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Origin and history

The Pourcheresse de Fraisans hotel, located at 67 Grande-Rue in Besançon, is an 18th-century building built on an irregular plot. Originally, it consisted of a house on the street and another at the back of the courtyard, connected by a staircase with an open cage in masonry and frame, equipped with a railing in ironwork decorated with naval anchors. A stake occupied a second court. Today, only the house on the street, the staircase, the front façade of the main house and its left wing remain.

The hotel would have been built by architect Nicolas Nicole from 1739, on the site of the house of sculptor Hugues-Melchior Morand, acquired in 1728 by Jacques-François Pourcheresse. The latter, who came from an anobligated family in 1758, was a naval officer, which would explain the reasons for anchoring in the ironworks. In 1769 the house was sold to Désiré Richardot, seigneur of Choisey and president of the Besançon Chamber of Accounts.

In the 19th century, the studio of the painter Édouard Baille (1814-1888) occupied the attic of the house at the back of the courtyard. At the beginning of the 20th century, the façade of the house on the street was rebuilt. In the 1970s, the extension of a nearby department store led to the destruction of the annexes of the second court and the house in the back of the first court, retaining only its earlier façade. The protected elements (facades on courtyard, roofs and stairs) were listed in the Historical Monuments in 1963.

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