The house is just a few minutes’ walk from Châtillon’s old heart and shops. It has a ground floor, a first floor and a second floor. The dwelling is set back from the road, on a plot of around 600m². It was built in 1908. The building is part of a preserved series of three houses designed by the architect Léon Mériot, who worked a lot in this area: France’s Haut-de-Seine department. Mériot was a public architect and surveyor for the town of Châtillon. He later worked privately until 1911. He also designed many holiday homes on the coast of Normandy, in Mesnil-Val and Criel-sur-Mer. The house is made of burrstone. It is typical of the Paris region’s built heritage from the period between 1880 and 1930. The dwelling reflects the spirit of rural holiday homes owned by wealthy Parisians. Its facade, which wisteria climbs up, features two wooden balconies, red brickwork, ceramic embellishments and green enamel ornamentation. The roof is covered with interlocking tiles and crowned with terracotta finials. Together with the zinc works, it was fully renovated in 2019. The house has two upper floors that an oak staircase leads to. The ceiling heights are comfortable at each level. The dwelling offers a liveable floor area of around 155m². It has a double reception room, a spacious kitchen with a garden-facing dining area, an office, five bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a lavatory on each floor. A basement extends beneath the whole house. It includes a vaulted wine cellar. A large terrace beside a summer kitchen lies at the foot of the dwelling’s rear elevation and leads to a tree-dotted garden with a lean-to. Lastly, on one side of the garden, there is an annexe with a floor area of around 70m² at the same level as the garden. The entire property needs to be renovated.

The house

A wrought-iron gate leads into a paved front court where up to four vehicles can be parked. This court is edged with an althea hedge. A majestic magnolia towers in it and roses and wisteria grow here too. You enter the house from this front court. A flight of front steps leads up to a magnificent double entrance door that dates back to the time of construction. This front door is panelled and glazed with a finely crafted wrought-iron grate. There is a fanlight above it. A small red balcony on the first floor extends over it like a canopy. The garden behind the house can be reached along both sides of the edifice.

The ground floor
The entrance hall has a floor of well-preserved cement tiles. On its left, it connects to an office. On its right, it connects to a lounge that extends into a dining room. This double reception room faces south-west on its street side and north-east on its garden side. On the street side, elegant stained-glass French windows lead out onto a small timber balcony. The room has fine wood strip flooring and the ceiling is embellished with mouldings. The ceiling height on this floor reaches almost 2.9 metres. The entrance hall leads through a glazed double door to another hallway with cement-tile flooring. This space extends the entrance hall and takes you to an oak staircase with a balustrade that starts with a glass sphere. These stairs take you to the upper floors. On the left there is a guest lavatory, then a door to a large kitchen with a floor area of around 20m² and a dining space. This kitchen lies in an extension that was built in the second half of the 20th century with respect for the house’s style: it has a burrstone base and its upper section features red-brick ornamentation that recalls the facade. It leads out to the garden via a glazed door. Lastly, beneath the staircase, a door leads to the stairs that take you down to the basement.

The first floor
On the first floor, a landing of oak strip flooring connects to three bedrooms: two that look out at the street and one that looks out at the garden. The wooden floor type up here is more modest than that on the ground floor – a common trend at the house’s time of construction. The bedrooms are comfortable and generously sized. Their ceiling height is over 2.7m. This first floor also has a walk-in wardrobe, a large bathroom with a lavatory, and French windows that lead out onto a small red balcony. The windows have been replaced with more recent ones that are double-glazed.

The second floor
The oak staircase carries on up to the second floor, which is in the roof space. The roofing was renovated and insulated less than five years ago. Yet the sloping attic ceilings up here are only slight and this floor also offers comfortable space and a ceiling height of over 2.7m. There are two large bedrooms and a shower room with a lavatory. There is also a storeroom that used to be a kitchen as this floor was once rented out to students. It could serve a new purpose.

The basement
The basement has a ceiling height of 2.1 metres and offers a total floor area of around 50m². It has several storage spaces, a water inlet, a workshop and boiler room, and a wine cellar with a gravel floor and vaulted brick ceiling.