Hôtel Chéret, Private mansion in 10th arrondissement, Paris, France

The Hôtel Chéret at 30 rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière has a seven-bay street building with a porte cochère opening onto a courtyard 15 metres wide and 45 metres deep. At the far end, the main pavilion is five bays wide (18.75 m) and 15 m deep, with a central stone stoop of five steps behind four Ionic columns. A mansard roof with dormer windows tops the attic storey.

Claude-Martin Goupy bought the market-garden plots between rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière and rue d'Hauteville in 1772 and resold to Benoît de Sainte-Paulle, who had Nicolas Lenoir design the mansion in 1773; the ground lay 1.5 m below the street and had to be levelled. Sainte-Paulle sold it unfinished in 1776 to Jean-François Caron, treasurer of the Order of the Holy Spirit, who added two courtyard wings by Antoine-François Peyre in 1778. Caron was declared fraudulently bankrupt in 1779 and jailed in the Bastille; the house was auctioned to François-Nicolas Lenormand, who extended the wings.

The property housed notable residents, including General Ney who celebrated his marriage there in 1802, and later Air France offices.

The building now serves as social housing and holds protected monument status, making it closed to general visitors. You can appreciate the street façades and architectural details from outside on the public way.

In 1942 the building housed the design office of the Société anonyme des usines Farman, where the future general Jacques Collombet worked as an engineer. From 1946 Air France used it, before the City of Paris bought it and let it as social housing through the régie immobilière de la ville de Paris.