs-de-sac, wrote René Sordes, "Suresnes was no longer at the end of the world". A restaurateur acquired a lot near the quay, helping to turn the area into a lively district, with Longchamp turfers, crowds cheering the army on the July 14th military parade at the eponymous racecourse (inaugurated in 1857), weddings on large white floats, and lovers of guinguettes and balls. After the war, the National Guard was disbanded. On August 16, 1871, Huché was elected mayor. His responsibilities included repairing roads and paths. On December 12, 1872, it was decided to demolish the "well of love", which was done the following year; a square in the town center has since been dedicated to it. In 1873, street names were indicated by enameled sheet metal plaques; previously, inscriptions had been made directly on the wall; in 1885, they were made of cast iron, with the name in relief. As the Fizeau town hall (in place from 1856 to 1889) In 1888, "La Fraternelle," a shooting and military training society, was created, marching and maneuvering at official events in uniform. The civilian shooting club "''L'Espérance de Suresnes''" was founded at the same time. Until the end of the century, a festival with a burlesque costume parade was organized to mark the drawing of lots for the conscripts' assignments. , which housed the clock from the Saint-Leufroy church (demolished in 1906) to sound the start of classes. On March 10, 1885, the municipality decided that for ten years, goods entering Suresnes would be subject to octroi. By 1861, four octroi offices had already been set up in Suresnes; by 1870, they were bringing in 50,000 francs for the town. They disappeared in 1943 due to traffic congestion. One was located on the Route de Neuilly, mixed with Puteaux; one at the Bergères traffic circle; one at the former Quai Impérial (mixed with Saint-Cloud); and finally, the central octroi office in Suresnes. After World War I, one of them moved to the corner of the Blériot factories. . A plot of land was acquired in 1886-1887 to house the new town hall. Charles Garnier presided over the architectural competition. Jean Bréasson was commissioned to carry out the work, at a cost of around 465,000 francs. The façade is neoclassical in style, adorned with statues of Law and Justice; the building also features a monumental double-revolution staircase and high attic space. The town hall is decorated with marouflaged canvases by Henri Brémont (1911), who also created the stained-glass windows for the new Suresnes church; he depicts the link between Suresnes and the Seine, in particular the dam and lock. In 1878, the inhabitants and industrialists of Suresnes and Puteaux called for the construction of a goods station. On December 31, a law authorized the construction of the Moulineaux line. Still, work did not begin until July 28, 1886, giving rise to expropriations and the construction of viaducts (the first with a 4-metre opening on the Sente de Chigneux in Puteaux, a second in masonry with three arches and a 10-metre opening on the Chemin des Bas-Rogers and a third with an 8-metre opening on the Chemin de la Tuilerie, now Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau). A tunnel (310 m long under the “Paris-Versailles” station and Rue Desbassyns) is also dug. The Suresnes-Longchamp station was built between 1886 and 1889, with a high retaining wall along the Boulevard de Versailles to stabilize the earth fill, and two staircases leading to the Place de la Gare. While the new line did not change residents' habits, the creation of a goods station between the Rue des Bas-Rogers and the Rue des Velettes fulfilled their long-standing wishes. The line was inaugurated at the 1889 Paris Universal Exhibition and electrified in 1928. In 1907, the company built the pedestrian footbridge over the freight station. Recognized as dangerous, the Puteaux connection was withdrawn in October 1934. File:Viaduc des Bas-Rogers Suresnes 4.jpg|Bas-Rogers Viaduct or "Five Arches Bridge", over which the Moulineaux line passes. File:Pont de chemin de fer dit viaduc du Val-d'Or Suresnes 7.jpg|Val d'Or Viaduct, which serves the same line. File:Station Tramway Ligne 2 Suresnes-Longchamp Suresnes 2.jpg|Former Suresnes-Longchamp station building, current headquarters of the ''Musée d'histoire urbaine et sociale de Suresnes''. File:Cimetière Voltaire Suresnes 1.jpg|The Voltaire cemetery, the second cemetery in Suresnes after the Carnot cemetery. The 1890s Rapid population growth led the town council to consider creating a new cemetery in the Bas-Roger district. The decision was passed by the town council in 1890, with architect Girard in charge of the work, and the cemetery was subsequently named the Voltaire Cemetery. Several prominent figures are buried here, including engineers Fernand Forest and Prosper Émile Liot, painter Juana Romani, and actors Marcel Herrand and Félix Oudart. On May 11, 1889, a petition from Suresnois called for the installation of a telephone service between the suburbs and Paris. The replacement of gas with electricity to light the town was also envisaged. In 1891, the first mention was made of a racecourse on the Plaine de la Fouilleuse, a piece of land that once belonged to the Dames de Longchamp (to whom the Cour des Dames in the historic center pays tribute). . With a population of 9,000, the number of winegrowers continued to decline. The petty bourgeoisie occupied a few houses near the railway line, and industry continued to develop, requiring an ever-increasing workforce. A secular freethought society is formed, calling for the removal of religious books from the girls' school and the renaming of streets dedicated to saints. The nursery school housed in the former presbytery proved too small, and it was decided to build a new school complex between Rue Carnot and Rue de Neuilly. Plans by architects Godefroy and Beaulieu were submitted in 1894, as were those for the village hall on the opposite side of the sidewalk: the latter, designed by Édouard Bauhain and Raymond Barbaud, featured a framework by the Eiffel company. he had stored a large number of columns, sculptures, and statues salvaged from the ruins of the Tuileries Palace (burnt down during the Commune), which he had frequented as a result of working for Empress Eugénie. Exotic greenhouses also adorn the park. The interior is richly decorated. In 1892, his son Gaston erected a neo-Norman-style building on the site, known as the Balsan Pavilion (named after the billionaire Consuelo Vanderbilt, wife of Balsan). Charles Frederick Worth's original property was razed to the ground in the early 1930s to be replaced by the Hôpital Foch; all that remained was the monumental gateway on Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt, while the remains of the Tuileries were transferred to Barentin (Seine-Maritime). The Pavillon Balsan, bequeathed to the Foch Foundation, has been preserved. In the municipal elections of May 1896, Arthème Genteur was elected mayor; he was more left-wing than his predecessor. Plans for a new school and village hall were maintained. The extension of the market led to the demolition of old houses on Rue du Moutier, and Rue de Montretout. The village hall and the Place du Marché were inaugurated on September 26–27. A bandstand was also built in the town hall square (where the statue of Henri Sellier now stands), along with a charity office, now the Justice of the Peace office, on the side of the square. but was not inaugurated until 1908. An older people's home was also created in 1899, in the building occupied by the headmistress of the nursery school. In July of the same year, a monument to those who died for their country was inaugurated in the new Bas-Rogers cemetery (now the Voltaire cemetery). In 1897, an agreement was reached to create the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer du Bois de Boulogne, from Porte Maillot to Suresnes, near the Gare de Longchamp. In reality, this was an electric trolley railway. In 1911, the line was extended to Saint-Cloud; the following year, to Garches; and, during the First World War, to the Rueil arsenal. Although it carried no more than 8,000 to 10,000 passengers a day, it did handle 25,000 to 30,000 on weekends and public holidays and 50,000 at certain events at the Longchamp racecourse. The end of the concession, bought by RATP Group in 1930, technical problems, and poor service to the new garden city led to its demise in 1936. The following year, the railroad was replaced by the “44” bus line and the “44 B,” which departed from Saint-Cloud but no longer crossed the Bois de Boulogne; in Suresnes, it ran via Boulevard de Versailles and Rue Émile-Zola. A gendarmerie brigade was set up in Suresnes, in a building constructed in 1898 on Rue de Verdun, not far from the present-day church. The aim was to relieve congestion in the Puteaux brigade, which was too busy working in the Bois de Boulogne. Laure Surville, the sister of writer Honoré de Balzac, retired to Suresnes at the end of her life. She was married to M. Alain, a civil engineer from the Ponts-et-Chaussée department, who had participated in the design of the 1842 suspension bridge. Development of the industry End of dyeing Gradually, the old industries gave way to automobile and then aviation factories. The dyeing plant, founded in 1833, was replaced by an automobile factory in the former Rothschild Park. Created by Rouques, it was sold to Terrier around 1850, who joined forces two years later with Jean Bernadotte (second cousin of Swedish King Charles XV), who eventually took over the business. Wishing to invite his cousin to visit his factory during the 1867 Universal Exhibition, he proposed building a fountain at the corner of Rue du Bac and Rue des Bourets on condition that the former be renamed “Rue du roi de Suède.” In the end, the King did not come, but the street kept this name until 1881. In 1877, future Normandy MP Georges Roulleaux-Dugage joined forces with André Meunier-Pouthot. In 1893, after the owners' deaths, part of the land was subdivided for housing, and three streets were laid out (Colonel-Picard, Frédéric-Passy, and Diderot; the first two were renamed by Henri Sellier in 1920 as Belle-Gabrielle and Conférences-de-Suresnes, in tribute to the commune's history). The dyeing business disappeared at the beginning of the following century. There were other dye works, however, such as that run by Arthur Guillaumet, mayor of Suresnes between 1878 and 1888, between Rue du Port-au-Vin and Pagès. In the former château grounds, a dye factory was first established (along Rue de Penthièvre and Rue de Gondolo), purchased from Betty de Rothschild at the end of 1870 and later taken over by Edmond Sordes and his cousin Alphonse Huillard, also mayor of Suresnes, then by the Compagnie des extraits tinctoriaux du Havre and finally by the Société lilloise des laminoirs in 1914. The neighborhood was also home to a carpet factory before the automobile industry arrived, thwarting plans to turn this once aristocratic neighborhood into a residential area. File:Panneau Darracq Suresnes.jpg|Commemorative panel with an old advertisement for the Darracq automobile brand, along the Quai Gallieni, where the Suresnes factories were mainly located. File:Panneau Olibet Suresnes.jpg|Commemorative panel with an old advertisement for the Olibet biscuit brand, on the same quay. File:Panneau Suresnes Worth.jpg|Memorial panel with an old advertisement for the perfume brand Worth, on the site of the former property of the couturier's family. Automobiles The development of industry in Suresnes paralleled that of surrounding towns, such as Renault in 1899 and Voisin in 1905 in Boulogne-Billancourt, De Dion-Bouton in Puteaux, and the towns of Asnières-sur-Seine, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Levallois-Perret, and Gennevilliers, considered to be the cradles of the automobile: 115 manufacturers were born in the Hauts-de-Seine during the Belle Époque. Under the pressure of industry, vineyards, cherry orchards, and fields gradually disappeared. In 1896, Suresnes' first metallurgical plant, Gallia, moved into the Parc Rothschild, creating the city's first workers' mutual insurance company. Two years earlier, Alexandre Darracq began building Gladiator bicycles in his 3-hectare factory at 33 Quai Gallieni, employing a thousand people. He received a medal and diploma from the municipality, thanking the mayor for his determination, "in his small way, to make Suresnes a prosperous manufacturing town, a little French Coventry". In 1905, he founded the Darracq et Cie company, which was later acquired by Talbot (Sunbeam-Tablot-Darracq or STD group, then the Rootes group