The Hôtel de Valentinois was an hôtel particulier, a kind of large townhouse of France, in Passy, bordering at its greatest extent present-day Rue Raynouard, present-day Rue des Vignes (opposite to Château de Passy), Rue Bois-le-Vent,[1] to present-day Rue de l'Annonciation.[1]
The Hôtel was last owned by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, who bought it in 1776 and rented to Benjamin Franklin the dwelling appending by the orangery, and eventually the eastern pavilion of the Hôtel.[2]
Le Ray de Chaumont sold the Hôtel as three different lots.[3]
Auguste Doniol's claim that in June 1837 the Brothers of the Christian Schools bought "les deux pavillons" (supposedly those bordering present-day Rue Raynouard), and a part of the gardens, from "M. Briant"[4] seems to conflict with Henri Bouchot's claim that Briant had owned "the back premises" (likely the orangery and adjoined buildings) "and kitchen-garden", while "the greater part, the house with the colonnades, the terraces and garden" had been owned by "writer and politician, Claude Fulchiron of Lyons",[3] and with claims that these passed in 1811, at least in part, to banker Isaac-Louis Grivel's daughter Anne-Marie, and were sold by her husband Charles Vernes to the Brothers in 1836,[5] another part having been bought by industrialist David Singer and opened with a street bearing his name as early as 1836.[6]
A "third lot" had fallen "to Du Mersan, the gay dramatist", comprising the commons and some remains of the garden[3] (likely a southwestern part of it, visible on the Roussel map of Paris and its faubourgs and surroundings but not shown on the Guélin plan of the Hôtel).
On 8 April 1839, the Brothers transferred a boarding school for boys which they had opened at 165 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin to facilities which they had specially built on their lot of the Hôtel's grounds and possibly facilities of the allotted Hôtel which they had preserved,[7] and which became known as "le Pensionnat des Frères des écoles chrétiennes à Passy". In the following decades, the Brothers would rebuild some of the school's facilities and expand other ones,[8] the school buildings bordering eventually, if not from the day of its opening in Passy, all of the segment of present-day Rue Raynouard running from the corner of present-day Rue Singer to that of present-day Rue des Vignes.