Courtyard Week 3: Hotel de Savourny, 4 rue Elzevir

Before I get to today's courtyard, I wanted to tell you that I am very proud of the cover article I wrote for the premier luxury gay travel magazine Passport, titled 10 Ways to Say I Love You in Paris. Click here to read it. You may also buy it at the newsstands.

This courtyard totally took me by surprise one day a few months ago. I had passed this building many times without giving it a thought. One day the doors  were open and inside was a most charming courtyard. The most pleasant part was the basin filled with goldfish swimming madly. Also quite striking was the indigo colored tiled wall with the quirky oval porthole. The only information I could find about the Hotel de Savourny was that it was built in 1586 by an Italian man.

Again, for all of you history sleuths, especially Yurly, I am enlisting you to see if you can find out anything more about the history of this building.

4 rue Elzevir, 3d arr.

Metro: St. Paul

 

 

Coming soon: Eye Prefer New York Tours

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, co-author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook (with Olivia Kiang-Snaije). First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Minimum of 2 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

Tours cost 195 euros for up to 3 people, and 65 euros for each additional person. I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Comments

[Evelyn]

I love the blue! Anxiously awaiting Yurly's history lesson about this beautiful courtyard. His info about the courtyard on the Ile was fabulous.

[Yuriy]

*blushing* errr... it's Yuriy with an "i" after "r". And there is not a lot to be found about the building. David Thomson tells us that, "Carlo Savornini or Savourny was a royal equerry, and like Gonzaga, he built his modest house in the current Parisian fashion, with a decoration of rustication less refined than the bevelled blocks on the garden front of the Hôtel Mortier, void of columns of pilaster, and without pediments." (David Thomson, Renaissance Paris, University of California Press, Berkley and Los Angeles, 1984, p. 106) I was also able to find out the name of the master mason (one of the two) who was in charge of the construction, "L'Hôtel de Savourny au n° 4, construit en 1586, par les maîtres maçons Noël Crécy " (Juliette Faure, Le Marais: organisation du cadre bâti, Paris, l'Harmattan, 1997). Around 1908 and later, a wholesale pharmaceutical company was located at this address, "H. Salle & Cie. 4, rue Elzévir, 4. - Paris. Drogueris & Produits Chimiques. En gros." The same company advertised their apparent offshoot temptingly named Fabrique Française d'Alcaloïdes. (Journal de Pharmacie et de Chimie, Sixième Série, Tome Vingt-Septième, Paris, 1908, p. 7)
In the WWII years we find six children of the Kopitowski family, Flora, 17 years old, Rachel, 15 years old, Bernard, 12 years old, Jacqueline, 6 years old, Samuel, 5 years old, and Colette, 4 years old, who resided at 4, rue Elzévir and in 1942 were deported to the infamous Drancy, and most probably perished in one of the Nazi concentration camps. (Serge Klarsfeld, French Children of the Holocaust, New York University Press, New York, 1996, p. 219)

[parisbreakfasts]

Me too...love the French bleues!!

[Yuriy]

BTW, great cover story in Passport. May I get a signed copy please? ;)