The buildings of the General Farm in Paris

Throughout France the General-Farm advertised its presence with imposing offices, factories and warehouses.  In the provinces, it was common to assign to the Farm grand hôtels left vacant by their noble owners; when these were not available for sale, they would be leased.  In Paris the Farmers owned the properties they occupied.  On the eve of Revolution  it is estimated that there were as many as 700 officials and clerks employed in the Farm's central bureaux alone (Dict. des Fermes).   The most important building was the Hôtel des Fermes, rue de Grenelle, which had been acquired  in 1687.  It was here that the assemblies of senior Farmers met, and here also that much of the administration was accommodated.  In course of the century half-a-dozen others premises were added, notably the magnificent Hôtel de Bretonvilliers on the Île Saint-Louis.  The Hôtel de Longueville adjacent to the Louvre was occupied from 1746, by the administration and Paris manufacture of the tobacco monopoly. There was also a splendid salt warehouse, the grenier à sel in the rue Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. 

Nicolas-Jean-Baptiste_Raguenet, The Hôtel de Bretonvilliers, 1757

According to the research of Nicole Coquery (1991) the premises of the Farm played a central role in the evolution of Paris's official administrative buildings towards a  more modern concept of  dedicated workplaces.  During the second half of the 18th-century, the distinction between public and private space became more marked. Until this time, it  had been common practice for  magistrates and financiers to accommodate bureaux in their own town houses and, often, to lodge their staff.  This was the case, for instance, for the young Jacques Delahante who was chef de bureau to the Farmer La Borde  [A. Delahante, Une famille de finance, vol.2, p.97].   Under the Lease Henriet (1756-62), the bureaux of the Farm were all moved to the rue Grenelle, or one of its satellite sites.  (Coquery p.209) 

During the reign of Louis XVI,  government actively sought concentrate financial administration within dedicated buildings. The number of financial establishments rose from just one in 1700 -  the Hôtel des Fermes itself -  to ten by the 1780s.  

The will of ministers to create a modern financial administration in these years is  also reflected in  government-sponsored  projects to improve the buildings of the Farm in the period.  These included the notorious "Wall of the Farmers-General",  but also a significant  redesign by Ledoux of the offices of in the rue Grenelle.

The Hôtel des Fermes/ Hôtel Séguier

The former Hôtel des Fermes in a 19th-century periodical illustration (Musée Carnavalet). 

Location: Rue de Grenelle Saint Honoré (rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau), rue du Bouloi, rue Coquillière.  

Built by Jacques Arouet du Cerceau, 1613.
In the possession of the General-Farm: 1687-1793.  Acquisition.  

Administration of the General Farm
Administration of Customs

Ceded by the State (1795)

In the course of the 18th century Paris's  financial hub shifted from the Marais towards the place des Victoires and Montmartre, centring on the Bourse in the Hôtel de Soissons. (Durand, p.69-70). The Hôtel des Fermes, situated immediately adjacent, was part of this move. 

The building itself was the splendid former Hôtel Séguier, where the Académie française had once met.  Above the principal door on the rue de Grenelle, a black marble plaque with gold letters  now proudly identified the "Hôtel des Fermes du Roi."  The interior retained elements of its original sumptuous decor;  the Farmers-General held their committees under a maginificent ceiling by Vouet representing Minerva and Bellone.  The chapel, decorated by Vouet, Lebrun and Mignard, was left unaltered; indeed every day a mass was said there, "so that it might please God to bless the Society".

However, the premises were significantly adapted to accommodate their new role.  

The accommodation was divided into two parts.  The entrance in the rue de Grenelle gave onto what was known  the "petit hôtel des fermes". This contained the bureaux of the secretariat  and the "General Directions", plus the central administration for customs duties, the gabelle and the salt works.  Here too, the assemblies of the Farmers met, and held daily audiences  "to hear the requests of the Public". 

