Review: L’Hôtel particulier, une ambition parisienne

Abstract

L’Hotel particulier, une ambition parisienne Cite de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Palais de Chaillot, Paris 5 October 2011–19 February 2012 The Parisian hotel (the French designation for what in English would be a mansion) appeared in the Middle Ages, and examples of the type continued to be built until the beginning of the twentieth century. It was the single-family house for the urban elites, including aristocrats, financiers, military officers, and cosmopolitans from abroad. Unlike its rural counterpart, the château, the hotel was built between a courtyard and a garden. It was a place to host guests and entertain them. The word particulier (private) was added later in the nineteenth century in order to distinguish them from the new commercial hotels. These buildings were the subject of an engaging, informative, and extremely well- documented exhibition mounted at the Palais de Chaillot, which was nonetheless rather traditional in its approach. The vast 5,000-square-foot space was designed to attract a wide range of visitors and was quite easy to understand. A re-creation of a suite of apartments was followed by a chronological survey illustrating the evolution of the type, using models as well as drawings, engravings, and paintings, while a concluding thematic section presented a dense array of more detailed information. Although the curators acknowledged the existence of the interstitial spaces within the mansion that were crucial for setting the stage for this theater for the elites, they focused above all on the spaces that represented the social status of the owners. The small area devoted to the toilets and the description of the different service activities that took place within the courtyard are good examples of this; this section could have been expanded to address, for instance, how these spaces were used by those who were not members of the family. The selection of paintings, furniture, objects, models, engravings, plans, elevations, sections, and other graphic materials gathered from archives, libraries, and other …