from 1934). Louis Chevrolet worked alongside him as a foreman before leaving for the United States in 1900. After the Second World War, the rue Salomon-de-Rothschild factory was used only as a warehouse. In 1902, Latil moved to the banks of the Seine, near Rue des Meuniers, to build heavy trucks. In 1909, Le Zèbre moved to Suresnes, where its owner, Jules Salomon, was associated with Jacques Bizet (son of Georges Bizet). In 1910, Saurer moved to Suresnes, manufacturing trucks and buses in a plant at 67 Rue de Neuilly[h53] Citroën also had a factory there. The establishment of these industries attracted retailers specializing in bicycles and automobiles to the district (already very busy with balls and guinguettes), right up to the bridge, particularly for gasoline, at the bottom of Boulevard de Versailles, near the cafés. To avoid paying the octroi tax, many Parisians came to the Pont de Suresnes at weekends to stock up on petrol in cans. In 1921, the first petrol-dispensing columns were installed at 7 and 62 Boulevard de Versailles. The speed of cars traveling over the bridge to Suresnes (30–40 km/h) was considered excessive for the time, and an agent was installed to prevent accidents. In May 1891, Merelle, de Dion, and Bouton competed in an automobile race between the Bourget fire pump and the Château de Versailles. On their return to Suresnes, near the Moulineaux railroad bridge that spans the boulevard, de Dion's car collided violently with Merelle's, perhaps the first automobile accident in history, according to René Sordes. In 1907, engineer Fernand Forest set up shop at No. 22 Boulevard, transforming his home into a workshop for research, notably into canoe and automobile engines. Copied by his competitors, his property was finally seized in 1909. Appreciated by the people of Suresnes, he was awarded the ''Légion d'Honneur'' before he died in 1914. The municipality offered him a perpetual plot in the Voltaire cemetery and paid an annuity to his widow. The rue des Petits-Clos, where he lived, was renamed in his honor. Aviation factory in Suresnes are exhibited in their original location (since 1917), even though the original building was destroyed in 2004. The current building is partly occupied by the Airbus group and then, With the development of aviation, they began building aircraft. They died shortly before the First World War. In 1915, Louis Blériot set up his factory in Suresnes, at the junction of Quai and ''Rue du Val-d'Or'', in place of the disused gasworks. A total of 28,000 m² of workshops were built on a 40,000 m² site in response to the development of military aviation amid the First World War (via SPAD, acquired in 1914). According to René Sordes, "Suresnes can be proud of the efforts made at the beginning of the century by some of the great pioneers, creators of these gigantic industries, the automobile, and aviation". Electronics In 1911, Westinghouse Cie Hewitt set up its workshops in the former seigniorial house of Suresnes, Rue du Pont. In 1921, Radiotechnique built a factory at 51 Rue Carnot, producing radio lamps and later TSF sets. At 106 Rue Carnot, the Société de Mécanique de Construction Tubulaire is located. Cookie factory Around 1880, the Olibet cookie factory was built on the eastern part of the property that belonged to the d'Estrée family in the early 18th century, between Rue du Port-au-Vin and Rue du Bac. For a time, the children of Suresnes came to buy from the concierge, who gave them broken cookies unsuitable for sale. Cookies in good condition were sold at the Parisian store on Rue de Rivoli. A rare experiment at the time, Olibert set up a nursery in its buildings to enable its working mothers to keep their jobs. Renowned for his social spirit, Mr. Olibet was elected deputy mayor of Suresnes in 1884, at the same time as the Guillaumet municipality, also an industrialist. The factory was demolished in 1940 to make way for the metallurgical industry. Perfumery factory near the Seine, now the headquarters of Bel, after having been that of Havas. At the end of the 18th century, Suresnes was already home to the factory of Fargeon, Marie-Antoinette's perfumer, in the barn of a house on Rue de Saint-Cloud. He and his chemists used Damask roses, then grown on the slopes of Mont Valérien, near Puteaux. Famous perfumes such as ''L'Origan, Rose Jacqueminot, and Ambre Antique'' are produced at the Suresnes factory, where many women work. Initially built of wood, the building was later replaced by a new one in red brick, which has since been listed as a historic monument. In 1924, Maurice Blanquet moved to Suresnes with his brother and founded the Coryse-Salomé brand, combining Hugues Guerlain's brand with Mr. Quartier's Coryse brand. This, too, was a success. Also in 1924, Jean-Philippe Worth, a descendant of the couturier, founded a perfume brand in his name, manufactured by Maurice Blanchet. These perfume factories were located in the same district: the Coty factory at Château de la Source, the Blanchet factory on the grounds of the estate's kitchen garden, while Fargeon was established nearby. There was also the Hudnut company, specialized in pharmaceuticals and with a perfumery and cosmetics division. Finally, Maison Volnay, located near Mont Valérien, manufactured eau de toilettes and eau de Cologne for the capital's department stores. == Third Republic (1900–1919) ==

Until the First World War The 1900s In the municipal elections of May 1900, the list led by Caron defeated that of Genteur. The victor accuses his predecessor of overspending on the construction of the village hall, but defends himself against critics who portray him as clerical and reactionary. In October, the municipality inaugurated what was to become the Musée de Suresnes, then a simple showcase in the marriage hall containing memorabilia bequeathed by Dr. Gillard and Edgar Fournier, Suresnes' first historian. In 1901, the land known as "Terres blanches" was purchased from the heirs of Suresnes industrialist Meunier to exploit the water from the Tertre fountain springs, which the Prefecture de Police laboratory had positively analyzed. In the center of Suresnes, a standpipe was even built to distribute water from this source. However, the initiative was not followed up on, as the mayor's opponents criticized it. The American cemetery was later established on the site of the spring. The laboratory reversed its decision in January 1906: the fountain was condemned, and its water was redirected to the sewers. According to the new municipality, the retirement home was deemed too costly, and the system of home help was reinstated. In 1905, the law separating Church and State led to the departure of the teaching congregation of nuns who ran a girls' school at 15 Rue de Neuilly, therebyincreasing the shortage of places in public schools. The question of creating a new school complex was revived, to be located on Rue Vanier, the name sacrificed by the previous municipality and now given back to the section of Rue Benoît-Malon between Rue de Neuilly and Rue Carnot. While waiting for a new school to be built, the girls were left in their old, vacant premises. In the May 1904 elections, Genteur again defeated Caron but left his seat as mayor to the industrialist Alphonse Huillard. Upon his arrival, the new municipality voted to reprimand his predecessors for the accounting deficit. Rue Vanier was renamed, along with several other roads. After falling ill, Huillard was replaced by his deputy, Victor Diederich, on August 11, 1905. . To finance new projects, on March 17, 1905, the municipal council ratified a loan of one million francs repayable over thirty years, the interest on which would be paid by a special octroi tax. The mayor's office then undertook many projects: clearing the Place Trarieux with the disappearance of the old houses on Rue du Four, widening Rue Étienne-Dolet and Rue Émile-Zola, renovating the old roads, improving links between the town center and the plateaux, creating ten new sewer streets, and re-establishing the old people's home. However, more than 150 owners of the roads affected by the work had to be dealt with. In 1904, the city's first summer camps were set up, enabling children to be sent to the countryside. The operation was repeated the following year in Adou, Le Buisson, and Longuesse (Loiret). A loan was also taken out to finance the project for a new school complex, to be named in homage to the pedagogue Jean Macé and built by the architect Loiseau on the land of a market gardener. The school complex (now known as the Collège Jean-Macé) was very modern for its time and was inaugurated in 1908 in the presence of Minister René Viviani. At the same time, an old and renowned educational establishment disappeared, located at 24 Rue de Neuilly. The Demoiselles Linder girls' boarding school (Jeanne-d'Arc institution) also existed on Rue Saint-Antoine and closed before the Second World War, having moved to 56 Rue du Mont-Valérien. Following the 1905 law abolishing the Concordat, the inventory of church property in Suresnes took place from February 5 to 7, 1906. Featuring a Romanesque bell tower porch dating from the 11th-12th centuries, Religious objects, some religious paintings, the pulpit, and the organs are sold. The money raised was used to maintain the local older people's homes. During the dispersal, the notoriously anticlerical mayor praised "the priest's correct attitude". The state of disrepair of the church was advanced; at the time, it belonged to the commune, having pre-dated the Concordat of 1802. Necessary renovation work had not been carried out, while an arson attack had affected the north chapel in 1904. Concerned, the Archbishop of Paris wrote to the mayor on April 14, 1906, noting the danger to the faithful of visiting a building in such a state, which the mayor was nevertheless not legally bound to maintain. Faced with the council's refusal, the religious authorities threatened to stop worshiping in the church. On April 27, the council gave in and voted to demolish the church. On June 2, Minister Aristide Briand wrote to the mayor, advising him to demolish “only what is strictly necessary.” The municipality ignored this advice. In the tense context of the passing of the law, the affair caused controversy in the major Catholic newspapers, further aggravated by the affair of the church bells: after the war of 1870, only one remained and, in 1897, the parish priest Combel had acquired four of them by subscription, which became, after the demolition of the old church, the property of the commune. On July 26, 1907, the town council decided to melt one of them down and create a statue of Émile Zola from the resulting bronze, sculpted by Émile Derré. The inauguration took place on April 12, 1908, with the participation of Gustave Charpentier and the Mimi Pinson conservatory he directed. The writer's son, Jacques-Émile Zola, was also present. The mayor declared at the ceremony: "This bell has rung enough error to now proclaim the truth". The other bells were melted down; the material was sold to maintain the retirement home. On its pedestal is engraved a phrase by Émile Zola, written during the Dreyfus Affair: “One day, France will be grateful to me for having saved its honor.” Built-in 1908-1909 by architect Édouard Bérard, it features a monumental statue of the Virgin and Child standing on a globe, an 1829 plaster by Jean-Pierre Cortot commissioned by Forbin-Janson for his neo-Byzantine church project. Among the stained-glass windows created between 1907 and 1911, several by Calor and inspired by drawings by Henri Brémont, pay tribute to the life and history of Suresno, particularly in terms of religion (ascent of the Calvary, winegrowers' processions on Saint-Vincent, Saint Geneviève, Marguerite Naseau, etc.). File:Rue des Terres-Blanches Suresnes 10.jpg|House on the hillsides of the northern plateau: example of progressive urbanization at the turn of the century. File:Vue de Suresnes depuis les coteaux 8.jpg|Another house on the hillsides. File:Collège Jean-Macé Suresnes 2.jpg|The Jean-Macé school, which became a college in 1968. File:Collège Jean-Macé Suresnes 1.jpg|Clock on the facade of the school, long stopped. File:Carte postale - 67. Suresnes - Rue de Saint-Cloud (tourelle des anciens murs de Suresnes) - Recto.jpg|Remains of the postern gate of rue de Saint-Cloud in an old photograph. The population of Suresnes continued to grow: in 1906, there were 1,344 houses with 4,125 households, representing 12,474 French citizens and 299 foreigners. Work continued improving the streets (147,835 m2), and a sweeping tax was introduced to finance street cleaning. In October 1907, the widow Gardenat-Lapostol donated her house at 5 Rue des Rosselins to serve as the retirement home. The street was subsequently renamed in her honor. In the same year, the postern that closed the Porte de Saint-Cloud in the 16th century was demolished to align Rue de Saint-Cloud with the old Vaux d'Or spring, which now flows through the grounds of the nursing home. In the May 1908 elections, Victor Diederich was re-elected mayor. The municipality now had thirteen committees. A medical dispensary was set up to assist people in need, at 15 Rue de Neuilly. 