The hotel occupies a former hôtel particulier, the Hôtel Batailhe de Francès, built in 1723 by Pierre Perrin, secrétaire du roi, and the architect Armand-Claude Mollet [fr]. Constructed behind the uniform façades designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart for the Place Vendôme, the hôtel itself was designed by Mollet. Perrin lived there until 1729, and in 1736 his heirs sold it to the munitioner and Receiver General of Alsace, Jean Fauste de Batailhe de Francès.[1] It became the Hôtel d'Affry in 1787.[2] From 1842 to 1843, it was the Texas embassy. By treaty of 1839, France had become the first nation to recognize the Republic of Texas (1836–1845).[3] A plaque to the right of the main entrance commemorates the event. The façade and the roof of the building on the Place Vendôme were classified as monuments historiques on 17 May 1930.[4]
The hotel
The Hôtel Batailhe de Francès was combined with the neighbouring building at 358 Rue Saint-Honoré in the early 19th century, and the merged buildings became a hotel in 1858.[5] In 2004, Chopard, a retailer of luxury watches and jewellery, opened a boutique on the ground floor of the hotel with an entrance on the Rue Saint-Honoré. In 2014 Chopard purchased the entire hotel from its previous owner, the UHP (Union Hôtelière Parisienne).[6] The hotel closed for renovation in 2019 and was scheduled to reopen in autumn 2022. However, the reopening has been delayed and the hotel is still currently closed.[7]
Ziskin, Rochelle (1999). The Place Vendôme: Architecture and Social Mobility in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN9780521592598.
