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Origin and history

The Jean de Julienne pavilion was erected in 1735 for Jean de Julienne (or Jullienne), patron and director of a linen factory located between two arms of the Bièvre, near the Gobelins factory in the Saint-Marcel district. This small rectangular building, with a ground floor and a basement floor, was distinguished by a roof with cut panels pierced with skylights and carved ornaments (mascarons, garlands, vaulted consoles) surrounding the bays on the ground floor. These decorations reflected the social status of its sponsor, close to the artistic and industrial circles of the time.

Over the centuries, the pavilion gradually sabered: its sculptures deteriorated, its roof disappeared, and it was partially buried by the raising of the ground of about two meters. Despite attempts to preserve (awning in the 1930s), his condition deteriorated. In 1964, it was included in the additional inventory of historical monuments, but its dismantling was decided to allow the construction of the New Gobelins Manufactures by architect Louis Blanchet. Only the carved facades were to be preserved, but the project of integration into the new building was never realized.

The remains of the pavilion, disassembled stone by stone in 1968, were laid along the Perret building of the National Furniture, where erosion completed to degrade them. Today, there are only documentary traces (revealed by Henri Nodet in 1900, photographs by Eugene Atget) and an engraved stone showing the maintenance of the Bièvre on 70 toises and 4 feet, recalling its link with the old stream. The site, marked by the industrial and craft history of Paris, illustrates the urban transformations of the 13th arrondissement.

The Berbier-du-Mets street, where the pavilion was located, follows the ancient bed of the Bièvre, a river which is now missing but whose route was marked on the ground in 2008. This area, once marked by tannery and dyeing activities (as evidenced by the wooden Persians of the building of the 16-18 bis, built for a megissier in 1901), preserves traces of this pre-industrial past. Julienne's pavilion was part of this economic landscape, at the junction of the artisanal and aristocratic worlds.

Jean de Julienne, unknown but influential figure, embodies the patronage of the eighteenth century. A collector and close to artists, he symbolizes the links between the economic elite and artistic creation under the Old Regime. Its pavilion, though modest in its size, reflected this ambition to mark the territory with a neat architecture, in a neighbourhood then in full change, between royal factories and bourgeois dwellings.

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