On our last few trips to Paris, we’ve stayed in apartments in the Clignancourt neighborhood in the northern part of Montmartre; on each trip I’ve walked past this odd building more than once, and always wondered about its history.
After last month’s trip, I finally did the work and tracked it down. Its history is interesting, from its mundane origins to its role as an artists’ model, and its (perhaps) racy existence today.
The little tower, known form much of its life as the Tourelle, or Turret, stands at the corner of rue de Mont-Cenis and rue Marcadet. It started life in 1771 as a grinding mill producing stone paste for porcelain manufacture, a specialty of the area at the time.
By a few years after the 1789 French Revolution, though, the company failed and the mill took on other uses. At one point, part of the building was used as a cow shed, selling milk fresh from the udder.
By the 1890s, as this postcard shows, it had become a hotel and restaurant, advertising on the side, just to the left of the tower, that it had that new marvel, a telephone! It’s been a historic landmark since 1965.
Maurice Utrillo, who lived nearby, painted the Tourelle several times. These two views are from 1911 and 1935. The print above, by Andre Renoux, dates to the early 1960s, shortly before it became the Club Chateau, notorious as a rendez-vous for swingers and voyeurs.
As abandoned as it appears, several sites report that it is the site of the Chateau de Lys, which advertises itself as a club for libertines. Its website lists a nearby address instead—but we didn’t investigate in person.