The rear of the site, known simply as the "Hôtel des fermes"  or "La Douane", housed the day-to-day business of collecting customs duties and verifying passports for the transit of goods through Paris.  A huge and busy courtyard covered what had once been an ornamental garden, with a gateway for traffic onto the rue du Bouloi. Here the "rouliers" - merchants or drivers -  thronged to present their merchandise for inspection.  Around the courtyard crowded the offices of the commis de ferme.

 As early as 1725 Germain Brice lamented the change of function in his guidebook to Paris:.

[The buildings surrounding the great court on the rue du Bouloi] contain two galleries, one on the ground floor, which was once an orangery, and the other on the first floor, with an entire ceiling painted by Simon Vouet.  But these galleries can no longer be seen; for some years  they have been partitioned to provide offices....

There remains scarcely anything of the ancient lustre of this hôtel.  Apartments which were once devoted to the Muses are now filled with clerks collecting Customs dues; they are converted into counters, and the Farmers-General hold their assemblies there.  The famous library....has become a warehouse for miscellaneous merchandise. 

Thus has the hôtel changed in usage and layout since it became the office of the King's Farms.  
Brice Description de la ville de Paris (1752 ed)  vol.1.p.476 [On Google Books]

Hôtel des fermes in its final years - Lithograph of 1838

As part of Necker 's reorganisation plans of 1780, Ledoux was commissioned to come up with a design to replace this ad hoc arrangement.  The aim was to centralise all the functions of the Farm, currently housed in the various annexes,  into a  single central complex.  The surviving plans show  a lateral spine with three wings projecting front and back to create four courtyards.   The left half of the building was to house the bureaux whilst the right was open to traffic. A central stairwell provided a common landing.  The project is described by Braham, as "perhaps one of the earliest designs that is recognizably an office-block". He also comments that the exterior wall, with its heavy doorways and squat towers gave Ledoux's design "more than the suggestion of a fortress"  (Braham, p.190-1)

By 1787 the first wing had been completed. 

During the Revolution the site served briefly as a prison, then in 1795 was  acquired as an investment property by Saint-Simon and his colleague the comte de Redern; after 1825 Redern began its progressive demolition (for some time part of the buildings became a popular bal.) 

Today the "Cour des Fermes",  in what is now the rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  echoes the ground plan of the old hôtel.  The former carriage entrance in the rue Bouloi is also preserved (see below right)

Images from "Cour des Fermes" on Wikipedia

The Hôtel de Bretonvilliers

Location:  Ile-Saint-Louis - Rue de Bretonvilliers & rue Saint-Louis en l'Ile

Built by Jean Arouet du Cerceau, 1637-1641.

In the possession of the General-Farm: 1719-1791.   

Annexe of the General Farm: 

bureau des aides,  régie des entrées de Paris  

Ceded by the State (1795).  Partly demolished between 1840 and 1866.

Leased by the Farm in 1717, the  Hôtel de Bretonvilliers, dominated the point of the Ile-Saint-Louis, with terraced gardens overlooking the Seine.  Again the site had been among Paris's most prestigious 17th-century private residences: the interior boasted a grand gallery by Sébastien Bourdon and more splendid painted ceilings by Simon Vouet.  It housed chiefly the bureaux of the aides and entrées de Paris.   Despite its grandeur,  by the end of the period, the location had already lost much its importance as the services of the Farm became concentrated in the area of the rue de Grenelle.  

Ruins of the Hôtel de Bretonvilliers by Gabrielle-Marie Niel, 1875
Baltimore Museum of Art

After serving briefly as an armaments factory, the site was sold off  by the Revolutionary government in 1795.  The buildings were finally demolished to make way for the Boulevard Henri-IV and the new pont Sully between 1840 and 1874.  Traffic now passes through a single remaining pavilion at the end of the rue de Bretonvilliers.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B4tel_de_Bretonvilliers

The Hôtel de Longueville

Jean-Michel Moreau, View of the Hôtel of the Tobacco farm, 1763, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Location: Rue Saint-Thomas du Louvre & rue Saint-Nicaise

Rennovated by Clément II Métezeau, 1621-1624. 

