This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of Nantes tobacco factory building history, located in France. This is one of the most significant buildings in this municipality which exemplifies, through its walls, the architectural evolution of the spaces destined to production, storage and sales of tobacco products, in a context of state monopoly of this product. Moreover, its rehabilitation, in the early 1980s, is an example for the sensitivity with which it was treated by architects, artists and municipal corporation that shaped this project. In their proposals they bore very much in mind not only to preserve the architectural remains of industrialization but also the women and men workers memory that give life it.