L'Hôtel del Castillo
2 Rue de Balzac, Paris, 8th Arrondisement
Built in 1856, for Santiago Drake del Castillo (1805-1871) and his second wife Clara Spitz (1824-1865). Standing at the corner of the Rue de Balzac and the Champs-Élysées, the main entrance into the courtyard is on the Rue de Balzac but from the 1970s it was given the additional address of 124 Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Santiago was an Anglo-Hispanic multi-millionaire whose father had made a fortune in Cuba as a sugar planter before marrying into Cuban aristocracy. Like his father had done in 1830, he too retired to Paris and built this as his townhouse while he tripled the size of the Château de Candé in Indre-et-Loire to serve as his country home. The latter sprang to fame when the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson were married there in 1937....
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After Santiago died in 1871, he passed his hôtel particulier to his second son, Emmanuel, who divided his time between here and the Château de Saint-Cyran close to his elder brother at Candé. Emmanuel became President of the Botanical Society of France and his herbarium here drew visitors from near and far. After he died, it was briefly home to Emmanuel's eldest son, Louis, before he went to Montreal for work and leased it from 1918 to La Société Hutchinson, a manufacturing company. The Drake del Castillo family sold the building to Total in 1974 but Hutchinson continues to have its headquarters here.
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