Hôtel de la Païva
| Hôtel la Païva | |
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| General information | |
| Type | Hôtel particulier |
| Architectural style | Italian Renaissance |
| Address | 25 Avenue des Champs-Élysées |
| Town or city | Paris |
| Country | France |
| Current tenants | The Travelers Club |
| Construction started | 1856 |
| Estimated completion | 1866 |
| Client | Esther Lachmann, La Païva |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Pierre Manguin |
The Hôtel de la Païva ("Mansion of La Païva") is a hôtel particulier, a type of large townhouse of France, that was built between 1856 and 1866, at 25 Avenue des Champs-Élysées by the courtesan Esther Lachmann, better known as La Païva. She was born in modest circumstances in the Moscow ghetto, to Polish parents. By successive marriages, she became a soi-disant Portuguese marchioness and a Prussian countess, this last marriage supplying the funds for the hôtel, at which she gave fabulous feasts. Since 1904, the house has been used by Travelers Club of Paris, a gentlemen's club that was all-male until recently.
La Païva had already acquired a luxurious mansion at 28 Place Saint-Georges in Paris, but dreamt of building another on the Champs-Élysées, which she thought the most beautiful avenue in the world. According to legend, in her youth she had been pushed out of a cab by a hurried customer and slightly injured. She promised to herself to build herself a house on the avenue where she fell. After her marriage to Albino Francisco de Araújo de Paiva, the self-styled Portuguese marquis de la Païva, she had the funds to do so.
Once the hôtel was built, she received many notable people there, including the Goncourt brothers, Théophile Gautier, Léon Gambetta, Ernest Renan, and Hippolyte Taine. In 1877, suspected of espionage, La Païva and her husband, Prussian multimillionaire Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck, whom she had married in 1871, left France and withdrew to Silesia, where she died in 1884.
The double entrance to the courtyard of the hôtel has been preserved: one door was for entry of cabs and the second for their exit, avoiding the need to turn around. The courtyard has been replaced by commercial establishments: first a financial exchange office, and later a restaurant.
La Païva commissioned architect Pierre Manguin to build the hôtel in Italian Renaissance style. He worked with the sculptors Léon Cugnot, Eugène Delaplanche, Eugène Legrain, Ernest Carrier-Belleuse and Jules Dalou. There is a ceiling by Paul Baudry.
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Wikipedia