Molitor’s New Lease of Life

After more than 20 years of shameful abandonment and a host of controversies, this May saw the history of Paris’s most famous swimming pool, the Art Deco masterpiece Piscine Molitor, rewritten with bold creativity and overwhelming modernity. This water sports complex, with its fluid and refined forms, was inaugurated in 1929 by the Olympic champions Aileen Grey Soule and Johnny Weissmuller, the most famous big screen Tarzan, who even spent an entire summer there as a lifeguard.

Situated in the 16th arrondissement, a relatively bourgeois neighbourhood of Paris, Molitor is close to Bois de Boulogne and the Roland Garros stadium – the latter built a year earlier to host the Davis Cup and used since then as the venue for the French Open. Lucien Pollet, the architect who designed the “cruise liner” style Molitor also fitted out an apartment for himself, where his daughter grew up.

Molitor very quickly became the place to be seen in the city. Its two piscines, one a 33-metre indoor pool surrounded by two rows of changing booths, the other a 50-metre outdoor lido enclosed by changing facilities laid out over three floors, were packed at all hours of the day. In summer, Molitor bore a close resemblance to an up-market seaside resort, with its porthole windows, sandy beaches, sundeck and striped parasols. Every year, when the temperature dropped, the outdoor pool was transformed into a skating rink.

Pollet employed the services of the very best craftsmen of the time, such as the master glassworkers Barillet, Damon and Tuilan. The stained glass windows dedicated to the joys of water sports, the ironwork, the mosaics, the terrazzo floors and the moulded glass lamps were of such beauty that they provided the French-Canadian writer from Quebec, Yann Martell, with the inspiration for the name of his hero, a young Indian boy, Piscine Molitor Patel, nicknamed Pi. His best-selling novel, The Life of Pi received the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and, in 2012, the movie adaptation, scooped four Oscars, including one for Best Director for the Taiwanese film-maker Ang Lee. In one of the movie’s most amazing scenes, Molitor is visually recreated, as Pi’s uncle  describes it to the young boy: “I was in heaven, swimming in the most splendid swimming pool”.

The famous baths are still very present in France’s collective psyche – in Piscine Molitor, a seductive comic book by Hervé Bourhis and Christian Cailleaux recently published by Dupuis, the late French cultural polymath Boris Vian, author of such novels as Froth on the Daydream and I Spit on your Graves, is depicted swimming there alone, putting his weakened heart to the test…

The Golden Age

During the inter-war period, Molitor was known as one of the most entertaining and fun places in the capital, offering a succession of concerts, plays and fashion shows. On June 18, 1934, the Artists Union Gala was organised there, featuring stunning actresses parading around in swimming costumes. The event’s jury, which included the actress and chanteuse Mistinguett, brought together a host of celebrities, such as painter Jean-Gabriel Domergue and film-maker Julien Duvivier.

On a different level, the first outing of the bikini on July 5, 1946 created a huge scandal. This miniature item of swimwear designed by Louis Réard was named after an atoll in the Pacific recently used for nuclear testing. For the very first time, the navel was revealed. No model was prepared to run the risk of wearing one and it was immortalised by a nude dancer from the Casino de Paris, Michèle Bernardini. The bikini was banned in several European countries and declared sinful by the Vatican. However, General Franco allowed it, in the hope of  attracting more tourists to Spain’s beaches.

Large numbers of Parisians came to swim in these pools drenched in light. “I remember my rubber bathing cap that had a strap under the chin, and also the cork floater belt I learned to swim with when I was six”, explains Nicole T, a delightful 70-year-old. “It was also at Molitor that I had my first romantic frisson. He was a member of the Lions de Paris hockey team and used to train there in the winter.”

