Please check back for the photos - they are on Carole's camera, as I forgot mine.
The American Church has an organization Women of the American Church that invites Americans and others to participate in things like “Tea at the American Embassy” as an annual fundraiser and as a membership building event. This year, my friend Carole forwarded the forwarded invitation that she received and we both paid our 25€ for a ticket to tea. It was a rainy, cold day in Paris but I was quite excited to get another chance to see the inside of what is known as "the residence" or to its friends "41," referring to the street number of the house. It's actually a separate building from the Embassy, which is a couple of blocks away. The house manager (an artist hired by the Stapletons - the Bush cousins who are literally packing to move this week) gave us a guided tour of the first floor of this three-story elaborately decorated building and recounted this history.
This house was built in the mid 1800s by a very wealthy and strong willed American woman from New Orleans who had been married off to her third cousin - a poor but titled son of a French Duke. Micaela Leonarda Almoneter who married the Baron de Pontalba when she was 16 at the directive of her parents moved to France and lived in a chateau in the country on the west side of Paris, but when her father-in-law became angry that she wouldn't hand over the family fortune - he tried to kill her, literally. He shot at her with two hand guns and narrowly missed killing her. There is a portrait of her in the residence that shows her gloved hand which she was hiding her mutilated hand, missing 3 fingers.
Anyway, as he did not kill her, he was so distraught he killed himself, and she took her money and left the family. She moved to Paris and bought the property and then had Visconti (the architect of choice at the time) design her house at 41 rue Fauberg-St. Honorée.
She then lived there until her death in 1874, upon which she left instructions that the house should be sold to the Rothchild's - a wealthy Jewish French banking family. They bought it and remodeled it with the interiors of the majestic gilded baroque style rooms that were being disassembled in various mansions in Paris as the styles were changing. It is in this tradition that the house is restored. I say restored, because the history didn't stop at the changing of hands to the Rothschild.
They loved the house, and added two wings and the third floor, as well as all of the baroque trappings, and were savvy enough, fortunately, to have plaster copies made of the entire contents of the decorations. I say this because the next chapter for the house occurred when the Rothchilds fled for their lives as the German Nazis were taking over Paris and were shipping the Jews and others they found to be imperfect or toxic to their death camps.
The Nazis also found the house to be perfectly comfortable, and moved the top ranking officers and a kind of entertainment motif into the house. They made one room a projection screen viewing room, and the rest was living and meeting quarters.
By the time the Rothchilds got the house back, there were none of the elaborate ornamentations and they sold it to the Brits, who used it for office space. Then the Brits sold it to the Americans, who also used this huge building for office space, until Sargeant Shriver said the residence should be here and remodeling started in about 1966. It was remodeled by gifts made through "the friends of 41" an organization that he created to have money and furnishings given to the house and its restoration. Fortunately, there were good records of what the house looked like when the Rothchilds owned it, and the decision was made early on to restore it to that level of grandeur. One interesting side story is that the black lacquer Chinese panels that were purchased by Rothschild for one of the rooms, and for which the house were famous, were found in 2002 in a Paris antique dealer’s basement, and though they were so prohibitively expensive that only about 1/2 of them were purchased (through the foundation) those have been put back in the house in the Pontalba Room.
Apparently, there are several other permanent American pieces in the house as well, and the bedrooms are furnished with these, such as a replica of a desk chair designed by Thomas Jefferson, and artifacts from the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Charles Lindbergh.
The other really interesting project that goes on there is a kind of temporary - for the term of the current ambassador - exhibition of art. The program is called ART in the Embassies (catchy huh!) and it means that each ambassador gets to choose American art to take to his or her embassy as a way of introducing the rest of the world to these styles of art. Right now, the Stapletons have several pieces of folk art with the theme of Statue of Liberty. There are also a couple of other themes - American artists who studied in Europe and then painted American landscapes in the style of the French artists - for example Winslow Homer - amazing landscapes in the impressionist style after he studied here. There are also several permanent pieces and those will stay while all the rest will be returned within the next month to it's permanent places. I have a catalog of the collection that was there during the Stapleton's stay, it was handed out as a lovely parting gift...
Lastly, the ambassador and his wife did not show up, Mrs. Stapleton was away on "Ambassador business," though we saw her heading up the elevator as we were leaving. Apparently they are moving out next week, and someone new - I heard a name of Wills, though I am not sure of that, will be coming within the next month.
