This book is about the real estate company that built, owned and managed the buildings the most famous street in Lyon, the "rue de la république", from the XIXth Century to the beginning of the XXth Century. Thanks to this original configuration in France, it is possible to link the story of a company and the story of an urban space, its population and its shops. This study is based on the “Société de la rue impériale” archives and on both qualitative and quantitative methods. It shows that