1910s In 1910, Suresnes was hit by the flooding of the Seine, with the river invading the quays and low-lying areas as far south as Place Eugène-Sue, north of Rue de Verdun and central Rue des Bourets. Historically, built on a sandy plateau that is inaccessible to flooding, the majority of the city escapes flooding. However, flooded streets meant that residents had to travel by boat or on temporary footbridges alongside their homes. The Suresnes bridge remained accessible at both ends. After the floods had subsided, the devastated buildings had to be restored, and the unemployed helped, thanks to 143,193 francs collected from the State, the Prefecture, companies, and the town of Keighley. Subsequently, a new development plan for the Seine enabled the construction of the new sluice dam. Le Journal wrote: "In Suresnes, the water rose overnight by 40 cm, invading houses on the quay up to the second floor and causing further devastation in the interior of the commune. In Puteaux, five new factories closed their doors. The number of unemployed is rising daily." Le Matin added: "50 engineer soldiers garrisoned at Mont Valérien, mounted on bachots (boats) from the lakes of the Bois de Boulogne, rescued the inhabitants through the windows, who were transported to hotels in Suresnes. Canal automobiles (motorized boats) crisscrossed the river, helping to supply supplies." When the Entente Cordiale was signed, Mayor Alphonse Huillard proposed twinning Suresnes and Puteaux with the industrial town of Keighley, which his English wife knew. Exchange trips were organized with workers and shopkeepers. In October 1909, Suresnes renamed the part of rue de Penthièvre within its territory after the British town (where the Entente Cordiale Committee was based and where Huillard lived); today it is Avenue Georges-Pompidou. In June 1911, the English mayor visited Suresnes and presented a silver cup in thanks for the welcome. In 1912, the mayor signed a contract with the Compagnie des Eaux to distribute water to these new districts, whereas the previous 1864 treaty limited the height to 90 meters. In the May 1912 elections, Diederich was re-elected. That same year, Genteur died and left a bequest, the interest on which would be distributed every July 14 to two deserving young girls. Like the rosière, this prize still existed in the 1960s, thanks to the municipality's contribution, but the distribution date was changed due to the school vacations. In 1912, a project was signed to build a shower bath near the dispensary, although work did not begin until after the war. The municipality also took out a 225,000-franc loan to build a school on the northern plateau. These years also saw the development of hospital relief, assistance for large families, and compulsory daily assistance allowances. cycle race in Suresnes in 1914. The writer Charles Péguy — certainly on the advice of Rodolphe Simon of La Revue Socialiste — chose to publish his works at the Suresno printing works run by Richard and Husson, located at 9 Rue du Pont. In December 1897, Jeanne d'Arc was printed there. The printing works subsequently moved to 13 Rue Pierre-Dupont and changed ownership. Péguy had his Cahiers de la Quinzaine printed there. He used to walk from Paris to Suresnes through the Bois de Boulogne, accompanied by his friend Jean Jaurès. Louis Boulonnois, who devoted an article to Charles Péguy in 1919, wrote: “A Jaurès who, standing at the spindly cast-iron or metal parapets of the Suresnes bridge, looked towards Puteaux, admired, knew how to admire as a modern spectator all the industrial beauty of this part of the Seine, or looking at the other side, planted upright, facing the river, he looked, he admired, he recorded, he saw like a Frenchman the curved and noble river descending at the feet of the admirable lines of the hillsides.” During this period, the Suresno printing house also published the first editions of works by writers such as Romain Rolland, André Suarès, Julien Benda, Jean, Jérôme Tharaud, and Georges Sorel. After his death in August 1914 during the Battle of the Marne, Charles Péguy is honored in Suresnes, with the Rue des Champs being renamed after him. During the same decade, writer Charles-Albert Cingria enjoyed visiting family members in Suresnes: "They were relatives of mine, charming and fine people, who were employed in a wagon house in Suresnes. It was a joy for me to go and see them [...]. We talked, laughed, and had a great time. In the evenings, before parting, we'd still have blond aperitifs at La Belle-Gabrielle. Writer Léon Werth was more critical of the influx of Parisians to the town bordering Mont Valérien: "Suresnes is spoiled by Paris. Parisians come here as if it were a tourist destination. It's like a Cook agency for shopkeepers and midinettes organizing Suresnes Sundays. There are vast, solemn refectories for first-class travelers and well-known restaurants where, sometimes between shadows, Second Empire courtiers and car thieves dine." Germain Bazin, a member of the Institut, lived in Suresnes for many years and is honored by a square in front of the Château de la Grève. In reality, it's a small Napoleon III-style townhouse built in 1867 by Duttenhoffer for the Meillassoux brothers, dyers from Suresnes. It owes its name to a strike that took place shortly before its construction, due to the 1867 Universal Exhibition, which caused prices to rise. Today, it houses the municipal social affairs department and the town hall's cellar. A section of the fortress's pigeon fanciers also distinguished themselves during the conflict. One of the birds was even cited in the regimental order, "for having succeeded in transmitting the last message from the commander of the fort, before its surrender", while soldiers from Mont Valérien were taking part in the battle of Fort de Vaux (1916). The fortress, home to the 8th Signal Regiment since 1913, had seen some units pass through since the beginning of the Third Republic, including the 30th Territorial Infantry and the 5th Engineers' telegraph sappers. The war, which mobilized many workers, forced some factories to close. To combat the consequences of unemployment, canteens run by the mayor's wife were set up on Rue du Bac and Rue du Mont-Valérien. At the Saint Joseph dispensary, Sister Claire also organized a soup kitchen. After the Battle of Charleroi, which drove people from northern France into exile, Suresnes welcomed 439 families (489 adults and 356 children). Faced with the advance of the Germans, some Suresnois even left the town for the provinces. On the other side of the Seine, Bagatelle and Longchamp were transformed into cattle pens. On September 30, the municipality set up an unemployment fund, financed by state subsidies, the town itself, and donations. The following year, faced with the impossibility of alleviating unemployment, the city issued bonds for a total of 175,000 francs, under the conditions laid down by the decree of December 15, 1914, which allowed them to be redeemed at maturity. File:La fabrication des obus de 75 - obus bruts.jpg|The manufacture of 75 shells at the Darracq factory in Suresnes: raw shells just after leaving the oven. File:La fabrication des obus de 75.jpg|The manufacture of 75 shells at the Darracq factory in Suresnes (filming). File:Fabrication des mitrailleuses à l'usine Darracq à Suresnes.jpg|Manufacturing of machine guns at the Darracq factory in Suresnes. From the end of March 1915, Zeppelin raids converged on Paris, the fort's defenses preventing them from bombing the factories in Suresnes and Puteaux. Suresnes nevertheless experienced several evenings when all the lights were switched off and its inhabitants waited in cellars. As trench warfare begins, many skilled workers are recalled from the front to keep the factories running and supply the army with munitions. The municipality distributed 30,000 liters of milk to the "Goutte de lait" charity, and 110 children were sent to summer camps in Châtillon-sur-Seine, Carnoy, Saint-Firmin, Ousson, and Saint-Brisson. With the war expected to drag on, the hospital was moved to 74 rue du Mont-Valérien, which the town hall had just bought, to free up the Jean-Macé school for pupils. During the first year of the war, the hospital cared for 350 patients. In 1916, the commune renamed one of its quays after General Joseph Gallieni and Rue de Neuilly Rue de Verdun, in tribute to the famous battle. With coal in short supply due to the German occupation of the coalfields, the gas company is forced to reduce its supplies. The town council also opened a 20,000-franc credit line to buy foodstuffs at low prices. At the end of 1917, the prefect also offered several thousand kilos of beans and lentils. At the end of 1916, however, the municipality had to introduce ration cards, first for sugar, then for bread and coal. The people of Suresnes had to go without meat for two days a week. A stock of coal collected by the town hall enabled it to be distributed to certain households, in exchange for individual cards issued by the authorities. In November 1917, the prefect wrote to the mayor, urging him to save firewood. and First Lady Edith Wilson dedicating the American Cemetery. In 1917, the United States entered the war. On September 28, the prefecture informed the mayor that the American authorities were looking for land west of Paris to create a cemetery for their fallen soldiers. The municipality offered them 3,600 m2 of the Tertre and Terres blanches communal property free of charge "for the burial of American soldiers who died for France". On June 29, 1918, the cemetery's surface area was increased to 8,300 m2, and on March 14, 1919, to 12,497 m2. On May 30, 1919, the cemetery was officially inaugurated in the presence of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, General Pershing, and Marshal Foch. A chapel with a peristyle of Doric columns was added in 1931-1932, designed by William and Geoffroy Plath. On either side of the central building, two pavilions are dedicated to each of the world wars. A mosaic fresco by Barry Faulkner, entitled La Paix, is preserved here. The cemetery contains the graves of 1,541 soldiers from the Great War and 24 from the Second World War. Bodies are buried vertically to save space. Every year on Memorial Day (May 30), a ceremony is held here in the presence of French and American authorities. While the basements of the Jean-Macé school were large and solid enough to shelter all its pupils, those from other schools had to find other shelters. On April 28, 1918, it was decided to install a siren in the bell tower of the town hall to warn Suresnois of any danger. The siren was useless, however, as no bombs hit the town. in the fort. There is also a military square of soldiers in the Voltaire cemetery. The armistice of November 11, 1918, is celebrated with joy. Suresnes historian Octave Seron recounts: "What joy, what celebration, what excitement! At eleven o'clock, after 1,561 days of war, the news spread that the armistice had been signed, that it was all over... instantly, workers poured out of factories, women out of workshops, employees out of offices, pupils out of schools, and crowds of people took to the streets in a frenzy of joy, embracing, singing and dancing — an unforgettable spectacle. Anyone who has not lived through those hours, who has not seen, as we did, the boulevards on the evening of November 11th, is unaware of the explosion of joy of an entire people freed from a bloody nightmare of four years, and intoxicated by the legitimate pride of victory". 523 Suresnois died in the war, their names inscribed on a monument in the Voltaire cemetery. A memorial has also been erected in the fortress. After the end of the war, the town welcomed many troops awaiting demobilization, including the 2nd Battalion of the 101st Infantry Regiment, whose men were housed in uninhabited houses on Rue du Mont-Valérien, and the infirmary of the 14th Infantry Battalion, in the basement of the salle des fêtes. On July 13, 1919, soldiers still in Suresnes for the following day's parade presented their flags to the municipality. On August 4, 1919, a 77 mm cannon was awarded to Suresnes as a “war prize and trophy,” although René Sordes did not know what had become of it, or even if it had been received. On July 29, 1919, Suresnes decided to allocate 100,000 francs to Brancourt-le-Grand (Aisne), which had been devastated by the war, and appointed six delegates to study the commune's needs. In June 1919, Mayor Victor Diederich was accused of having, during the war, obtained permission from the Schwob brothers to store coal in the former Meunier factory in exchange for 3,000 kg of fuel for the owner, even though the municipal council had not been consulted. This did not cause a scandal, but the mayor was blamed nonetheless. The municipal employees then went on strike, and on September 12, the mayor had a 14-article statute adopted. On November 21, he presided over his last council meeting, boasting of the town's prosperous finances and asserting that he had “always wanted to do his duty and to have always looked after the interests of the commune.” == The Seine at Suresnes ==

