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In the 1770s Paris was being transformed at an extraordinary speed. Real-estate speculation was in full swing, driven by financiers, the nobility, and the clergy. Private residences were spinning up along the Champs-Élysées, as well as in the entire faubourg Saint-Honoré area. Architects such as Charles de Wailly, Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, Étienne-Louis Boullée, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Louis Letellier, and Mathurin Cherpitel were putting up mansions everywhere.
The new residences included Mathurin Cherpitel's 1770 Hôtel du Châtelet (at 127 rue de Grenelle, now the ministry of Labour), with an avant-corps of colossal Corinthian columns on the main façade and a more graceful three-sided avant-corps on the garden façade.
The photo shows the main façade.
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