A narrow house in dressed stone on the rue Saint-Honoré, a few doors from the Oratoire du Louvre and opposite a protected row of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses. The Paris planning agency dates it to between 1851 and 1914; the hotel speaks of a nineteenth-century front on the site of a former private mansion. The house is not protected. Below is what can be documented, and what is still missing.
At a glance
This stretch of the rue Saint-Honoré is one of the oldest in Paris: the City protects long sequences of houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on both sides of it, at numbers 117 to 131 and 138 to 154, and the wall of Philippe Auguste once crossed the street a few metres to the west. Number 141 belongs to a later generation. The building database of the Paris urban planning agency (APUR) places its construction between 1851 and 1914, and the hotel that occupies it, the Hôtel Louvre Saint-Honoré, describes its front as nineteenth-century and says that a private mansion, an hôtel particulier, once stood on the site. We have not found the year of construction, the architect or the name of that mansion.
Key facts
- Where: 141 rue Saint-Honoré, 75001 Paris (Quartier des Halles), between the rue du Louvre and the rue de l’Oratoire
- Construction period: 1851–1914, according to APUR’s building database; nineteenth-century front, according to the hotel
- Plot: a narrow, deep plot of about 215 square metres (cadastre, section AT, parcel 147)
- Earlier building: a private mansion, according to the hotel; not identified
- Architect: not known to us
- Protection: none. Not a listed historic monument; not a protected building of the Paris PLU (the protected sequences are at numbers 117-131 and, opposite, 138-154)
- Current use: hotel, the Hôtel Louvre Saint-Honoré
- Coordinates: 48.861762, 2.340685 · open in Google Maps
History
The rue Saint-Honoré grew out of the medieval road that led west from Paris, and in this section, near the Louvre, many houses still stand on narrow old plots, as the City’s heritage notices for them record. Across the street from number 141, the City of Paris protects the houses from number 138 to number 154 as a coherent sequence of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries built on the old street line, with much of their wrought ironwork; a little to the east, numbers 117 to 131 form another such sequence around the former cour d’Aligre. Remains of the city wall of Philippe Auguste survive at numbers 146 to 150 and are a listed monument.
The Marquis de Rochegude, walking the street for his survey of 1910, recorded that the site of number 145 had carried the city wall and then the hôtel du Bouchage, where Jean Châtel tried to stab Henri IV, and that the Oratorians bought it in 1616 and built their chapel there from 1621, the church that is now the Protestant temple of the Oratoire du Louvre. He did not list number 141 among the notable houses of the street.
The house at number 141 stands on a deep, narrow plot of the kind the old street was divided into. APUR dates the present building to 1851–1914, the period in which the rue du Louvre, declared of public utility in 1853, was opened a short way to the east. The hotel, for its part, describes a nineteenth-century front “in the image of the former private mansion that occupied the site”. We have found no permit, no architect’s name and no earlier description of the house that would give a precise date.
What you see
We are not publishing a photograph of the house, so this description follows a photograph of the ground and first floors taken in March 2021 and published on Wikimedia Commons. The front is built of dressed stone in regular courses. At street level, a wide rectangular opening sits in a moulded stone frame, with the number 141 above it. Over the opening, the name “Hotel Louvre St Honore” is cut in large Roman capitals across the stone courses, under a projecting stone moulding.
On the first floor, two tall windows with small panes are fitted with iron guards in a pattern of scrolls, set on a continuous stone sill. The upper floors are not visible in that photograph; the hotel speaks of a nineteenth-century front and we have no description of them.
Practical information
- The building is a hotel, the Hôtel Louvre Saint-Honoré; the interiors are for guests.
- The front can be seen from the rue Saint-Honoré; the protected houses at numbers 138 to 154 are directly opposite.
- The house has no heritage protection; what is described here is its place in the street and the little that is recorded about it.
Getting there
The house stands on the rue Saint-Honoré between the rue du Louvre and the rue de l’Oratoire, one block north of the rue de Rivoli. The nearest Métro station is Louvre – Rivoli (line 1), a short walk away; Palais Royal – Musée du Louvre (lines 1 and 7) is a few minutes to the west.
Nearby
- The Protestant temple of the Oratoire du Louvre, at number 145, begun in 1621 and listed as a historic monument in 1907 (Mérimée PA00085789).
- The remains of the wall of Philippe Auguste at numbers 146 to 150, across the street, listed in 1889 (Mérimée PA00085802).
- Louvre Museum, about 250 metres to the south-west, and the Palais-Royal, about 330 metres to the north-west.
- La Samaritaine, about 330 metres to the south-east.
Do you know more?
On this page we have published what we could verify about the street around number 141 and the little that is recorded about the house itself. We could not find the year it was built, its architect, or the name of the private mansion that the hotel says stood here before it, and we have no photograph of the whole front that we are free to publish. If you know something — a date, a building permit, the families who lived here, an old photograph of the house or of this stretch of the rue Saint-Honoré — or if you can send us a photograph of the front, write to Sofia, who looks after these pages.
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Please start your message with the title of this page, so it reaches the right file. Every contribution is checked against independent sources before it goes on the page, and we always say where a piece of information came from.
Sources
- APUR, Emprise bâtie Paris (open data): construction period 1851–1914 for the building on parcel AT 147.
- Cadastre (Etalab, cadastre.data.gouv.fr) and Base Adresse Nationale: 141 rue Saint-Honoré on parcel 75101 AT 147, about 215 square metres.
- Ville de Paris, PLU – Protections patrimoniales (Paris Data, dataset plub_pvp): protections 01-1095 (nos. 138-154, “séquence cohérente de maisons des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle à l’ancien alignement”) and 01-1195 (nos. 117-131); none for number 141.
- Félix de Rochegude, Promenades dans toutes les rues de Paris. Ier arrondissement, Paris, Hachette, 1910 (Internet Archive), pp. 172-174: the rue Saint-Honoré from number 123 to number 145, the hôtel du Bouchage and the Oratoire; number 141 not mentioned.
- Wikipedia (fr), Liste des monuments historiques du 1er arrondissement de Paris, from the Mérimée database: Temple de l’Oratoire du Louvre, 145 rue Saint-Honoré (PA00085789, 1907); Enceinte de Philippe Auguste, 146-150 rue Saint-Honoré (PA00085802, 1889).
- Wikipedia (fr), Rue du Louvre: the decree of 1853 creating the street between the quai du Louvre and the rue Saint-Honoré; Rue Saint-Honoré: the Oratoire at number 145, first stone in 1621.
- Hôtel Louvre Saint-Honoré, official site: the owner’s description of the “façade du XIXème siècle, à l’image de l’ancien hôtel particulier qui occupait ces lieux”.
- 141 rue Saint-Honoré, Paris 1er, photograph by Polymagou, 20 March 2021, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0): the source of the description of the ground and first floors.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim: position, returned as 141, Rue Saint-Honoré, Quartier Les Halles, Paris 1er.
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