A former partner of Puerto de Liverpool in Mexico City, Jean-Baptiste Ollivier approached Eugène Marx in 1900 to build a villa he wanted to construct not far from Villa Les Mélèzes, recently built for Casimir Reynaud.
An initial preliminary design, executed in the tradition of the École des Beaux-Arts, in Indian ink and pencil enhanced with watercolour, displays a classical spirit. The symmetrical but dissimilar façades, with a central avant-corps and broken roofs, betray a post-Haussmannian style that was widespread on the outskirts of urban centres.
The interior layout is in keeping with the style of contemporary bourgeois architecture, with reception areas and service rooms concentrated on the ground floor and bedrooms on the upper floors.
Close to the entrance, on the north-east side, the study or smoking room is for the exclusive use of the master of the house, who keeps his desk and library there and receives his former associates.
To the north-west, the well-lit, tiled kitchen, accessed by a service staircase, is separated from the dining room by the pantry.
To the south, the dining room connects to the large and small living rooms.
Upstairs, the master bedroom and guest bedroom face south and share a bathroom and toilet; the children's bedrooms are located to the north. The attic floor houses the unheated bedrooms without any sanitary facilities reserved for the servants.
The project selected by Jean-Baptiste Ollivier and completed in 1904, which was significantly different, opted for an asymmetrical treatment of the façades with, on the south side, the adoption of a polygonal avant-corps entirely pierced by windows framed with moulded door and window frames, in contrast to the north façade facing the street, which was redesigned in 1987.
Here, Eugène Marx revisited the theme of the polygonal avant-corps, which he had first used two years earlier in Jausiers with the Villa Morelia.
In the 1980s, the villa was stripped of its fine, tinted Tyrolean plaster, which is still visible on the chimney bases.
Only the masonry of the base, made of local rubble stone laid and repointed with cement mortar, was intended to be visible, crowned by plaster mouldings and a band of hard Cassis stone. The white mouldings, window frames and cornice are made of hydraulic plaster from Jausiers. As a sign of affluence, balconies are now present on all floors.
The interior layout is in keeping with the style of contemporary bourgeois architecture, with reception areas and service rooms concentrated on the ground floor and bedrooms on the upper floors.
Close to the entrance, on the north-east side, the study or smoking room is for the exclusive use of the master of the house, who keeps his desk and library there and receives his former associates.
To the north-west, the well-lit, tiled kitchen, accessed by a service staircase, is separated from the dining room by the pantry.
To the south, the dining room connects to the large and small living rooms.
Upstairs, the master bedroom and guest bedroom face south and share a bathroom and toilet; the children's bedrooms are located to the north. The attic floor houses the unheated bedrooms without any sanitary facilities reserved for the servants.
The project selected by Jean-Baptiste Ollivier and completed in 1904, which was significantly different, opted for an asymmetrical treatment of the façades with, on the south side, the adoption of a polygonal avant-corps entirely pierced by windows framed with moulded door and window frames, in contrast to the north façade facing the street, which was redesigned in 1987.
Here, Eugène Marx revisited the theme of the polygonal avant-corps, which he had first used two years earlier in Jausiers with the Villa Morelia.
In the 1980s, the villa was stripped of its fine, tinted Tyrolean plaster, which is still visible on the chimney bases.
Only the masonry of the base, made of local rubble stone laid and repointed with cement mortar, was intended to be visible, crowned by plaster mouldings and a band of hard Cassis stone. The white mouldings, window frames and cornice are made of hydraulic plaster from Jausiers. As a sign of affluence, balconies are now present on all floors.
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