The (, ''

City Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...

'') is a municipal building in

Chartres Chartres () is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir Departments of France, department in the Centre-Val de Loire Regions of France, region in France. It is located about southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 1 ...

Eure-et-Loir Eure-et-Loir (, locally: ) is a French department, named after the Eure and Loir rivers. It is located in the region of Centre-Val de Loire. In 2019, Eure-et-Loir had a population of 431,575.monument historique () is a designation given to some national heritage sites in France. It may also refer to the state procedure in France by which national heritage protection is extended to a building, a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings, ...

'' by the French government in 1939.

History

The building was commissioned in its original form by the administrator to the Duchy of Chartres, Jean de Montescot in 1546. After it was badly damaged during the

French Wars of Religion The French Wars of Religion were a series of civil wars between French Catholic Church, Catholics and Protestantism, Protestants (called Huguenots) from 1562 to 1598. Between two and four million people died from violence, famine or disease di ...

, Jean's son, Claude de Montescot, decided to have it rebuilt in the early 17th century. The new building would be a typical

hôtel particulier () is the French term for a grand urban mansion, comparable to a Townhouse (Great Britain), British townhouse. Whereas an ordinary (house) was built as part of a row, sharing party walls with the houses on either side and directly fronting on a ...

with a grand portal, a grand courtyard and two ornate façades. It was designed in the

neoclassical style Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassici ...

, built in

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

stone with brick dressings and was completed in 1614. The layout involved a two-storey main building (with an attic) at the back of a courtyard, with a wing on either side and a grand portal at the front, facing north onto Rue de la Mairie. The central bay featured a square headed doorway with a moulded surround surmounted by a

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...

and a semi-circular panel containing a bust of Henry IV supported by two angels sitting on

scroll A scroll (from the Old French ''escroe'' or ''escroue''), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. Structure A scroll is usually partitioned into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyru ...

s. There was a tall

cross-window A cross-window is a window whose lights are defined by a mullion and a transom, forming a cross.Curl, James Stevens (2006). ''Oxford Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture'', 2nd ed., OUP, Oxford and New York, p. 214. . The Late ...

on the first floor and an

oriel window An oriel window is a form of bay window which protrudes from the main wall of a building but does not reach to the ground. Supported by corbels, bracket (architecture), brackets, or similar cantilevers, an oriel window generally projects from an ...

at attic level. The design also involved a symmetrical south-facing frontage of nine bays facing onto Rue au Lin: on this side the central bay featured a square headed doorway surmounted by a triangular pediment on the ground floor, a tall cross-window surmounted by a segmental pediment at mezzanine level, and a small bipartite window high up on the first floor. The other bays, both in the courtyard and on the south-facing frontage, were fenestrated with cross-windows and flanked by brick

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s. After Claude de Montescot died in 1625, his son, Jacques de Montescot, inherited the building but was unable to maintain it and decided to sell it. The

Ursulines The Ursulines, also known as the Order of Saint Ursula (post-nominals: OSU), is an enclosed religious order of women that in 1572 branched off from the Angelines, also known as the Company of Saint Ursula. The Ursulines trace their origins to th ...

Saumur Saumur () is a Communes of France, commune in the Maine-et-Loire Departments of France, department in western France. The town is located between the Loire and Thouet rivers, and is surrounded by the vineyards of Saumur itself, Chinon, Bourgu ...

bought it and converted it into a school for impoverished girls. In 1761, the building was sold to the Daughters of Providence, who used it as an orphanage. In 1792, during the French Revolution, it was seized by the state and the daughters were driven out. It was then bought by the City of Chartres for use as a town hall in 1824, and a museum and a library were also established in the building. The museum relocated to Cloître Notre Dame, to form the Musée des beaux-arts de Chartres, in 1939, but the library remained in the building and was badly damaged by inaccurate allied bombing on the night of 26 May 1944, during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. After the war, the main building was restored, and concrete office blocks were built to the east and west of the main building in 1960. In 2012, the city council decided to refurbish the main building, to demolish the 1960s concrete structures and to erect modern glass-clad structures in their place. A new underground linking gallery was created beneath the gardens to connect the new buildings to each other. The new structures were designed by Wilmotte & Associés and Trouvé-Tchépélev, built by

Eiffage Eiffage S.A. () is a French civil engineering construction company. it was the third largest company of its type in France, and the fifth largest in Europe. History The company was formed in 1992 through the merger of several long standing comp ...

at a cost of €10.5 million, and were officially opened by the mayor,

Jean-Pierre Gorges Jean-Pierre Gorges (born on 3 August 1953 in Gonesse (Seine-et-Oise, now Val-d'Oise), is a French politician. He has been mayor of Chartres and president of the Chartres Métropole agglomeration community since 2001. He was deputy for the first c ...

, in June 2022.

References

{{reflist Government buildings completed in the 17th century City and town halls in France 1614 establishments in France Chartres Monuments historiques of Eure-et-Loir