The Galerie des machines was built for the Universal Exposition of 1889 at the foot of the Champ de Mars in front of the École Militaire.

[3] The structure was built by the Société des Forges de Fives-Lille and the Cail factory, and the masonry was erected by the M. Manoury company.

It was estimated in 1889 that the building was large enough to hold fifteen thousand horses in the ground floor and the same number of riders in the upper galleries without being crowded at all (the experiment was never made).

[8] The Belgian Vierendeel said, "this lack of proportion produces a bad effect; the girder is not balanced; it has no base ... it starts too low ...

[10] From 1902, Henri Desgrange asked the architect Gaston Lambert to modify the Galerie des machines in order to create a track for cycling competitions, the auto-vélodrome d'hiver.

[12] The Galerie des machines was transformed into a vast camp in which the competitors would rest, eat, and receive medical care.

During the general strike of 1 May 1906, the troops assigned to policing the city were stationed there: six battalions of the 4th (Rennes), 47th (Saint-Malo) and 2nd (Granville) infantry regiments.

Desgrange decided to build a new cycling temple next door, at the corner of the Boulevard de Grenelle and the rue Nélaton, the new Vel d'Hiv.