The Seine Until the French Revolution, while Suresnes was part of the territory of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the stretch of the Seine in front of the village belonged to the Abbey of Saint-Denis, known as the “prévôté de la Cuisine” (because its revenues were used to cover the monks' kitchen expenses). Properties, wharves, and boats on the islands paid fees to the provost. After the Revolution, the Seine became part of Paris to the east (Bois de Boulogne) and Suresnes to the west. In 1669, Saint-Denis surveyor Claude Lescuyer surveyed the islets in the Seine opposite Suresnes. He mentioned the existence of three islands that had now disappeared: l'île au Mair (or Mer), l'île de Suresnes (or du Bac), and Le Motteau (or Javeau de Suresnes), which lined the right bank of the river and had been given by the abbot of Saint-Denis to the bishop of Paris, who then ceded them to the abbey of Saint-Germain. As time went by, however, they were eventually welded to the neighboring riverbank. Île au Mair, 50 hectares in size, was located at the level of the Longchamp Racecourse, began to the south by a road leading to Boulogne, and ended at the Seine with a watering hole; an arm of the river separated it from the bank, and a ditch from the neighboring island to the north, Île de Suresnes. The latter also had a moat to the east. The ferryman's house and pier were located there, as was the Brisemiche fountain. The island covered 10 hectares, of which a farmer cultivated 12 arpents. Finally, Le Motteau was a small island located between the first two, measuring 2 arpents and 16 perches. René Sordes hypothesizes that the lakes and rivers to the west of the Bois de Boulogne are the heirs to these ancient ditches between the islands. A map of the Seine made by Father Jean Delagrive, the king's geographer, in 1731 mentions the existence of two bassiers, “river bottoms raised by sand and stones”: the Marinet (from the Saint-Cloud bridge to the Avre aqueduct) and the Muret (at the southernmost tip of the Ile de Puteaux). When the water level was low, the herds of Suresnes could cross over the bassiers, making the Seine fordable, to reach the island's pastures. , possible survival of the location of an island between Suresnes and the woods. A trade route since Antiquity, the Seine brought in several types of income. Fishing was done with fixed installations (gords) or on the water (lines, nets, nasses), with many Suresnois using this second method. In 1646, there were six gords on the Val d'Or descent. There were professional fishermen in Suresnes until 1870, supplying the “guinguettes” for their fried fish and the markets of Suresnes, Puteaux, and Saint-Cloud. In September 1805, the gords were destroyed. At a time when shipwrecks were frequent due to the river's overflowing waters, the people of Suresnes were also able to benefit from the wrecks. In the past, boats on the Seine were generally small and flat-bottomed, pulled by horses along towpaths. In Suresnes, they stopped at the "Port aux Vins" at the end of the eponymous street, carrying barrels of wine to the capital. Boats also stopped on the banks of the Val d'Or to drop off sheep from Paris or Champagne, which were then taken to the pastures on the hillsides around La Fouilleuse. The inhabitants of Suresnes could also see boats coming down the Seine carrying trees cut down in the forests of the Yonne and Côte-d'Or regions. File:Alfred Sisley 019.jpg|The Seine at Suresnes by Alfred Sisley (1879). File:Après la débâcle, la Seine au pont de Suresnes. Alfred Sisley, 1880. (20472006790).jpg|After the Debacle, the Seine at the Suresnes Bridge by Alfred Sisley (1880). File:Henri Rousseau - La Seine à Suresnesl.jpg|The Seine at Suresnes by Henri Rousseau. (engraving from 1860, with Mont Valérien at the top right) attract many Parisians on Sundays, who then quench their thirst in the guinguettes of Suresnes. From the 19th to the early 20th century, strollers, turfers, and lovers of guinguettes flocked to Suresnes. The most important were located along the quays: “Le Moulin Rose” (with a mill on the front and a ballroom that welcomed turfers and newlyweds), “Le Pavillon de Suresnes,” “Le Chalet du Cycle” (with an attraction, a small cable car running above the gardens, between two turrets) and finally “À la Belle Gabrielle,” created in 1861 and described as follows by the historical and commercial directory of Suresnes at the time: “Great restaurateur, magnificent gardens, groves, pavilions, chalets overlooking the banks of the Seine, luxury cuisine, exceptional value for money, fine wines, billiards, private pavilions for banquets and weddings.” Since the construction of the first dam, boat omnibuses have been making the journey to Paris easier. While the first company, founded in 1866, only crossed Paris, from the Pont National to the Auteuil viaduct, a second, the Compagnie des Hirondelles-Parisiennes, entrusted to Courtin, established a service from Charenton to Suresnes. A third was created in 1885 to cross the Marne. The three companies subsequently merged to form the Compagnie Générale des Bateaux Parisiens. Measuring 30 to 33 meters, these boats could carry 225 to 300 people. Benches were spread across the deck, and a cabin accessible via a staircase in the middle provided shelter from the rain, while a beach at the stern lined with a semicircular tub was accessible via a double staircase. Boats disembarked at Suresnes downstream from the bridge, on a flat-bottomed steel pontoon with a wooden floor, 15 meters long and 5 meters wide. A bell signaled departures and arrivals every hour, from around 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Traffic diminished as electric traction developed, while the weather sometimes interrupted navigation (fog, floods, frost, etc.). From 27 million in 1899, traffic fell to 16 million in 1913, as the company put itself on standby for the outbreak of war. With the war over, the company sold its equipment to the STCRP, but customers were few and far between, except in fine weather. The bateaux-mouches disappeared in 1933 (due to the tramway's traffic growth) and the equipment was sold in 1935, to the great displeasure of the cafés, guinguettes, and restaurants around the bridge, which lost some of their clientele. Until the Great War, there was also a small port downstream from the pier, with 59,100 tons of movement in 1899 (58,900 inbound, 202 outbound), to supply coal to the Suresnes dye works, as well as coal, sand, millstone, firewood, cast iron, and wine. It disappeared, like the port-aux-vins and port-aux-moutons before it. The port of Suresnes was also home to boats belonging to the Touring Club de France yacht club. Crossing the Seine Until the bridge was built, the only way to cross the Seine at Suresnes was by ferry, as the bridges at Saint-Cloud and Neuilly were quite far away. The origins of the ferry are unknown, but the earliest document mentioning it dates to 1590. Until the Revolution, the ferrymen belonged to a community of "corps de maître", controlled by the Provost of Merchants and Aldermen of Paris. They earned their income from the fields they cultivated in parallel, and above all from rights of passage, particularly for pilgrims on their way to Mont Valérien. Men, horses, animals, and carriages could cross the Seine in this way. It disappeared in 1837, replaced shortly afterward by the suspension bridge, as its operation had become unprofitable due to the disappearance of the Calvaire pilgrimage. After the first aborted project in 1829, a new study to build a suspension bridge was presented in 1837 by the Séguin brothers and approved by the Suresnes town council, which offered a subsidy of 20,000 francs. The bridge would be located at Rue de la Barre (later Rue du Pont), offset from the old ferry crossing (which ended at Rue du Bac). Work, costing 355,000 francs, was completed in August 1841, and the bridge was inaugurated in April 1842 in the presence of a musical band from the 39th Infantry Regiment, the municipality, and the clergy, the bridge being decorated with tricolor flags for the occasion. The bridge is 7 meters wide, with two one-meter sidewalks and three spans. Supported by two pillars, it is suspended by "a bundle of soft iron ribbons". Featuring rivets, it was considered very modern at the time. There is a toll, except for official agents. However, tolls sometimes gave rise to conflicts, as did the lack of clearance at Rue de la Barre. In September 1870, as the Prussians entered Paris, a fire broke out on the bridge: an alert later proved false, which had warned of the arrival of Uhlans. The people of Suresne piled furniture from nearby restaurants in front of the bridge and set it alight. In reality, it was a French general and his staff. Official documents, however, mention another version of the story, according to which the destruction of the bridge was decided by the general staff, as with all those providing access to Paris. The abutment on the right bank of the bridge was destroyed by an explosive charge laid by the engineers. Once the armistice was signed, German pontoon boat operators built a boat bridge in its place, through which Kaiser Wilhelm passed in 1871 on his way from Versailles. The bridge was removed after the Germans left, leaving Suresnes isolated. As the Versailles government prepared to suppress the Commune, a new boat bridge was built by artillery and engineers. Later, the Pont de Bateaux was again removed and reinstalled with a guardrail, supervised by an engineering post paid for by the Paris municipality. On July 31, 1871, a bailiff found that the suspension bridge could not be repaired. The authorities decided to build an iron bridge on its site, like the one at Courbevoie. The Suresnes municipal council approved the project on February 20, 1872, voting to borrow 100,000 francs. Engineer Legrand was in charge of the design, and work began between April 1873 and August 1874. It comprises three arches, two 44-metre-long at either end and one 33-metre-long in the middle. The bridge is supported by two fir-tree pillars held together by a concrete mass cast in a caisson. Clad in exposed stone from the Château-Landon quarries, the bridge has a 7.5-metre-wide carriageway bordered by two 1.75-metre sidewalks. It was opened to traffic in November 1874, marking the end of the boat bridge. However, the metal bridge soon proved to be too small, especially “on race and review days, the crowds are so great that people crash into it,” as General Councillor Feron observed. The construction of the Bois de Boulogne railroad, which runs through the area, added to the difficulties. For 360,000 francs, with Paris and Suresnes each contributing 50,000 francs, the road was widened between June 1897 and 1901, increasing the carriageway to 11 meters and the sidewalks to 3.275 meters. Crozel was entrusted with the works; the Mazières factories in Bourges with the steel structure; Jean-Camille Formigé with the studies for the bridge ornaments; and the sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet with the griffins decorating the candelabras. The entrance to the bridge from the Bois de Boulogne was also redesigned. However, the octroi station at the entrance gate caused numerous traffic jams, as motorists had to declare the fuel in their tanks and present green paper for inspection on entering and leaving Paris. Even when enlarged, the bridge was quickly criticized as dangerous for both traffic and navigation, with barges hitting its left pier at high water. In addition, traffic along the quay, perpendicular to the bridge, made it difficult for cars to reach