The French Army commander Charles Martial Joseph Dessigny, then head of the French department of public facilities in the recently bombarded and occupied Casablanca, ordered the construction of the tower. It was completed between 1908-1910, before the Treaty of Fes in 1912, which officially established the French Protectorate. This original tower was one of the first things built by the French colonists in Casablanca and in Morocco. It reached a height of 30 meters, like another built under Dessigny's command in Aïn Séfra in the Algerian Atlas Mountains when he was stationed there.