The People's National Assembly building is a public building in

Algiers Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many Communes of Algeria, communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008Census 14 April 2008: Offi ...

and home of Algeria's

People's National Assembly The People's National Assembly (; abbreviated APN) is the lower house of the Algerian Parliament. It is composed of 407 members directly elected by the population. Of the 407 seats, 8 are reserved for Algerians living abroad. Members of the Peo ...

. It was designed in 1934 and inaugurated in 1951 as a new

city hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...

for the Greater Algiers, and repurposed following the country's independence in 1962.

Background

The building's location was previously used by a logistical branch of the French military (), built during the

Second French Empire The Second French Empire, officially the French Empire, was the government of France from 1852 to 1870. It was established on 2 December 1852 by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, president of France under the French Second Republic, who proclaimed hi ...

. The municipality had previously been located, from 1850 to 1883, in the of the

Casbah of Algiers The Casbah of Algiers, commonly referred to as the Casbah (Arabic: القصبة, Al-qaṣabah, meaning "citadel"), corresponds to the old town or Medina quarter, medina of Algiers, the capital of Algeria. It is a historic district that has been l ...

; and from 1883 to the mid-20th century on the Algiers waterfront, now , in the former building that still hosts the Casbah municipality.

History

In 1934, an architectural competition was held to build a new city hall for the expanding metropolis of Algiers. The competition's winners, the Paris-based brothers Edouard and in a team with local architect Jean-Louis Ferlié, designed a compact building in late

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

Stripped Classicism Stripped Classicism (also referred to as Starved Classicism or Grecian Moderne) Jstor is primarily a 20th-century classicist architectural style stripped of most or all ornamentation, frequently employed by governments while designing officia ...

style. The building was substantially completed in 1941 but was then used in the wartime context by civilian and military departments of the French state, which only returned it to the Algiers municipality in 1945. Given the post-war scarcity, the finishing works were protracted and not entirely completed at the time of official inauguration in 1951. In the 2010s, plans were considered to relocate the People's National Assembly and the Council of the Nation in a new Algerian Parliament complex, to be built northeast of Les Fusillés Station in the waterfront neighborhood of

Hussein Dey Hussein Dey (real name Hüseyin bin Hüseyin; 1765–1838; ) was the last Dey of the Deylik of Algiers. Early life He was born either in İzmir or Urla in the Ottoman Empire. He went to Istanbul and joined the Canoneers (Topçular in Turkis ...

Notes

Legislative buildings Buildings and structures in Algiers Government buildings in Algeria Art Deco architecture in Algeria {{Algeria-struct-stub

Background

History

See also

Notes