the Boulevard de Versailles. In 1936, at the suggestion of Mayor Henri Sellier, the Seine General Council decided to divert the boulevard de Versailles and build a new bridge. The new bridge had to be located upstream of the one to be demolished, and the boulevard had to be aligned accordingly. The axis of the new bridge was also to connect with the road leading to Porte Maillot, at an angle of 8 degrees to the river. The bridge would now also overhang the Quai Gallieni, which would therefore be located underneath it, to ease traffic flow; access ramps would be provided to reach the Quai Gallieni. Construction began in 1938, was interrupted by the war, and was completed between 1947 and 1950. It was first carried out by Grands Travaux de Marseille and the Dayde company, then, after the Second World War, by Ponts et Chaussées engineers from the Seine department and the Billiard company. For the occasion, the entrance to the new bridge at Boulevard de Versailles, now Boulevard Henri-Sellier, was modified, with a triangle of buildings demolished to allow alignment. The old bridge was demolished. The classic cantilever bridge is 160 meters long, divided into three spans (40, 80, and 40 meters), with a 20-meter carriageway and two 5-meter sidewalks. It is supported by two concrete piers and abutments of the same material. The departments of Paris and Suresnes bore expenses. This construction, says René Sordes, "wiped out the liveliest part of Suresnes, between Rue du Pont and the Coty factory", referring to the many guinguettes that populated the area. The project cost around 1,100 million francs. Barrages and floodgates For a long time, the Seine was unnavigable for part of the year, in winter due to ice or flooding, and in summer due to drought. The construction of dams and locks ended this situation. In 1861, Prefect Haussmann issued an inquiry to construct a dam at Suresnes; the decree of December 11, 1864, ordered the construction of a lock and a fixed spillway, which was completed around 1869. The new structure raised the water level between Paris and Suresnes by 2 meters, thereby increasing barge traffic. On April 6, 1878, a law was passed to carry out major works to improve navigation between Paris and Rouen. The lock was then doubled, with work taking place between 1880 and 1885. It now has a four meters draught. A new section was built in 1972. Today, the three dams and locks are fully automated, handling some 60 boats a day and 7 million tons of goods a year. == Between the wars: Henri Sellier municipality ==

Elections , mayor from 1919 to 1941. After the war, the “National Bloc” was formed in France, led by war veterans. In the municipal elections of November 1919, Henri Sellier and nine Bloc members were elected in the first round. He took office on December 10 and was consistently re-elected thereafter, in 1925 in the first round on the "Bloc des ouvriers et des employés pour la défense des intérêts communaux" (Workers' and employees' bloc for the defense of communal interests) list, by 2,100 votes to Victor Diederich's 1,250, the Communist list's 1,000 and the Radical list's 200. This bloc included non-ideological republicans, “concerned with good municipal management” writes René Sordes, which contributed to Henri Sellier's electoral success outside the socialist base, even though he was a member of the SFIO. Elected General Councillor for the Seine in 1912, Henri Sellier took advantage of the December 21 law passed the same year, which provided for the establishment of public low-cost housing offices (''Offices publics d'habitation à bon marché - HBM). In 1914, he presented a proposal to create the Office départemental des habitations à bon marché'', which was adopted by the General Council on July 1 and approved by ministerial decree on July 18, 1915, with an endowment of 15,000 francs. Henri Sellier was appointed Managing Director. Preparing for the future, during the war, he acquired 372 hectares of land for the Office, on which the housing estates of Stains, Champigny-sur-Marne, Le Plessis-Robinson, Châtenay-Malabry, and Suresnes were built. From 1916 to 1920, he was rapporteur for the departmental budget. By the time he was elected mayor in 1919, he already had a vast, coherent project combining town planning, social housing, education, and hygiene to develop the Paris suburbs, particularly in favor of the working class. Garden City (south-western plateau) At this time, Suresnes' industrialization, the development of factories along its quays and villas on its hillsides, and the increase in its population made it one of the most important towns in the inner suburbs. Like other neighboring towns (Boulogne-Billancourt, Clichy, Levallois-Perret, and Puteaux), Suresnes has an Italian working-class diaspora. Until then, workers had often lived in the dilapidated houses of the old village, and the need to build modern, hygienic dwellings was growing. The decree of March 21, 1919, had declared the expropriation of the land purchased by Henri Sellier in the Plaine de la Fouilleuse, a former imperial farm, to be in the public interest for the benefit of the HBM du département de la Seine, an airy plateau located at the foot of Mont Valérien, but sparsely built (it is home to cereal fields) In 1929, the municipal council of Rueil-Malmaison and the residents concerned agreed that Suresnes should annex part of the area where the garden city would be built. The Chamber of Deputies approved the change on December 19, 1931, and the Senate on May 15, 1932. In April 1929, a statue of Jean Jaurès by sculptor Paul Ducuing and foundryman Gustave Leblanc-Barbedienne was installed in the center of the square on Avenue Édouard-Vaillant (since moved along the school complex). By 1935, 1,600 homes had been built, and 900 were still under construction. Laundries and shower baths were also built, as well as a post office at the Croix-du-Roy crossroads, which in 1937 became an annex of the town hall. Finally, a village hall was built. File:École avenue Édouard-Vaillant Suresnes 2.jpg|School on Avenue Édouard-Vaillant, with a statue of Jean Jaurès. File:École Maternelle Wilson - Suresnes (FR92) - 2023-09-09 - 1.jpg|Wilson Kindergarten. File:9 bd Aristide Briand College Henri Sellier Suresnes.jpg|Henri-Sellier College, former Aristide-Briand school group. File:Résidence Locarno Suresnes.jpg|Locarno Residence. The choice of street names for the garden city was based on the following perspective, as expressed by the mayor at the city council meeting of March 22, 1932: “The municipality wished to pay tribute to the thinkers and statesmen of all religions and nationalities who, over the centuries up to the present tragic era, have held out to humanity the torch that should guide it towards definitive peace and the fraternity of peoples.” Sully, Grotius, William Penn, Father de Saint-Pierre, Romain Rolland, Jean Jaurès, Léon Bourgeois, d'Estournelle de Constant, Woodrow Wilson, Frank Billings Kellogg, Louis Loucheur (many Suresnois benefited from his law to build pavilions) and Gustav Stresemann. Henri Sellier adds in his speech that these are modest tributes, "devoid of official pomp and circumstance. No minister will come to deliver a harangue laboriously crafted from traditional platitudes." Indeed, for most of these projects, Henri Sellier never organized a solemn inauguration attended by a host of VIPs. He also decided to name certain streets after plants and flowers and to retain the historic name of La Fouilleuse, as well as that of the Croix-du-Roy crossroads, a term by which “it has been known for centuries,” thus respecting the heritage of Suresnes. This is an ancient locality where a cross once stood, and which has been shown on maps since 1669. According to tradition, it was erected in the presence of François I, but its earliest traces date to 1490. In 1919, Suresnes parish priest Patrice Flynn (who became bishop of Nevers in 1932) planned to create a place of pilgrimage to the Virgin Mary in the town. He therefore acquired a plot of land on the slopes of the southwestern plateau, at the corner of Chemin des Hoquettes and Rue des Raguidelles (the latter was lined with orchards until the First World War). The project was named Notre-Dame de la Salette church: designed by architect Pierre Sardou, it featured a large nave topped by a bell tower, with an unobstructed view of the Sacré-Coeur Basilica in Paris. Initially, the church was to feature an octagonal bell tower, but the war and financial problems prevented its completion. After its two main construction phases (1919-1929 and 1949-1958), the garden city comprises 3,300 housing units. This is one of the last agricultural areas in Suresnes. On the less exposed northern plateau, villas have been springing up above the railroad for some time, but at a good distance from Nanterre, where ragpickers had settled. Until the beginning of the 20th century, there were a few middle-class residences and boarding houses, as well as vineyards (until 1953) and orchards. The inhabitants of this plateau generally worked in Paris. Still, they were fairly isolated from the center of Suresnes, as the 1,500-meter embankment offered no pathway across the line, except at the ends or via a footbridge impassable to cars. While Victor Diederich had planned to build a modest school given the sparse population, Henri Sellier foresaw the rapid development of the plateau. Puteaux had created a housing development on the heights of its cemetery, and the Putéolian schools were a long way from it. The two municipalities therefore agreed that the school to be built on the northern plateau of Suresnes would accept 80% of Puteaux pupils, in exchange for a subsidy. In July 1920, architect Maurice Payret-Dortail was commissioned to build a school on a 12,000 m² plot of land between Rue Voltaire, Chemin des Cherchevets, and Rue de la Liberté, at a cost of around 15 million francs, financed largely by the State and the département. The school complex includes a nursery school, girls' and boys' elementary school, an upper elementary school for boys to prepare for the secretarial, industrial, and administrative professions, and a practical school of commerce and industry to train employees and skilled workers. The school was inaugurated on October 1, 1927, and was named after its architect, Maurice Payret-Dortail; Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš in 1939; and physicist Paul Langevin in 1948. Until 1933, the school also offered a pre-apprenticeship course for girls to prepare them for the fashion and sewing trades. The establishment also includes a swimming pool with shower baths (the walls of which are covered in gilded ceramics, with a statue of a woman dominating the pool). This gymnasium doubles as a party hall and cinema, a doctor's surgery, a physics amphitheater, a chemistry laboratory, a wood and ironworking workshop, a large refectory with kitchens, and an outdoor sports track. The school is very modern, with an emphasis on air and light, based on the Anglo-Saxon campus model, and respecting the site's slopes. Recent techniques are used (seamless parquet flooring, ceramics, automatic ventilation, diffused light, etc.). Brick and enamel are the dominant materials. Several plaques are engraved on the façade, including the motto of Suresnes and the ideology of this educational project: “This school group, where the love of France, Humanity, and the Homeland is taught, was built in 1927.” Pupils range in age from 2 to 18. However, the school quickly outgrew its capacity: in its first year, it took in 22 classes instead of the planned 17. 