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Hôtel de Langeac

Buildings and structures demolished in 1842Demolished buildings and structures in ParisFormer buildings and structures in ParisThomas Jefferson
François Nicolas Martinet, Site of Hotel d'Langeac, Jefferson's residence in Paris Lehigh University Library
François Nicolas Martinet, Site of Hotel d'Langeac, Jefferson's residence in Paris Lehigh University Library

The Hôtel de Langeac was a residence in Paris, France, located at 92, Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the corner of the Champs-Élysées and the rue de Berri.The property was first purchased by Louis-Phélypeaux de La Vrillière, Comte de Saint-Florentin, later the Duc de La Vrillière, for his mistress, the Marquise de Langeac. Construction on the home began in 1768 and proceeded slowly, parly due to an interruption. In 1777, the Comte D'Artois obtained the property but in 1778 the Comte de Langeac (son of the Marquise) regained the property and work again started to finally complete the building. The two-story house had a neo-classical facade and an asymmetrical interior plan with two parallel sets of rooms.The Hôtel de Langeac may have been best known as the (rented) residence of Thomas Jefferson while he was the American Minister to France, from 1785 to 1789. "I have at length procured a house in a situation much more pleasing to me than my present", he wrote in September, 1785. Jefferson grew Indian corn in the garden of the house. He filled the house with neoclassical furniture and employed a household staff of seven or eight servants, including a coachman, footman, and valet. Much of his official business was conducted from the house. Jefferson returned to the U.S. in September 1789 and his belongings were shipped to him in Philadelphia. The building was seized during the French Revolution, sold in 1793 and demolished in 1842. The subsequent five-story building on the site houses businesses, including the co-working offices operated by WeWork and a Morgan boutique.

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Hôtel de Langeac
Rue de Berri, Paris 8th Arrondissement of Paris (Paris)

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N 48.8717 ° E 2.3032 °
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Rue de Berri 2
75008 Paris, 8th Arrondissement of Paris (Paris)
Ile-de-France, France
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François Nicolas Martinet, Site of Hotel d'Langeac, Jefferson's residence in Paris Lehigh University Library
François Nicolas Martinet, Site of Hotel d'Langeac, Jefferson's residence in Paris Lehigh University Library
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Axe historique
Axe historique

The Axe historique (French: [aks istɔʁik]; "historical axis") refers to a straightly aligned series of thoroughfare streets, squares, monuments and buildings that extend from the centre of Paris, France, to the west-northwest of the city. It is also known as the Voie Triomphale (French: [vwa tʁijɔ̃fal]; "triumphal way"). The Axe historique began with the creation of the Champs-Élysées, designed in the 17th century to create a vista to the west, extending the central axis of the gardens to the royal Tuileries Palace. Today the Tuileries Garden (Jardin des Tuileries) remain, preserving their wide central pathway, though the palace was burned down during the Paris Commune, 1871. Between the Tuileries Garden and the Champs-Élysées extension a jumble of buildings remained on the site of Place de la Concorde until early in the reign of Louis XV, for whom the square was at first named. Then the garden axis could open through a grand gateway into the new royal square. To the east, the Tuileries Palace faced an open square, the Place du Carrousel. There, by order of Napoleon, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was centered on the palace (and so on the same axial line that was developing beyond the palace). Long-standing plans to link the Louvre Palace, as the disused palace was called, with the Tuileries, by sweeping away the intervening buildings, finally came to fruition in the early 19th century. Consequently, the older axis extending from the courtyard of the Louvre is slightly skewed to the rest of what has become the Axe historique, but the Arc du Carrousel, at the fulcrum between the two, serves to disguise the discontinuity. To the west, the completion of the Arc de Triomphe in 1836 on the Place de l'Étoile at the western end of the Champs-Élysées formed the far point of this line of perspective, which now starts at the equestrian statue of Louis XIV placed by I.M. Pei adjacent to his Louvre Pyramid in the Cour Napoléon of the Louvre. The axis was extended again westwards along the Avenue de la Grande Armée, past the city boundary of Paris to La Défense. This was originally a large junction, named for a statue commemorating the defence of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War. In the 1950s, the area around La Défense was marked out to become a new business district, and high-rise office buildings were built along the avenue. The axis found itself extended yet again, with ambitious projects for the western extremity of the modern plaza. It was not until the 1980s, under president François Mitterrand, that a project was initiated, with a modern 20th century version of the Arc de Triomphe. This is the work of Danish architect Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, La Grande Arche de la Fraternité (also known as simply La Grande Arche or L'Arche de la Défense), a monument to humanity and humanitarian ideals rather than militaristic victories. It was inaugurated in 1989. The network of railway lines and road tunnels beneath the elevated plaza of La Défense prevented the pillars supporting the arch from being exactly in line with the axis: it is slightly out of line, bending the axis should it be extended further to the west. From the roof of the Grande Arche, a second axis can be seen: the Tour Montparnasse stands exactly behind the Eiffel Tower. The Seine-Arche project is extending the historical axis to the West through the city of Nanterre, but with a slight curve.