Hôtel Lancaster Paris

The Russian painter Boris Pastoukhoff lived at the Hôtel Lancaster Paris in the 1930s and 1940s and could rarely pay his bill. Emile Wolf, the Swiss owner, accepted canvases instead. Some eighty of them stayed in the house, and portraits and flower pieces by Pastoukhoff still hang in the corridors and rooms of 7 rue de Berri. It is the kind of detail that explains the hotel: a town house a few steps from the Champs-Élysées that has behaved like a private home since 1930.

History

The building was put up in 1889 as the Paris mansion of Santiago Drake del Castillo, a Spanish-Cuban aristocrat, on a street that was then lined with similar hôtels particuliers. Wolf bought it in 1930 and turned it into a hotel, adding floors and keeping the proportions of the rooms. He ran it for four decades with a reputation for discretion that drew the film world: Marlene Dietrich made it her Paris home for three years in the 1930s, and Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and later Grace Kelly stayed.

The Lancaster passed through the Savoy Group of London in the post-war decades, and in 1995 Grace Leo-Andrieu, the Hong Kong-born hotelier, took it over and restored the house room by room, reviving the Pastoukhoff collection and the antiques Wolf had collected. In the 2000s Michel Troisgros took charge of the restaurant, La Table du Lancaster, which held a Michelin star under his direction. The hotel has since changed hands again and the restaurant has been renamed, but the house itself has not been rebuilt.

Architecture and design

The street elevation is a stone mansion of the 1880s with a carriage entrance. Inside, the hotel is a sequence of small salons rather than a lobby: antiques, Baccarat chandeliers, marble fireplaces and the paintings. A small lift in a wrought-iron cage serves the upper floors. The centre of the building is an inner courtyard planted as a garden, with a fountain and tables, which the dining room opens onto in summer. Few hotels this close to the Champs-Élysées have an outdoor space where the street cannot be heard.

Rooms and suites

There are about 57 rooms and suites, no two alike, furnished with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pieces accumulated by Wolf and Leo-Andrieu. The Marlene Dietrich Suite, on the upper floors, keeps the lilac tones she asked for. Upper rooms on the courtyard side look over the garden; those at the top have views towards the roofs of the 8th and, from some, the Eiffel Tower. Bathrooms are in marble.

Dining

The restaurant occupies the ground-floor rooms along the courtyard and sets its tables outside in the garden in good weather. Under Michel Troisgros in the 2000s it was one of the more sought-after tables of the quarter, with a star; the kitchen has since passed to other chefs and the name has changed. The bar is a small panelled room next to it, more drawing room than cocktail bar.

Weddings and events

The Lancaster is a house for small events. There is no ballroom; the salons and the private dining room take dinners and meetings of a few dozen, and the courtyard garden is used for cocktails and summer receptions. Weddings are held at the scale of a family party, with the restaurant privatised. The hotel is often booked in full during the fashion weeks by a single house.

Location

Rue de Berri joins the Champs-Élysées between the Rond-Point and the Étoile, in the 8th arrondissement. The avenue is one minute on foot, the Arc de Triomphe about ten, the avenue Montaigne and the Faubourg Saint-Honoré a little more. George V metro station on line 1 is the nearest. Charles de Gaulle airport is about 40 minutes by car. For a luxury hotel in Paris at this address, the silence of the courtyard is the rarest feature.