1 · Opening
The building on rue du Bourg-l'Abbé was a public bathhouse before it was a nightclub, and is a hotel now. No other entry in Part X has travelled the full distance.
2 · Why it matters
As a club it was the Paris room of the fashion decade, and it carried a Philippe Starck interior — one of the earliest instances of a named designer being the reason to enter a nightclub, a practice this register now records under Group VIII generally and LHL-S-154 Silencio in particular.
But its real value to the Library is the arc. A room built to sell washing, converted to sell the night, converted again to sell sleep — three entirely different hospitality propositions inside one shell, each of which worked in its period.
It is the strongest available answer to anyone who thinks Part X and the main register are separate businesses. They are frequently the same building at different times.
3 · Signature & ritual
The pool, kept and drained and danced around, so that every era of the building was visible inside the one after it.
4 · What this house does not solve
The club closed in 2010 in poor condition, and the hotel that followed is a different business with different owners — continuity of walls is not continuity of house, and the register does not pretend otherwise.
A protected building forces the conversion rather than inviting it: the arc looks elegant in retrospect and was driven by economics and planning law.
And the designer credit is the thinnest kind of provenance. A 1990 interior in a room that has been rebuilt twice survives mainly as an attribution.
5 · LHL connections
- LHL-P-100Philippe StarckThe interior, and the beginning of designer-credited nightlife.
- LHL-S-146Le PalaceThe other defining Paris room of the same decade.
- LHL-S-154SilencioWhere the authored-interior idea arrives thirty years later.
6 · Timeline
- 19th centuryBuilt as public baths.
- 1978Opens as a nightclub.
- 1990Philippe Starck interior ⚑ date to confirm.
- 2010The club closes.
- 2015The building reopens as a hotel ⚑ to confirm.
7 · LHL story
“Baths, Club, Hotel” — One building sold washing, then the night, then sleep. Part X and the main register are not different businesses; sometimes they are different decades.
Sources
What the entry rests on. Each reference records the specific facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.