Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Hotel de la Houssaye is a private hotel located at 22 rue de la Chaîne, in downtown Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime. Built between the 17th and 18th centuries, it illustrates the civil architecture of this period in a then prosperous city thanks to trade and crafts. Its designation as a historic monument in 1948 reflects its heritage value, although its exact origins and early owners remain poorly documented in available sources.

Local historian Raymond Quenedey (1870–1947) lived in this hotel from 1903 to 1920, during which time he studied and valued the Rouen heritage. In 1919, the hotel was put on sale, marking a turning point in its history before its official protection nearly three decades later. Subsequent research, such as that published in Les hôtels particuliers de Rouen (2002), has contributed to a better understanding of its role in the modern urban fabric.

The hotel's location in a historic Rouen neighbourhood reflects the importance of private hotels as symbols of social status for local elites (traders, robins, or officers). These urban residences served both as houses and as places of representation, often decorated with interior and exterior decorations characteristic of the artistic tastes of the 17th and 18th centuries. Their preservation today offers a material testimony of bourgeois life under the Old Regime and at the beginning of the modern period.

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