Pavillon de l'eau

The Pavillon de l eau stands on the site of a much older struggle to provide basic necessities to this part of Paris. In eighteen twenty-eight, a steam-powered pump was installed here on the road to Versailles to pull water directly from the Seine for the local municipalities of Auteuil and Passy. This was a critical step in turning a formerly semi-rural village into a functional part of the expanding city. You are looking at a building that was once the beating heart of that industrial transition, long before it became a public space for education.