125 Suresnois were expected to study there, but in the end, 600 did. Over time, the number of Putéoliens declined. In addition, the school had no upper elementary school for girls. So, 350 meters from the school, the commune built a school on two properties purchased from private owners in 1920 and 1931. The upper elementary school was later enlarged by the architect Demay, who added commercial teaching. Like the Payret-Dortail school, this one took hygiene into account and made the most of the gardens of the former houses. It later became a high school for girls and is now the Collège Émile-Zola. The municipality also took the opportunity to rehabilitate the surrounding roads to improve traffic flow. At the time, Nanterre had two enclaves on the northern plateau, the first between Rue de la Liberté and Rue des Parigot, the second between Rue des Chênes and the crossroads with Rue des Bas-Roger and route Charles-X. In January 1929, a resident, acting as spokesman for 155 signatories, asked for the area to be annexed to Suresnes, a decision approved by both municipal councils and authorized by prefectural decree on April 27, 1929. This was the fourth annexation of Suresnes since 1792, after Pas-Saint-Maurice, Mont Valérien, and Rueil-Malmaison. In 1923, the private housing estate known as the "English Village" was built on Rue Diderot, Rue du Bac, Avenue des Conférences, and Avenue de la Belle-Gabrielle (in the historic town center), near the quayside, to exacting specifications. It was built on the site of the former Meunier dye works. In 1926, the Mont Valérien fort was stripped of some of its military prerogatives, and the surrounding area, hitherto non ædificandi, lost this character. Henri Sellier had foreseen this requalification and asked the Seine General Council to organize these 10 hectares of land for the public, “which had the most marvelous view of Paris.” A decree dated February 17, 1927, approved the plans. These included the Fécheray heights and the foot of the American cemetery. Here, all that remained of the Château des Landes was an old orangery, home to Alice Hoffmann, born Green, niece (or cousin, depending on the source) of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The park had preserved a fountain known as the Piron fountain (named after an 18th-century Suresnois, unrelated to the famous poet). On July 7, 1928, the estate was encumbered by a servitude, prompting the owner to protest, using her connections or recalling her humanitarian action during the First World War, but to no avail. On March 14, 1934, the department declared the acquisition to be in the public interest. However, the Landes farm, located on the property, continued to supply Suresnois with milk until 1939. Today, this land forms the Parc des Landes. The department created several paths around the fort and, further down, the Fécheray terrace was built in 1935: a tree-lined promenade with benches and an unobstructed view of the capital. Henri Sellier even considered using the fort's platform as an airfield, but the project never came to fruition. To protect the mountain site, regulations were enacted to limit the height of buildings on the southern plateau. In 1938, the department donated the land it had developed to Suresnes. In April 1939, Henri Sellier decided to rename part of the Rue du Mont-Valérien after President Roosevelt. He had a plaque installed in his honor on the corner of Rue Carnot on May 28, 1940: "Apostle of humanity / Champion of democracy / Savior of peace". The plaque no longer exists. The Second World War interrupted some of Henri Sellier's plans. He planned to build a kindergarten on the southern plateau in the Couvaloux area, Rue de la République, but the conflict put an end to this project. Begun in 1925, a development plan for the Paris region calls for the quay between Suresnes and Puteaux to be widened to 16 meters, the quay between Suresnes and Saint-Cloud to be widened to 20 meters, the Boulevard de Versailles to be widened to 30 meters, the Boulevard Washington to be widened to 20 meters, including 10 meters in the non-ædificandi zone, and lastly, Rue du Mont-Valérien at 10 meters, with a new road starting at the crossroads between Rue Carnot and Rue Merlin-de-Thionville and ending at the entrance to the bridge, thus creating a major new thoroughfare from the bridge to Mont-Valérien, and facilitating traffic flow from Nanterre. To achieve this, the old Saint-Leufroy district, with its narrow streets and cellars, had to be demolished, as did the Jules-Ferry school. A property in Rue Desbassayns-de-Richemont, formerly owned by the farmer-general Parseval de Frileuse, was purchased for the project. Still, the war also indefinitely postponed its demolition, and the building became a retirement home. Sensing that the factories might one day leave Suresnes, either by choice or as a result of the “decentralization of war industry,” Henri Sellier also planned to create a welcoming square with lawns lined with stores and restaurants at the exit of the bridge, in a bid to revive the tradition of Suresnes guinguettes, which were gradually disappearing. Following a law passed in 1919, the law of July 19, 1924, required communes to draw up a development and expansion plan. As far back as 1920, the General Council had already prepared projects in line with Henri Sellier's thinking: “It is obvious that a development plan for a suburban commune can only have rational formulas in conjunction with those of neighboring communes.” For Suresnes, this concerns its relations with Saint-Cloud, Rueil, Nanterre and Puteaux. However, this is not intended to call into question the identity of each Suresnes district, marked by geography (industrial near the Seine, residential on the hillsides). In the words of Henri Sellier, the aim is “less to violate than to guide an evolution that has already begun.” The result, however, was the disappearance of old winegrowers' houses and collective dwellings on either side of the bridge, from the Seine to the town hall, along Rue du Mont-Valérien and Rue de la République. A development plan was adopted by the city council on October 30, 1927, confirming old ideas: no longer tolerate unhealthy or inconvenient businesses in the collective housing zone, and regulate building heights to ensure that each side of the street receives plenty of sunlight. In the industrial zone, by contrast, the project calls for the demolition of the remaining dwellings, except where necessary (e.g., for security guards). Finally, in the residential zone, only single-family homes and retail outlets would be tolerated, with dwellings covering a maximum of 50% of each property and not exceeding a certain height to allow for calm, light, and air circulation, and the development of gardens. Hygiene and inter-communal integration When it comes to hygiene, the municipality is heavily involved. As early as 1907, it had drawn up sanitary regulations, but no one was in charge of monitoring them. Worse still, its archives on the subject were discarded in 1918. In June 1921, Henri Sellier set up a hygiene office, applying the law of February 15, 1902, for municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants. Its remit included monitoring and surveillance of contagious diseases and vaccinations, surveillance of garrisons in conjunction with the Police Headquarters, creating a file for each building to monitor sanitation and sewage, and permanent medical inspection of schools. The Seine department and the State provide a subsidy. The office also provided services for visiting nurses and future social workers. Nurses were also installed in the two schools of the time, Jules-Ferry and Jean-Macé, and later in the new Plateaux schools. Victor Diederich had set up a nursery, but Henri Sellier felt it was more akin to a “children's slaughterhouse.” So in 1924, he decided to build a new nursery and medical dispensary. Land was acquired near the town hall, where the dispensary (now the Raymond-Burgos Medical Center) was built in 1931. It houses surgery, otorhinolaryngology, ophthalmology, neuropsychiatry, and radiology departments. That same year, industrialist Alexandre Darracq bequeathed two million francs to the commune. The sum financed the construction of the nursery, located behind the dispensary, along a street named after him. René Sordes notes that the construction of these buildings placed Suresnes in the vanguard of the hygienic policies of the time: “Suresnes was by far one of the municipalities with the lowest infant and tuberculosis mortality rates.” On his death in 1935, Jean-Auguste Brun bequeathed his house and garden at 9 Rue des Verjus to the commune, on condition that it be converted into a retirement home or cultural center for the inhabitants of the northern plateau. Henri Sellier planned to build a hospice there, and as Mayor of Suresnes and Minister of Public Health, he applied for a 50% subsidy, although the war delayed the project. The lane between Rue du Fécheray and Rue de Bellevue was renamed after M. Brun. , the first large hospital built in Île-de-France for the middle classes. In 1926, the American Bernard Flursheim (in charge of reorganizing the American Red Cross and distributing medical supplies in Europe) asked Senator Justin Godart to set up a clinic for the middle classes in the Paris region, modeled on the one in Boston. Marshal Foch's widow agreed to lend her name to the project. The authorities acquired the former Worth property, and the foundation stone for the hospital was laid on March 20, 1931—the initial project called for 350 beds, with architect M. Fouque in charge. The Foch Foundation had to borrow eight million francs to finance the work, with the commune of Suresnes providing a guarantee for the annuity payments. At the start of the Second World War, the hospital was requisitioned by the French army, then occupied by the Nazis, only to be reopened in 1950. As he did with the SFIO, Henri Sellier criticized the maintenance of the Suresnes octroi, which he considered a bad legacy of the Middle Ages. However, as the population of Suresnes grew to 20,000 in the early 1920s, the octroi had to change zone, as a decree allowed for an increase in its rate. Henri Sellier had the municipal council vote to increase the octroi tax to boost the commune's finances. In September 1935, however, the mayor pointed out to the government that the octroi system led to tedious checks on cars, recalling a proposal made in January 1933 to standardize the octroi for the Gennevilliers peninsula, which would have resulted in only the south-western limits of Suresnes being monitored. The decree of October 30, 1935, authorized communes to join together in a syndicate. In 1937, it united Suresnes and Puteaux, eliminating the octroi between the two towns, followed the following year by Asnières, Colombes, Rueil, and Villeneuve-la-Garenne. The decree of March 27, 1939, completed this action by creating the Syndicat des Communes de la Région Parisienne (Union of Municipalities of the Paris Region) for the granting. This policy of creating syndicates was coupled with financial equalization measures for certain compulsory expenses and for suburban municipal staff, who now had the same status. Sports and leisure The 1920s A municipal office also federates associations for popular education. Vocational courses were set up to train and hone workers' skills. Around 1930, communal evenings were even organized, with theatrical outings, educational visits, and lectures. Music and rhythmic dance schools were also set up. Le patrimoine laïque organized nature excursions for teenagers. At 2 Boulevard de Versailles, the municipality acquired the former building housing the Café Ribard (on the corner of rue du Pont) and, in 1931, set up a space on the second floor to accommodate all these associations for their receptions, exhibitions, and general meetings. On May 27, 1938, the Albert-Thomas Center was inaugurated in Garden City. To carry out all these projects, Henri Sellier's municipality needed a great deal of funding, which led some Suresnois to criticize him, either out of opposition or out of concern for good management. Henri Sellier responded to these criticisms by pointing out that communes did not have the capital to make investments, and, for example, in 1927, an expenditure of 200 million francs at the time cost only one-twentieth of this, thanks to subsidies from the State or the General Council. In 1935, despite the devaluation of the franc and heavy charges, he added that Suresnes ranked only 39th out of 79 Paris suburbs in terms of taxation. The situation worsened after this date due to unemployment, falling growth, and declining octroi revenues, leading to the postponement of certain projects. The mayor covered the deficits with loans. René Sordes is an advocate of long-term investment management for the commune. Festivities The Festivities Committee, created in 1920, aims to “offer the people of Suresnes truly interesting festivities and celebrations, attracting the greatest possible number of visitors to our town by enabling them to attend modern artistic and sporting events of the highest taste,” notes the director of the municipal library, E. Gibbon, recalling the exceptional location and pleasant setting of Suresnes, between the hillsides and the Seine, which had long attracted Parisians. In May 1926, after a grand ball, the people of Suresnes elected a "muse" for the garden city. A funfair, sports, and water sports activities were held throughout the month, in the presence of the free commune of Montmartre and the singers of "La Vache enragée" for the Reines de Paris parade. A fair exhibition is also organized, with stands showcasing the town's