This impressive apartment building not far from the Eiffel Tower, has some unusual circumstances that give it an interest beyond its Art Nouveau charm.
For a start, its name, essentially ‘the House of Arum Lilies’ comes from details of the arum and calla lilies the architect used in the decoration. It was actually built as a private girls’ school called .Cours des demoiselles Longuet.
It has long since become a desirable apartment building, the demoiselles presumably having graduated. The year after it was built, it won a prize as the best new facade in Paris.
You may have notice a missing detail so far in this story: the name of the architect, and that is one of the memorable bits about the building as well.
Octave Raquin—there, now you have the name—was 27 at the time and a well-known figure in the cabarets of Montmartre, in the drawing rooms of the avant-garde, in the salons of what passed for the Bohemians of the age.
But look him up on line, try to know more about his career, ask what else he did, and all you will find is that he lived to 1930, designed Les Arums, and had his portrait painted by his friend Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
