Not far from the City hall, the admirers of old Paris are struck by very modest proportions of a street called formerly rue du Puy ( street of the well) because of a public cistern which was there.

Since 1867, it became the street Aubriot, the name of the famous Provost of Paris ( who built the jail of the Bastille and was locked there one of the first ones ).

This street was enclosed in a maze of lanes which extended of the Place de Grêve in the fortress of the Temple. It is completely in the heart of the city because it is included in the first encircled of Paris, that built by Philippe Auguste around the year 1200. We can verify it from the map of Braun today, the most ancient which we know and which goes back in1530, We see there very sharply drawn the old rue du Puy.

A modest mansion kept the imprint of time in this street, it is the Hôtel* Havis ( *Townhouse built for the nobles families).

This private hôtel( or mansion), such as it exists even at the moment, dates 1705. Title deeds go back to the 17th century and mention the sharing of this house (of the rue du Puy) among the children of Lord Jean de Vaton, a councillor and a secretary of King Louis XIII (act of September 1-st, 1616).

Pierre de Vaton to which the hôtel was devolved, sold it to Adam-Pierre Barthélemy, Lord of Bissy, councillor for the Parliament of Paris.

Louis Havis, a councillor of King Louis XIV, general controller of the pensions of the city hall, buys this house in 1705 to a Lord of Bissy (Nicolas Pierre Barthélemy, son of the previous Lord and Abbot de Bissy) and makes it rebuild completely.

This man of taste was, as all the financiers of then, proud of nobility; Not satisfied to compose weapons in his way and to place them on his coach and on the livery of his staff, Louis Havis made sculpture, over a berry arched in the passage of his entrance, a badge, we can decipher it even at present

A double play on words on its name constitutes its talking weapons;

He was so natural that this financier who had just acquired this house in one of the most beautiful districts of the city, just a step from the Royal Place (today Place des Vosges) which was then the centre of the worldly life, wanted to restore, to enlarge, to reconstruct finally this modest hôtel before coming to live in it in 1705.

This financial vain person had a small girl, Elisabeth Geneviève Charpentier, who brought in dowry to her husband, Jacques Martin Hotteterre, ordinaire of the music of the bedroom of King Louis XIV, half of the house of the rue du Puy. Later after bereavements of family and following repurchases from parts succession, this musician took up the totality of the hotel (from 1732 till 1759, it is him who pays personally the rights of taxable rating, the hotel of which was appreciative to the Commanderie du Temple).

Which illustrates flutists' family that of Hotteterre. Since the middle of the 17-th century till the end ofthe 18-th, they seem to take part in the musical festivities of Versailles.

On January 29, 1664, The mariage forcé is represented with brightness, Louis XIV deigns to dance personally in an entertainment that the contemporaries named "Ballet of King". The last interlude of this Molière's play had for subject a grotesque tumult and the author quotes among the interpreters Lully and three Hotteterre brothers.

To celebrate the peace of Aix the Chapel in 1668 Georges Dandin is played in Versailles. Four shepherds disguised as servants enter scene the first ones. They are accompanied with four other shepherds; Descourteaux, Philbert, Jean and Martin Hotteterre who play the flute. After this musicians' family, the other owners should succeed one another.

It is at first Lord Jacques Baron, councillor in Châtelet of Paris living rue Pavé, in the Marais district, who became the owner of the building on March 3, 1784 for the total sum of 46000 French pounds among which 6000 for the price of mirrors and ornaments. This owner's change had the effect an exact description of the state where was then the hotel, room by room, object by object. This long enumeration of woodcarvings, mirrors, fireplaces in rare marble, rich ironworks, parquet of mirror, top of door painted and framed by sculptured wood, shows enough which wealth of internal decoration contained then the slightest hotel of family in this time. Most of these ornaments disappeared since one drew up this inventory of fixtures, the new buyer and his immediate successor having wanted to make money of everything.

 

 In this time all the second floor was occupied by the rooms of reception, the third floor by the rooms where lived the host. The fourth floor consisted of flats for the domestics and in the fifth floor, was the attics where were stored fodders, which had risen side street by means of ' an outside pulley. At the first floor there was a kitchen, a stake

and larder to the right following which is the cage of the stair, the stable for four horses to the left, the shed with harness in behind, and a premises for two harnessing cars.

In 1835 on January 21, same Jacques Baron sold the mansion to Adolphe Nevers, architect for 15000 francs of main price, without the backhanders, more a 1000-franc life annuity constituted for the benefit of a third party...

J.Hillaret, dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris

Adolphe Jullien, un vieil hôtel du Marais