Villa Rhodania

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

History

On this plot, an initial construction was undertaken by Joseph Mons, merchant, in the third quarter of the 19th century. In 1919-1920, the Villa was rebuilt. It took the name Villa Hostein, after its architect and owner Charles Antonin Hostein, who had previously collaborated with Tony Garnier on the construction of the Mouche abattoirs in 1910-1914. It was part of the development of Parilly park by the Department of Rhône. It is not clear that elements from the previous construction could have been preserved in the new building. In 1934, a competition for the development of the park was launched. Prefect Bollaert (prefect of Rhône from 1934 to 1940), in his capacity as representative of the Department, proceeded with the acquisition of Villa Hostein and its park so that it could be integrated into the major Parilly park project. On 19 June 1940, Prefect Bollaert was taken hostage by the German army. He was released in July. On 25 September 1940, he was relieved of his duties and forcibly retired for refusing to take an oath to Marshal Pétain: the general council of Rhône authorized him to stay in Villa Rhodania, until he obtained, for himself and his family, permission to cross the line of demarcation to return to his home in Paris, in the occupied zone. The villa also housed the widow of Prefect Bonnefoy, who died in deportation. The villa was subsequently made available by the Department to successive prefects as a place of rest.

Description

The villa Rhodania has twenty-two rooms distributed over five levels and in external outbuildings a tennis court, a garden, a vegetable garden, an orchard and a greenhouse, is somewhat abandoned. The rose garden has disappeared, the aviary and the greenhouse are no longer in use. The basin deserves repair. Inside, the drawing rooms on the ground floor are simply furnished. On the first floor, a bedroom to the south was the prefect's working office. Access is by the staircase built by the Hostein in the entrance of the house in 1919-1920. The bedrooms on the second floor are lit by the dormers of the roof and are served from below by a secondary staircase located in the centre of the villa, on the east side. The north pavilion was fitted out as a belvedere-library. A room in this pavilion served as a chapel for the Hostein-List, then was converted into a games room at the time when the villa was regularly visited by prefects and their families. Currently, this villa is totally unknown to the general public. The last prefects did not all use it and there was even talk of the local administration disposing of it in the medium term. For the heritage of the city of Bron and the metropolis, this villa is however very interesting and it is a place with a magnificent view over the conurbation. The building requires repairs to certain rapid-setting cement masonry but is sound and this place allows one to strongly evoke the history of the Rhône department. In this sense, it lives up to its name of "Rhodania". From the point of view of architectural history, its free construction (perhaps carried out without an architect but with the technique of a building engineer) adapts well to its natural environment, by large openings opening onto the garden. The roofs have a marked overhang and the marked horizontals follow the morphology of the gently sloping terrain on the summit of which it stands. In terms of architecture, the currents of thought that presided over its construction link it to the influence of the Chicago schools and the "prairie" style according to the problem of building dwellings in large spaces where the natural aspect takes precedence over the urban aspect. A concept of housing very modern for the time, at the heart of a space organized for domestic economy and pleasure on the scale of a well-to-do family of the early 20th century.