Art Nouveau apartment

On a high floor, this 90 m² Loi Carrez flat benefits from a triple orientation. It comprises a beautiful entrance hall, a double reception room with a south-facing dining room and lounge extending onto two balconies, a fitted kitchen, two bedrooms with built-in cupboards and a shower room. A cellar completes the property.

It is located in the heart of the 16th arrondissement, close to Jasmin and Ranelagh metro stations.

The flat has retained all the original details designed by the architect: large windows with coloured stained glass, elaborate brass and porcelain door and window handles, sculptural fireplaces, mosaics, mouldings and more. The wrought-iron balustrades on the balconies are adorned with the famous masks that have given the building its nickname of “Devil’s House”.

On the façade, Hector Guimard emphasised the autonomy of the building’s volumes by using contrasting materials: millstone, ashlar, brick and ceramics. He adorned his building with a rich bestiary of crustaceans, cats, birds and seahorses, as well as plant and marine motifs. Guimard created a total work of art, designing all the components, from the architecture to the door handles and wallpaper.

Hector Guimard (Lyon, 1867-New York 1942) was the leading representative of Art Nouveau in France. Long considered a secondary player in the movement, he left behind no posterity, no disciple and no school. In particular, he designed the Paris metro stations (1900-1902), now emblematic of the capital.

He was commissioned to build Castel Béranger at the end of 1894 by Elisabeth Fournier, a Catholic middle-class woman living in Auteuil. Permission from the City of Paris to build the three residential buildings was obtained on 16 September 1895. During the summer preceding this authorisation, Hector Guimard met Victor Horta during a trip to Belgium and Holland. Deeply influenced by this meeting, Guimard adopted the concept of a total work of art, which he would apply to each of his projects. The structural work on the building began in autumn 1895 and was completed in 1896. Guimard then began work on all the interior and exterior decorations (panelling, wallpaper, fireplaces, hardware, corbels, railings). In 1898, Castel Béranger was fully completed and occupied; despite the criticism (it was called “the Devil’s House” in reference to the figures in the masks on the railings), the publicity it attracted attracted many tenants. Among them were Hector Guimard himself, the architect and decorator Pierre Selmersheim and the painter Paul Signac, who had this to say about the building:

“The Castel Béranger is romantic in name only; it is a very modern three-storey apartment block containing around forty flats.

Instead of the usual rectangle with symmetrical openings, the facade is multi-faceted: red or enamelled brick, white stone, flamed sandstone and millstone are arranged in uneven sections and varied shades, against which the iron and cast iron of the balconies, bow windows, chain-link anchors, pipes and oak beams, and the woodwork, of an identical shade but lighter in colour, climb, tinted a single blue-green.

The red copper entrance door sparkles. The hallway is nothing like the banal mahogany vomitory of faux-marble: Bigot’s flamed sandstone, copper, cut sheet metal, porcelain stoneware mosaics and fibrocortchoïna clad it sumptuously: they are boldly orange, blue or green, the walls covered in cordolova and fabrics with dynamogenic arabesques, the steps stretched with climbing carpets.

Each flat has its own character: the middle-class, the working man, the artist and the smart can all find something to suit them; garden lovers can satisfy their tastes thanks to the flowerbeds on the ground floor or on the upper terraces.