Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Martel sculptors' workshop house, located at 10 rue Mallet-Stevens in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, was built between 1926 and 1927. It is part of a concerted subdivision designed by architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, inaugurated in July 1927. This architectural project, marked by the use of reinforced cement and clean lines, illustrates the modern movement. The workshop house is the only one in the subdivision to have retained its original volumes and provisions, without major alteration.

Mallet-Stevens Street, 7 metres wide and 77 metres long, is a dead-end road on a plot originally owned by banker Daniel Dreyfus. It was inaugurated in the presence of politicians such as Maurice Bokanowski, Minister of Trade, and Paul Bouju, Prefect of the Seine. The buildings, designed by Mallet-Stevens, underwent subsequent modifications, including the addition of floors in the 1970s before their protection in 1975.

The house-workshop of the Martel brothers, classified as a historic monument in 1990, housed on the ground floor the workshop of the two sculptors, who worked there until their death in 1966. Several of their works are still preserved there today. A window by Louis Barillet, a glass painter, adorns the stairwell, adding an additional artistic touch to this iconic building. Mallet-Stevens Street, with its reinforced cement buildings, remains a major testimony to the avant-garde architecture of the 1920s.

During World War II, some private hotels on the street, such as the Allatini (No. 3-5), were requisitioned by the French Gestapo. This place has become a dark symbol of repression, sheltering cells and torture chambers. At the Liberation, a list of fifteen resistance fighters shot by the Germans was discovered, hidden under a bathtub.

In the 21st century, Eric Touchaleaume, owner of the Martel Hotel, restored a luminous fountain designed by Mallet-Stevens, originally planned for La Pergola in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. This initiative is part of a desire to preserve and enhance the architectural and historical heritage of this unique street, classified and protected since 1975.

External links