{"id":1147,"date":"2025-11-22T08:54:39","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T08:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rfprmrm.cluster100.hosting.ovh.net\/?page_id=1147"},"modified":"2026-06-01T13:46:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T13:46:36","slug":"lhistoire","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/chezpepemerle.fr\/en\/lhistoire\/","title":{"rendered":"L’histoire"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The History of No. 131<\/span><\/h2><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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A family story rooted in eastern Paris
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At the origin of it all is Marcel Merle, my great-grandfather; born in Paris\u2019s 19th arrondissement on 26 February 1903 and who passed away on 11 November 1980 in the 11th arrondissement. I do not forget my great-grandmother Marthe, who of course played an active role in Marcel\u2019s business. Even before him, she had run her own small grocery shop on Rue Stendhal in Paris\u2019s 20th arrondissement.\n\nMarcel was a kind of \u201cinventive metalworker-boilermaker\u201d, based in the 20th arrondissement on Rue des Rondeaux (which runs alongside P\u00e8re Lachaise Cemetery), living there with his wife Marthe and their two daughters, Simone and Paulette. As his workshop became too small, he moved his family and purchased the VALDO factory located at 127\u2013129\u2013131 Rue du Chemin Vert in the 11th arrondissement.\n\nThe factory was in a poor state when he acquired it in 1946: the previous owners of the foundry had ceased operations in 1936 (likely following the strikes of the Popular Front) and had returned to their country of origin (Italy) at the end of the war. At the time, the chimney was at risk of collapsing and, in this post-war period when materials were scarce, it was dismantled brick by brick so that the materials could be reused elsewhere.
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An industrial heritage at the heart of Paris\u2019s 11th arrondissement
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The MERLE boilermaking workshop operated until 1986. It produced refrigerators, hot water tanks and many other products required to meet the ever-growing demand for post-war comfort. But P\u00e9p\u00e9 Merle also manufactured the first machines used to bleach paper pulp, cable cars for ski resorts (notably Serre Chevalier), the first road marking line machine (a patent never filed or exploited by Marcel\u2026), as well as cabinets designed to house the first IBM computers.
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The rebirth of a place transformed into a charming guest house
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Having become too small, polluting and noisy for its Parisian surroundings, the factory closed its doors in 1986. However, the activity was taken over by the industrial group ASEDEC and relocated to the suburbs, in Noisy-le-Grand. A second life then began for this former industrial site: concerned about managing the boilermaking workshop alone, my great-grandmother had already started, as early as 1956\/57, to build a small garage to run a parking service. Paulette MERLE and her husband Bernard GISI, a RENAULT agent\u2014selling new cars, repairs, bodywork, a petrol station and parking\u2014occupied the former factory space until 2006. Today, part of the garage remains on the ground floor of No. 131, and the two front buildings are the only remnants of that bygone era. New residential buildings have since been constructed on the former factory site. The entire space is now dedicated to housing, and there is no longer any trace of its industrial past\u2014the 11th arrondissement is no longer \u201cthe little factory of Paris\u201d.
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L’histoire du 131 Une histoire de famille ancr\u00e9e dans l\u2019Est parisien \u00c0 l\u2019origine de tout il y a Marcel Merle, mon arri\u00e8re-grand-p\u00e8re; n\u00e9 \u00e0 Paris dans le 19\u00e8me arrondissement le 26 f\u00e9vrier 1903 et disparu le 11 novembre 1980 \u00e0 Paris 11\u00e8me arrondissement. Je n\u2019oublie pas mon arri\u00e8re-grand-m\u00e8re Marthe qui a bien entendu contribu\u00e9e de […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1147","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezpepemerle.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezpepemerle.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezpepemerle.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezpepemerle.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezpepemerle.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":157,"href":"https:\/\/chezpepemerle.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2864,"href":"https:\/\/chezpepemerle.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1147\/revisions\/2864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezpepemerle.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}