The Cité district was born in 1851 at the initiative of the Société industrielle de Mulhouse, which wanted to offer a house and garden to each of the families of its workers in this town, enjoying a boom at the time. It is most characteristic in the area around St Joseph's Church on Rue de Strasbourg, where the long straight "passages" are lined by houses in different styles. Mulhouse and its suburbs are home to a dozen or so such housing-garden estates.