The Girls’ Lycée of Moulins, a Morning on the Boulevard
Card No. 152, published by L. Pétillat, éd., Moulins — antique postcard, circa 1905-1915
This antique postcard of Moulins captures the imposing façade of the Lycée de Jeunes Filles (Girls’ Secondary School), an institution opened around 1885 that would later become the town’s Collège Départemental. The photographer chose a slightly angled viewpoint from the tree-lined boulevard, allowing the entire length of the building to be seen: three storeys pierced by tall, evenly spaced windows, a slate roof punctuated with chimneys, and a wrought-iron fence set between stone pillars enclosing the courtyard. The sober, functional architecture is typical of the great secondary school buildings of the Third Republic, an era in which girls’ secondary education finally became institutionalized in France following the 1880 Camille Sée law.
The street scene in the foreground gives the image its documentary charm: a man in a hat leans against the fence, watching the street; further along, a group of children lingers near a water pump, their figures softened by the long exposure time. The unfinished pavement, the dirt roadway, and the gas streetlamp place the scene in a provincial town whose urban infrastructure was still largely rural, despite the modernity of the educational institution it housed. Technically, the image is a black-and-white phototype print, a common process for this kind of architectural and urban view at the turn of the century, rendering fine detail in the stonework and foliage.
The affixed postage stamp, a green lined Semeuse at 5 centimes, corresponds to the printed-matter/postcard rate in effect during this period, and combined with the divided back format (suggested by the series numbering and publishing style), places the card in the first decade of the twentieth century. The publisher, L. Pétillat, was a locally established Moulins postcard editor well documented in Allier antique postcard collections, notably active in producing street and monument views of the town.