The American Church has an organization Women of the American Church that invites Americans and others to participate in things like “Tea at the American Embassy” as an annual fundraiser and as a membership building event. This year, my friend Carole forwarded the forwarded invitation that she received and we both paid our 25€ for a ticket to tea. It was a rainy, cold day in Paris but I was quite excited to get another chance to see the inside of what is known as "the residence" or to its friends "41," referring to the street number of the house. It's actually a separate building from the Embassy, which is a couple of blocks away. The house manager (an artist hired by the Stapletons - the Bush cousins who are literally packing to move this week) gave us a guided tour of the first floor of this three-story elaborately decorated building and recounted this history.
This house was built in the mid 1800s by a very wealthy and strong willed American woman from New Orleans who had been married off to her third cousin - a poor but titled son of a French Duke. Micaela Leonarda Almoneter who married the Baron de Pontalba when she was 16 at the directive of her parents moved to France and lived in a chateau in the country on the west side of Paris, but when her father-in-law became angry that she wouldn't hand over the family fortune - he tried to kill her, literally. He shot at her with two hand guns and narrowly missed killing her. There is a portrait of her in the residence that shows her gloved hand which she was hiding her mutilated hand, missing 3 fingers.
Anyway, as he did not kill her, he was so distraught he killed himself, and she took her money and left the family. She moved to Paris and bought the property and then had Visconti (the architect of choice at the time) design her house at 41 rue Fauberg-St. Honorée.
She then lived there until her death in 1874, upon which she left instructions that the house should be sold to the Rothchild's - a wealthy Jewish French banking family. They bought it and remodeled it with the interiors of the majestic gilded baroque style rooms that were being disassembled in various mansions in Paris as the styles were changing. It is in this tradition that the house is restored. I say restored, because the history didn't stop at the changing of hands to the Rothschild.
They loved the house, and added two wings and the third floor, as well as all of the baroque trappings, and were savvy enough, fortunately, to have plaster copies made of the entire contents of the decorations. I say this because the next chapter for the house occurred when the Rothchilds fled for their lives as the German Nazis were taking over Paris and were shipping the Jews and others they found to be imperfect or toxic to their death camps.
The Nazis also found the house to be perfectly comfortable, and moved the top ranking officers and a kind of entertainment motif into the house. They made one room a projection screen viewing room, and the rest was living and meeting quarters.
By the time the Rothchilds got the house back, there were none of the elaborate ornamentations and they sold it to the Brits, who used it for office space. Then the Brits sold it to the Americans, who also used this huge building for office space, until Sargeant Shriver said the residence should be here and remodeling started in about 1966. It was remodeled by gifts made through "the friends of 41" an organization that he created to have money and furnishings given to the house and its restoration. Fortunately, there were good records of what the house looked like when the Rothchilds owned it, and the decision was made early on to restore it to that level of grandeur. One interesting side story is that the black lacquer Chinese panels that were purchased by Rothschild for one of the rooms, and for which the house were famous, were found in 2002 in a Paris antique dealer’s basement, and though they were so prohibitively expensive that only about 1/2 of them were purchased (through the foundation) those have been put back in the house in the Pontalba Room.
Apparently, there are several other permanent American pieces in the house as well, and the bedrooms are furnished with these, such as a replica of a desk chair designed by Thomas Jefferson, and artifacts from the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Charles Lindbergh.
The other really interesting project that goes on there is a kind of temporary - for the term of the current ambassador - exhibition of art. The program is called ART in the Embassies (catchy huh!) and it means that each ambassador gets to choose American art to take to his or her embassy as a way of introducing the rest of the world to these styles of art. Right now, the Stapletons have several pieces of folk art with the theme of Statue of Liberty. There are also a couple of other themes - American artists who studied in Europe and then painted American landscapes in the style of the French artists - for example Winslow Homer - amazing landscapes in the impressionist style after he studied here. There are also several permanent pieces and those will stay while all the rest will be returned within the next month to it's permanent places. I have a catalog of the collection that was there during the Stapleton's stay, it was handed out as a lovely parting gift...
Lastly, the ambassador and his wife did not show up, Mrs. Stapleton was away on "Ambassador business," though we saw her heading up the elevator as we were leaving. Apparently they are moving out next week, and someone new - I heard a name of Wills, though I am not sure of that, will be coming within the next month.