activities, from agriculture to commerce and industry. Octave Seron, director of the Cours complémentaire, and collector Xavier Granoux displayed old Suresnes memorabilia with the help of many celebrities. It was a success, leading to the creation of the Société Historique et Artistique de Suresnes (Suresnes Historical and Artistic Society) on July 12, 1926, whose mission, writes René Sordes, is "to organize a permanent museum and to research all things of interest to local history". Octave Seron was its first president. A few years later, it dropped the qualifier "artistic", and the ''Société des Artisans d'art de Suresnes'' (Suresnes Society of Art Craftsmen) became a separate institution. The following year, still in May, the muse was elected at La Belle Cycliste, at the junction of Rue des Carrières and Boulevard Henri-Sellier, an establishment destroyed by fire shortly afterward. The crowning ceremony takes place on Place du Marché, in the presence of local associations, the Mimi Pinson Conservatory, and its creator Gustave Charpentier. In July, a parade of thirteen floats decorated by local associations is held, with the Historical Society presenting, for example, one, the “Vieille Maison suresnoise,” featuring a hearth and a wine press, with old winegrowers in traditional costume, and another, the “Guinguette,” where bohemians and grisettes dance and sing under an arbor. The Historical Society also organizes a photography competition, "Old and New", which forms the basis of its iconographic collection. Festivities include a music festival, cycling, and pedestrian races, an "international motorboat meeting", and a fishing competition. In 1928, the theme was Charles Perrault's tercentenary and the grandparents' and grandchildren's party. In 1931, the festivities ran from June to September, with the crowning of the Muse featuring performances of old musical tunes in the presence of 400 people. For the occasion, the Comité des fêtes and the Société historique help evoke the history of Suresnes by erecting the towers of the old "''Porte de Dessus-l'Eau" at the beginning of Rue du Pont''; a well of love is also reinstalled, along with old houses and poternes in the Saint-Leufroy district. Gustave Charpentier also staged a candlelit performance of Dancourt's 18th-century play Les vendanges de Suresnes. In July, a funfair celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the secular school, while a parade of “cars through the ages” takes to the streets of the town, in memory of Fernand Forest. There are also "''grandes fêtes de l'eau''" (spear jousts, swimming and rowing championships from France and twenty European countries), balloon releases, night parties, fireworks, and illuminated boats. The 1930s In the 1930s, there were three soccer clubs in Suresnes: the White Harriers, founded by the British Paul Finch, and M. Porteron's FCS (Football Club suresnois), which played in the first division, reached the round of 32 in the Coupe de France and won the Coupe de Paris; the latter team trained on the site of today's Maurice-Hubert stadium, on land rented from farmers. The FCS disappeared in 1939, due to the outbreak of World War II. In 1936, Henri Sigogneau founded Jeunesse Sportive de Suresnes, champions of Paris FSGT in 1937-1938, but disbanded in 1942 after joining the FFF and winning the Coupe du Matin the same year. The team played at Bagatelle. In 1933, the Suresnes Sports Nautiques association was created, with swimmers training in the Seine from a barge in summer and in a pool in a garage in Levallois in winter. Swimming in the Seine was banned in 1961, and it wasn't until 1968 that members of the association could once again swim in Suresnes, in the new Raguidelles pool. On February 6, 1934, a demonstration took place in Paris, raising fears of an overthrow of the Republican regime. A major popular protest demonstration took place in Suresnes, one of several organized across the country. In 1934, several cabs joined forces to take passengers from Porte Maillot to Place de la Paix. The 1934-1935 festivities were not on the same scale as the previous ones. However, they did see the final adoption of the town's coat of arms, designed by the Société historique using elements of the flag that Bougault had made for the Garde Nationale in 1789. The city council unanimously adopted the new coat of arms on June 18, 1935. The coat of arms reads as follows: "Azure a cross gules, charged in the heart with an octagonal shield argent charged with the letters S and L or [for Saint Leufroy], and cantoned by four fleurs-de-lys or arranged in saltire and often towards the abyss of the angles of the shield". The motto reads: "''Nul ne sorti de Surenne qui souvent n'y revienne''" (No one leaves Surenne who doesn't often come back). In 1962, the arms were modified, the fleurs-de-lys becoming "en pal" and the municipality chose a reproduction of Bougault's seal for its official papers. wrote, following the boats passing on the river from his belvedere in Meudon: "From my attic, I can see her name, her number, her laundry to dry, her man at the helm... I point, the way she takes the arch of Issy, the bridge... you're passionate, you're not... you're gifted for the movements of ports, rafts, dock traffic, and dams [...] Look at this panorama! The hills, Longchamp, the grandstands, Suresnes, the loops of the Seine... two... three loops... at the bridge, right up against it, Renault's island, the last clump of pines, at the tip". In Henri Calet's La Belle Lurette (1935), the narrator thinks of a friend who had committed suicide, and whose body had been fished out of the sea between Suresnes and Puteaux, helping to build the dark imagination of the Parisian suburbs. As for Raymond Queneau, he has one of his characters say in Loin de Rueil (1944) that the inhabitants of this town don't go to Paris, but prefer to go to Suresnes for moules-frites. René Sordes concludes these more than a thousand years of municipal history with a few words about the future: “Suresnes was once a charming end of the world, where people came to be entertained or to rest; nowadays, people pass through as quickly as possible. And yet the foliage of the Bois de Boulogne, the Seine, and its magnificent waterway, the charming banks of the river, Mont Valérien, and its crown of greenery make it one of the most pleasant districts in Greater Paris. Let's hope that urban planners will take this into account when drawing up their projects, and allow a few picturesque cabarets, welcoming restaurants, and even pleasant hotels to survive or be reborn. Then people will once again be able to stop off in our town, and the charming old saying 'No one leaves Surenne who doesn't often come back' will remain our motto despite everything." == World War II ==

Drôle de guerre and German settlement On August 24–26, 1939, the government ordered the men to rejoin their regiments amid rising tensions. On the 28th, the Suresnes municipality began preparations for the exodus of the town's children to the provinces, which began two days later, to the Sarthe, a place designated by the prefecture but against the advice of Henri Sellier, who protested on June 13, 1940, against “the anarchy and lack of common sense that characterized the evacuation of the children,” even though the town already had a colony in the Nièvre. While the majority of young Suresnois joined the Sarthe, a group from the outdoor school was sent to the Henri-Sellier colony in Hossegor. Before the outbreak of the war, the Ministry of the Interior had set up the so-called “passive defense” organization, the aim of which was to entrust volunteers with the services normally provided by the Police Headquarters, which would be mobilized by other issues and thus dispersed. This service works in coordination with the fire department. This includes organizing and monitoring shelters, encouraging people to go there, distributing protective equipment such as gas masks, operating darkening lights, calling for help in the event of a serious incident, and assisting with clearance after destruction. Suresnes was then divided into twenty "îlots", each headed by a civic guard, one of whom died during the first bombardment to hit the town. However, the guards had few resources and limited room for maneuvering during the Occupation, as the Germans were wary of them. At the Liberation, they organized police operations in conjunction with the FFI-FTP. In May 1940, the Germans invaded France, prompting numerous air alerts. On May 20, a bus bound for Normandy from Chimay passes through Suresnes, loaded with refugees. 16 ambulances also took many wounded to the Foch hospital. The town council had flown the Belgian flag over the town hall, but “following the betrayal of King Leopold III” (who decided to surrender after the dazzling German breakthrough into Belgium), recounts Jean Becker, who is finishing René Sordes' book, the municipality lowered it to half-mast. On June 3, 28 bombs fell on Suresnes, the sirens going off ten minutes after the explosions. Two civilians and an island guard perished, and many houses were destroyed or damaged, including the town hall (doors, windows, and partitions were ripped out, and the glass roof over the central staircase was destroyed). This led to its temporary relocation to the Jules-Ferry school, where the unemployment, prisoner, and food services (ration cards) were particularly busy during the conflict. The marriage hall was moved to the Justice of the Peace auditorium. It wasn't until 1945 that the town hall returned to its original location. On June 24, at 9:30 a.m., the first German presence appeared in the form of a sidecar arriving via Rue du Bac. The pavilions surrounding the fort were occupied, as was the Radiotechnique building on Rue de Verdun. A few days later, the authorities asked Henri Sellier to proceed with requisitions, in particular of the pavilions and buildings in ''Rue de l'Hippodrome, Rue de Montretout, Rue de la Criolla, Rue de la Tuilerie, Rue du Fécheray, Rue du Bel-Air, and Rue de Bellevue. The mayor must also accompany two German generals to open the fort and the meteorological service premises. On July 21, German formations 22-499 and 25-501 arrived in Suresnes, along with the Kommandantur, and took up residence at 19 Rue Pierre-Dupont, in a factory that used to print race tickets (and which in the 1960s housed the Blanchet perfumery). The training offices were located at 33 Rue Pierre-Dupont and 43 Boulevard de Versailles in the municipal library. As for the German horses, they were housed on Rue de Verdun'', in the stables of the Watelet company. (photo from 2007). A German colonel seized airline plans from the offices of the Compagnie Aérienne Française on Rue de Nanterre (now ''Rue Honoré-d'Estienne-d'Orves), where he had worked before the war. He returned several times, notably during the African campaign. In August, the Bois de Boulogne guards are evicted from their accommodation and relocated. Hauptmann von Furstemberg is appointed commander of the Suresnes square. His lodgings were at 17 Rue Desbassyns-de-Richemont'', then transferred to no. 48 for an annual rent of 16,000 francs, after Major Hafner had replaced him. The Suresnes Kommandantur was solely responsible for maintaining law and order, with administrative matters (requisitioning buildings, contractors, etc.) devolved to the Courbevoie Kommandantur, headed by Hauptmann Heindel. The town was responsible for billeting German troops at the Saint-Cloud Racecourse, where light artillery and SS formations were stationed, as well as a Luftwaffe staff company and a radiotelegraphic intelligence unit. The formations were able to hire Suresnois for quartermaster jobs (laborers, cooks, etc.), controlled and paid by the town hall, with passes issued by the army. A German officer, whose grandfather had fought in the 1870-1871 war, was concerned about finding out what had become of the Valérie artillery piece and managed to have it repatriated to Berlin. In June 1940, the German health services moved into the Foch hospital, where they remained until January 1944, when they were transferred to the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches, which was less likely to be bombed. The Garches staff then came to work at the Suresnes hospital. As the white hospital was particularly visible, the Germans had it repainted green by their camouflage services. Exterior ladders were also installed at the windows to enable rapid evacuation of the building. During the war, the Foch Foundation received several million francs in compensation for the occupation of the buildings. The writer Ernst Jünger was treated there in 1942. From