Office de Tourisme de Clichy la Garenne

Between 1933 and 1935, the architects Cassan, Plausey and Walter built a hospital in Clichy that was unequalled in Europe. Jean Walter found the inspiration for the building while travelling in the U.S.A. Beaujon was the first tower block hospital arranged vertically on 12 floors including ground floor and basement. The architects retained just one element of the traditional layout, the aspect and designed the patients’ rooms facing south and department rooms facing north.

The new building takes up relatively little ground space but has a large capacity (1000 beds). The latest techniques were used to install no less than thirty lifts, three telephone networks and group together the operating theatres.


Rather than dispersing the different departments the building keeps them together and the functionality of the architecture can easily be adapted to scientific and social changes.
This “sky-scraper of suffering”, as is was nicknamed owes its name to Nicolas Beaujon (1708-1786), administrator of public finances and Councillor of State who built a hospital-hospice-orphanage in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1784.