Villa Mady or the end of the orange workers

Welcoming, the small Quartier des Platanes gives itself to see its small shops. Dashing between the exit of Venelles and the climb of the Alps road, which goes down to Aix-en-Provence, a bakery rubs shoulders with a bar, a grocery store and a little higher a colleague bakes.  Behind this crossroads with a parking is a network of secondary roads that flee from all sides in deadlocks.

Some of them sleep in the shelter of old tiles arranged on beautiful bastides. A few meters away, others continue the alternative experience of our contemporary hippies. Encouraged by "understanding" parents, a young couple enjoys a breathtaking view of the city, perched in a piece of greenery of the Platanes district in a house with only pedestrian access. In addition, beyond the Viaduct, along the A51 motorway, a path looks like pavilions. All plots are neat and hidden gardens of plaster and clean walls.  Purring a Karcher on wheels is in action.

Inside, the stone jars are cleaned, scratched: the new acacias will be very good. However, as if breaking up, the Villa Mady imposes it by its architecture. The weight of the years of difference between the venerable and the riverside houses gives the building a sense of poise. While most of the houses were built in the 1960s and 1980s, the Mady claims a small century of existence. Not quite in his time, the house has almost never been in agreement with his time. Indeed, as soon as the beauty came out of the ground, her estate was already threatened. Victim of its situation, the park of the property is struck by alignment in the plans of what must be a solid alternative to the Alpine Road.

 Remember. In the 1950s, access to the municipality of Aix-en-Provence from the Alps, the north of the city, was only possible via the Route des Alpes, whose saturation threshold was quickly reached. The terrain of the site makes it impossible to envisage a widening of the roadway. This sum of elements leads us to consider the development of the section of motorway linking Aix-en-Provence to Venelles and subsequently to many other cities - via the extension of the motorway to Sisteron. Soon, surveyors came knocking on the door of the house. In fact, the workers of "Pont et Chaussées" (Public work engineers) are uncomfortable alas the owners since the old wrought iron gate.

The announcement of the news, of the end of the Mady, is all the more painful to carry out as the residence is welcoming. The officers invited to return pass through a garden flooded this June by summer fires. Yet under the hundred-year-old plane trees the air and fresh. A stone staircase leads to the flowering terrace.  Inside, the agents follow and finally access another terrace, this one is glazed and dominates the fields. Sitting around a glass, the discussion begins on the terms of the expropriation.

Like others, The Mady is hit with alignment and soon part of its gardens is sunk under the asphalt of Highway 51. A thin mesh, unrolled along the new route, cuts the Mady in half. In the end, all the frame is preserved. Besides, the view from the closed terrace has changed a lot.  Besides a crane or the passing gabian, José must hear the sound of the landscape of thousands of motorists. Moved, the latter remembers the first days when the house was requisitioned as the headquarters of the highway construction site. Located on the public network, the house has become over the years a branch of the DDE (Public Department Construction). Up until 2007, discarded panels, objects found along the roadway, a dirt truck or a bulky tractor were stored there.

Since the ambassadors of the Pont et Chaussée to the snow removal officers, the men in orange took possession of the property. Thus, the garden was decorated with metal boxes charged with the reception of the machines. Further, a boat is as if stranded: fallen from a car on a Sunday in January. The memories of the expropriated family disappeared except for a green jersey sweater, works of art corrupted by the humidity while for about twenty years those of the highway were there as a gallery. Emptied of its contents in recent months, the Mady should soon know a second life, perhaps on the occasion of an auction sale. Rescued from the raid, a panel "limited speed 50" is useless like this old safety poster well recorded with yellowed walls.