In the possession of the General-Farm: c.1750-1791

Annexe of the General-Farm

Ferme du tabac

Régie des droits réunis  

Demolished in 1848 to make way for the  extension of the Louvre.

In 1746 the administration of the tobacco monopoly was transferred to the Hôtel de Longueville, in the rue Saint-Thomas, literally next door to the Louvre Palace .  

The building, which was acquired from the duc de Chevreuse, was yet another splendid historical residence,  resonant with memories of Richelieu, Mazarin and the Fronde.  It had the advantage of offering sufficient space to accommodate the tobacco warehouse and processing factory on the same site.  During  Revolutionary and Napoleonic times, it period it was occupied by a public ballroom, then  stables, before being finally demolished in 1832 to make way for the enlargement of the place du Caroussel: "A ceiling on which  Mignard had painted Aurore, the final vestige of the splendours of this historic house, fell into the dust of the demolition works."  Les derniers fermiers généraux, 1872, p.195-6.

The grenier à sel

The 18th-century grenier à sel was a purpose-built building, designed by architect Jacques de La Joue in 1698.  It occupied the site of the former house of the canons of Joyenval Abbey, on the corner of the  rue des Orfèvres and the rue Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois -  close by the quai de la de la Mégisserie, where the cargoes of salt were unloaded from the river boats.

The long rectangular building in fact housed three separate warehouses, divided by thick stone walls, and with adjacent entrance on the rue Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.  Each bore a coat-of-arms which gave the warehouse its name: the grenier-l'Abbaye (arms of the abbaye de Joyenval), the grenier-au-Soleil (arms of Louis XIV) and the grenier-l'Évêque (arms of the Bishop of Chartres).  

See:  Nicolas-Michel Troche, La rue, la chapelle et la maison hospitalière des Orfèvres et le grenier à sel, à Paris (1855), p.33- "Le grenier à sel", 
La rue, la chapelle et la maison hospitalière des orfèvres et le grenier à ... - Google Books

 

Illustration from Louis Figuier, Les Merveilles de l'industrie (1882)
Les merveilles de l'industrie, ou, Description des principales industries modernes / par Louis Figuier. | Wellcome Collection

Drawing by Léon Leymonnerye,  1863. Musée Carnavalet
Le Grenier à Sel, rue Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois,  Paris. | Paris Musées

The grenier was sold off in 1818 but the structure remained more or less intact for another hundred years.  By  the 1850s the facade had become obstructed by a row of shops surmounted by a mansard roof, but it was still possible to see the triangular pediment, with its badge of drapery between two palm trees. The building was finally demolished in 1909 to make way for a nursery school.  

The pediment, and the head of Apollo, the symbol of the Sun King which once adorned the warehouse below, can still  be seen in the garden of the Musée Carnavalet:  

Couronnement de baie provenant de l'ancien Grenier à Sel | Paris Musées

References

Dictionnaire de la Ferme générale (1640-1794)
https://dicofg.hypotheses.org/1823

CAEF, Une Ministère dans la ville: l'administration des finances à Paris du xviiie au xxie siècle.  
Virtual Exhibitionon the website of the Ministère de l'Économie, des Finances et de la Relance (archived version)

Un ministère dans la ville (archive.org)

Yves Durand, "L'habitat parisien des fermiers généraux"

Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France 1962 [1963], t. LXXXIX, p. 66-90
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9603031r/f68.item#

Natacha Coquery, "Les hôtels parisiens du XVIIIe siècle : une approche des modes d'habiter",  Revue d’Histoire Moderne & Contemporaine, 1991, vol.38(2): p. 205-230.
https://www.persee.fr/doc/rhmc_0048-8003_1991_num_38_2_1587

Allan Braham, The architecture of the French Enlightenment (1989) [open access on Internet Archive], 

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_EstKYtJpOK0C/mode/2up