Grands Magasins du Louvre
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The Grands Magasins du Louvre was a Parisian department store that was founded in 1855, three years after their competitor Le Bon Marché, and that closed definitively 1974. At the present the building houses the Louvre des Antiquaires as well as offices. The Grands Magasins du Louvre had inspired Émile Zola in his novel Au Bonheur des Dames (1883).
In 1855, Alfred Chauchard, hitherto a clerk in the store Au Pauvre Diable with the salary of 25 Francs per month, joined Auguste Hériot and Charles Eugene Faré to rent the ground floor of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, which had just opened its doors on the Rue de Rivoli in a building built in 1852 at the occasion of the World Fair by the Pereire brothers at the request of the Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine.
At the ground floor of the building, Faré's company, "Chauchard, Hériot, et Compagnie" created a store for fashion, "the Galleries of the Louvre." The buildings were rented by La Compagnie Immobilière de Paris. The Pereire brothers advanced funds for the launching of the business and, in 1860, took shares in the company.
In 1857, Faré withdrew, mistakenly, because commerce did not cease thriving. In 1865, the Grands Magasins du Louvre realised 15 million sales, and 41 million ten years later. At that time they employed 2.400 people. Chauchard and Hériot became extremely rich.
In 1875, the two associates were able to repurchase the whole of the building. They transferred the Hôtel du Louvre to other side of the Place du Palais-Royal, where it is still today and, after two years of work, opened the Grands Magasins du Louvre. They were pleased to offer all that the customer could desire: fifty-two departments and counters offed silks of all the colors, shawls of the Indies, tartans, article de Paris, hosiery, toys, watercolors, et cetera.
Auguste Hériot died in 1879 and his brother, Olympe, inherit his shares of the company. Chauchard sold his shares, for some unknown reason, in 1885. Olympe then directed the company alone until 1888, the year in which the first signs of mental derangement obliged him to resign. He was replaced by the son of Émile Pereire.
In 1889, the company was renamed Société du Louvre and opened a second hotel, the Hôtel Concorde Saint-Lazare, whose hall is the work of Gustave Eiffel. In 1909, the company opened the Hôtel de Crillon, Place de la Concorde after its renovation. In 1930, the shares were registered in the official list of the Paris Bourse.
