La Samaritaine (French pronunciation: [la samaʁitɛn]) is a large department store in Paris, France, located in the first arrondissement. The nearest métro station is Pont-Neuf, directly in front at the quai du Louvre and the rue de la Monnaie. The company was owned by Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jaÿ who hired architect Frantz Jourdain to expand their original store. It started as a small apparel shop and expanded to what became a series of department store buildings with a total of 90 different departments. It has been a member of the International Association of Department Stores from 1985 to 1992.
It is currently owned by LVMH, a luxury-goods maker. The store, which had been operating at a loss since the 1970s, was closed in 2005 purportedly because the building did not meet safety codes. Plans for redeveloping the building involved lengthy complications, as the representatives of the store's founders argued with new owners LVMH over the building's future as a department store or a mixed-use development. After seven years of renovation, it has reopened to public on 23 June 2021, having been previewed by the French President Emmanuel Macron journalists the days before. Its retail offerings targeted at affluent consumers, restaurants, and a boutique hotel that includes a penthouse suite with its own private swimming pool. The building has been listed since 1990 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.
Construction history
Architect Frantz Jourdain was originally hired to assist in the remodeling and expansion of the existing store building, known as Magasin 1. However, as the store's success continued to grow, Cognacq decided to expand into a building across the street, Magasin 2, which became the site for the Samaritaine as designed by Jourdain. The construction of the building was done in stages, partly because the store had to continue to remain open in order to bring in revenue. Much of the building was brought to the site prefabricated, allowing the construction to occur rapidly. The building was proposed in 1905 and after five years of construction, the building, filling the entire block from rues de la Monnaie, Arbre-Sec, des Petres, and Baillet, was complete in 1910. The original store, Magasin 1, was eventually updated with a steel and glass structure to match Magasin 2, which was located across the street.
By the time the department store was completed in 1910, new movements, such as Fauvism, Cubism, and Werkbund, had come about and devalued the style of the Samaritaine. In the 1920s, Cognacq requested for expansions of the department store. City officials allowed for the expansions with the stipulation that Cognacq follow their specifications which centered around the utilization of a more current architectural style. This was done with little opposition as both Cognacq and Jourdain were aware that the original style of the building was outdated. During this reconstruction and expansion phase, the glass domes and decorative ironwork were removed. The new addition was a collaboration between architects Jourdain and Henry Sauvage, completed between 1926 and 1928, which featured cream colored stone and was of the Art Deco style. Similar to the original building in that it made use of the exposed steel however, its focus was much more geometry-based. At the end of construction, the Samaritaine eventually consisted of four different Magasins of department stores reaching eleven stories in total.
La Samaritaine was bought in 2001 by LVMH, the luxury-goods company that had just previously purchased Le Bon Marché. On 15 June 2005, in order to update the 19th-century building to modern standards of security, or for purposes of restructuring, as the labor unions believe, the department store was closed. LVMH selected the Japanese architectural firm SANAA to renovate the building. Implementation of the new design has been blocked a number a times by local authorities for failure to adhere to planning requirements and for lack of visual compatibility with the surrounding buildings. In June 2015, one of the Rivoli building permit is finalized and in September of the same year construction began. This modern construction of the Samaritaine is designed to feature a hotel, restaurant, a brewery, cafes, offices, and housing and was projected to be complete in 2019. However, the renovated building did not actually reopen until June 2021.