August onwards, the Mont Valérien fort was successively occupied by various units (infantry, DCA, artillery, and Luftwaffe), who were only passing through. At Val d'Or, the garage of the former Compagnie du chemin de fer du bois de Boulogne (Bois de Boulogne Railway Company) was occupied by motorized troops, who were then sent to the Russian front on May 30, 1941. Occupation Food shortages began in April 1940, but it was not until October that ration cards were introduced. Passenger rail transport, suspended at the start of the Occupation, did not resume until July 1, 1941, with only one train per hour. Bus 44 A (Cité-jardin-Pont-de-Neuilly) resumed service earlier, on August 30, 1940. With gasoline in short supply, Suresnois resorted to alternative fuels, installing coal-fired gas generators on utility vehicles. Gas stored in roof-mounted balloons enabled buses to run on municipal gas. Horse-drawn carriages and bicycles are once again widely used. There is now only one postal delivery a day. In October 1940, Solidarité suresnoise, an association under the patronage of Secours National, was set up to distribute aid. A month later, it was helping 5,000 unemployed people and distributing 8,000 relief items. At the same time, 600 Suresnois were prisoners of war, and 200 families had taken refuge in the city. While some households were able to resort to the black market, move to the countryside, or rely on relatives there, this created an imbalance for the less well-off, prompting Solidarité to organize occasional food distributions. On May 20, 1941, Henri Sellier was dismissed by Vichy, the decree signed by Admiral François Darlan stating that he had “shown manifest hostility to the work of national renewal.” In his office, the mayor had posted this document, adding a quotation from Maximilien de Robespierre: “Hatred of the people's enemies is the reward of good citizens.” On June 5, 1941, Louis Cucuat, Inspector General of Administrative and Financial Services at the Seine Prefecture, was appointed mayor by ministerial decree. On June 22, Henri Sellier was arrested and interned at Compiègne, before being released and returning to Suresnes on July 17. But these events, and the fear of further arrest, affected his health. On November 1, 1943, he suffered an attack of hemiplegia and died on November 24. He is buried in the Carnot cemetery. In 1941, the Germans chose Mont Valérien to execute resistance fighters in a clearing in the forest surrounding the fortress. On the eve of their death, some waited in the chapel of the former Château de Forbin-Janson, which still bears graffiti of the condemned on its walls. German priest Franz Stock assists those condemned to death. On August 29, Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves and his companions were among the first martyrs of the Resistance to be killed there. Five students from the Buffon High School were also executed there on February 8, 1943. Their bodies were then sent to cemeteries in the Paris suburbs, particularly Ivry-sur-Seine. Mont Valérien was a hotbed of the French Resistance and saw the execution of some 1,000 resistance fighters until 1944. Rue Georges-Appay and Rue Marcel-Monge (Resistance fighters living in Suresnes, shot on August 11, 1942), Rue Claude-Burgod (drawing teacher at Suresnes technical college from 1931 to 1942, resistance fighter deported to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he died on March 21, 1945), Rue Émilien-Collin (Suresnes resident who died in deportation), Noor Inayat Khan from Suresnes, a British secret agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), died in the Dachau concentration camp; a square in the town center and a plaque in front of her former home pay tribute to her. In 1941, some prisoners of war returned to Suresnes, first fathers of large families, then veterans of the First World War. On October 4, the Minister of the Interior dissolved the Suresnes municipal council and replaced it with a special delegation chaired by Louis Cucuat, which included André Bertrand, Henri Maleyx, and Louis Briquet. On November 4, Louis Cucuat was appointed mayor of the 20th arrondissement of Paris, and replaced in Suresnes three days later by André Bertrand. On the night of May 29–30, 1942, a British bomber destined to destroy the Renault factories in Boulogne-Billancourt was blinded by searchlights and strafed by flak, inadvertently dropping its missiles on the Garden City on Avenue de la Fouilleuse. Thirty people were killed, and several were wounded. The following day, the head of the French government, Pierre Laval, visited Suresnes to pay tribute to the victims. , inaugurated in 1960 by General de Gaulle. The "Relève", or STO, was set up to send workers to Germany, in exchange for the release of French prisoners. On October 2, 1942, the census of Frenchmen deemed suitable for this task began. Propaganda was rife, for example, in Le Petit Parisien on November 30, 1942: "The young mechanics' center in Suresnes, a breeding ground for up-and-coming specialists. Suresnes, a stone's throw from the guinguettes, the quai de Puteaux. To the strains of a marching song, a group of young apprentices, in columns of three, in black jackets and pants, leave the factory. Voluntary discipline, a spirit of solidarity, and a sense of duty are the laws of the community. After three months' training, the young people leave for Germany as specialists; after a further three months' work in a German factory, their commitment will be valid for the next shift." On Sunday, April 4, 1943, as the Longchamp racecourse reopened, it was bombed by Allied aircraft, targeting the anti-aircraft guns installed on the racecourse, which retaliated, but one of their guns was hit. Aviation bombs then fell on the racecourse, killing six people and injuring numerous walkers and turf enthusiasts. Thirty members of the Suresnes emergency teams went to the scene with the Red Cross to assist with the rescue, taking the wounded to the Foch hospital in horse-drawn carriages. Bombs also fell in Suresnes. There were no casualties in the town center, but many shop windows were smashed. Other bombs fell in the woods. In the French Resistance, the movement with the most members in Suresnes was the Libération-Nord network. Its role was mainly to hinder the German war effort by paralyzing factories or passing on information. However, as the factories in Suresnes did not represent a major strategic interest, they were not the target of spectacular sabotage as in some neighboring communes. At the time of liberation, volunteer resistance fighters were integrated into the FFI and FTP; there was no fighting in Suresnes, but some resistance fighters took part in police and clean-up operations. Other Suresnois collaborated by showing their support for Marshal Pétain: some received small coffins or threatening letters framed in black, signifying the death that awaited them when the Allies arrived. At the time of the Liberation, some collaborators from Sures were put on trial, but the penalties were measured, and none were sentenced to death. From the start of the war, factory activity had been reduced due to a lack of workforce and raw materials. Some relocated part of their activity to the provinces. On their arrival, the Germans exercised control over the remaining companies, with the allocation of raw materials being carried out by the Professional Organization Committees. Few factories, however, changed their mission, apart from the former Blériot factory, now known as SNCASO, which manufactured Junkers 2, and the Morane-Saulnier workshops, which built small Fieseler reconnaissance aircraft that took off from the Longchamp racecourse on a specially prepared runway. While Radiotechnique continued with its usual production (electronic tubes and Radiola receivers), the Occupying Forces also commissioned it to design special aircraft for night flights, and one of its workshops was mobilized to repair Telefunken aircraft. The Mémorial de la France combattante was built between 1958 and 1960, as a tribute to the 1,000 members of the French Resistance who were executed. It was built under the direction of Inspector General Félix Bruneau. A different artist sculpted each of the high allegorical reliefs; for example, it depicts the French expeditionary corps in Narvick (Norway), deportation, and the Liberation of Paris. A crypt houses the remains of 17 soldiers and resistance fighters. For Philippe Castagnetti, it's a “paradoxical resacralization of Mont-Valérien” around the memory and martyrdom of the Second World War, mirroring the mountain's thousand-year-old religious and penitential history. A "memory trail" around the execution sites of resistance fighters was subsequently set up, and a museum space opened in 2010. June 1944 saw the arrival of the Allied landings, the prelude to the Liberation of France, and more friction with the Nazis. On July 19, a German soldier was killed in Rue du Pont, in front of the Hewittic factory, but no one was identified as being responsible. On August 4, the Nazis executed two random hostages at the same location: Raymon Jozin, a 21-year-old worker at a boiler factory in Puteaux who was not carrying his work card, and Georges Schepp, aged 23, whose motive for arrest is unknown. A plaque, which has now disappeared, like Rue du Pont, pays tribute to them. On August 20, during the fighting for the Liberation of Paris, the Germans stationed in Suresnes, originally from Wrocław, took refuge in the fort. Over the next few days, the people of Suresnes expected French soldiers to arrive via the Quai or the Boulevard de Versailles, as a group of the 2nd AD led by Colonel Langlade was stationed in Sèvres. Residents took refuge in the town center. At the same time, German flak from Longchamp continued to fire. The confusion of information led to several events during the last night of the occupation, from August 24 to 25: barricades were erected, batteries were fired on Paris, Germans destroyed a barricade at the Suresnes bridge, and German convoys traveled up the Boulevard de Versailles with lights out. The next day, at 2:30 pm, French soldiers were seen in the Bois de Boulogne. The tank took a soldier from the Régiment blindé de fusiliers-marins to the Red Cross post, his head blown off at Porte de Madrid, and another, Michel Vassal, was shot dead at the same spot. On the evening of August 25, soldiers from the 2nd Armored Division and Americans were stationed at the Longchamp racecourse, many of them strolling through Suresnes, where they distributed food and cigarettes to the inhabitants, arousing the population's enthusiasm. At 9 p.m., the bells of the Suresnes church rang out, as did those of the entire Paris diocese, saluting General Leclerc's arrival in Paris. Tricolored flags were flying. Negotiations take place with the Germans and militiamen still hiding in the fort on Mont Valérien, as the people of Suresnes fear that they will blow up the military building before they leave. The former occupiers, however, were only willing to surrender to American troops. Talks were successful, however, and the surrender was handed over to the troops of the 2nd AD. On August 26 at 10.30 a.m., the French flag could once again be flown over the fort. The whistling and explosion of V2s could be heard, but they did not hit Suresnes. Jean Becker, president of the Société Historique de Suresnes and curator of the municipal museum, who completed René Sordes' book after his death, notes, however, that after the Liberation, “the days that followed, when everything that could divide the French should have been forgotten, were unfortunately marked by a veritable outburst of partisan passions, and it is not without sadness that we recall all those denunciations made under the guise of purge, which were often, in reality, nothing more than the satisfaction of personal grudges.” On August 26, several women and girls were publicly shorn for their relations with the occupying forces, taken on carts through the streets of Suresnes, and paraded. The historian Henri Amouroux, in ''La vie française sous l'Occupation'', noted that food shortages had adversely affected the health of the population, particularly young people. He notes: “In Suresnes, 35% of girls and 41% of boys attending school lost weight in six months.” A marble plaque was installed on the main staircase of the town hall, engraved with the names of the victims of the conflict. There were 75 civilian victims, 8 shot, 23 political deportees, 30 killed in action (maquis and Liberation), 53 soldiers killed by the enemy, 25 deported for work, 21 prisoners of war, and 28 racial deportees. == Fourth Republic ==