As for Rémi L, he recalls the caterpillar-tracked Citroën which was equipped with a scraper to level the surface of the outdoor skating rink: “It was a relic of the Yellow Cruise, a wonderful expedition through Central Asia in 1931-1932 along the old Silk Road. Friday evenings were very popular and we glided along to the sounds of the tango or the foxtrot. From time to time, a voice could be heard over the loudspeakers asking the skaters to change direction. The greatest French champions could be seen at Molitor, from Jacqueline Vaudecrane to Alain Calmat.”

Graffiti, Raves & Rebirth

Decreed insalubrious, Molitor was closed and bricked up in August 1989 – a sad spectacle for local residents. Molitor was listed as a historic building but it soon became a prime spot for street artists, often being referred to as the “Sistine Chapel of graffiti”. In April 2001, the French collective Heretick, a top name on the electronic music scene, organised a huge illegal rave there which attracted a crowd of 5,000. Bertrand Delanoë, the Mayor of Paris from March 2001 until April 2014, wrote the renovation of Molitor into his campaign programme and a call for bids was made.

“There were two basic issues,” says Delanoë, “how to take a classified building into the future without spoiling it? And how to make it profitable? There was no question of Molitor being a burden to Paris tax-payers.”

In 2008, a group comprising Colony Capital, Accor and Bouygues won the bid for Molitor, with a 54-year leasehold, and invested €80 million in the exceptional renovation works, which lasted nearly three years. In 2012, despite being classified, the building was razed. A victim of bad weather and damage by squatters, pillagers, graffiti artists and clubbers, the structure had become too fragile.

Today, Molitor still boasts its two emblematic pools and also offers a five-star hotel with 124 rooms managed by Accor under the MGallery trademark, two bars, several restaurants entrusted to the Michelin-star Chef Yannick Alléno, a private club and a 1,700 square-metre spa by Clarins. This legendary site which has seen the addition of two floors, has had its original colour restored: a deep, warm yellow referred to as ‘tango’.

All that remains of the original building designed by Lucien Pollet is part of the fa.ade and some decorative features, such as the very Art Deco stained glass window by the master glassmaker Louis Barillet and the blue doors of the changing booths, which will now serve as studios and mini- galleries.

“With the architects Derbesse, Perrot and Rougerie, we decided to renovate when the opportunity arose or to rebuild it as it was,” explains Molitor’s young Director, Vincent Mézard. “When none of these options proved to be available, we decided to lend support to Molitor’s second life: street art.” Counter-culture now has a place here: with renowned graffiti artists such as Blek Le Rat, Futura 2000, Nunca and Vhils being invited to apply their skills in one of the meeting rooms. The tone is set as soon as you enter the lobby: bare or black concrete walls, galvanised steel pipework, white Corian reception desks sculpted with 1930s motifs and mirrored ceilings in which a Rolls-Royce Corniche is reflected – one  owned by the footballer Eric Cantona and graffitied by JonOne, purchased by Sébastien Bazin, the head of Accor.

Lovers of Art Deco will not necessarily be on the same wavelength but Jean-Philippe Nuel’s talents may very well help to overcome their reservations. A leading light in the world of interior design, Nuel has already successfully converted several historical buildings into hotels, such as the old Courthouse in Nantes and the Hotel Dieu in Marseille. He says, “The aim was to avoid pastiche, to offer different levels of interpretation. Molitor has a varied and inspiring history”.

The restaurant evokes the period of graffiti art with its vibrant colours but the stucco ceilings have been returned to their former glory and the floor displays the original terrazzo mosaics. The superb spa, with its duck-blue walls is reminiscent of a fantastical Miami theme. However, there is less exuberance in the bedrooms, where Nuel has employed a range of soothing colours. In the corridors, white waves flow over grey carpeting that features the words ‘bikini’ and ‘Johnny Weissmuller’, which serves as a discreet reminder of Piscine Molitor’s heritage.

How to Experience Molitor

What’s on offer at Paris’s newly revitalised Art Deco gem…

Both of Piscine Molitor’s pools have been restored practically to their original condition, although the outdoor one has been reduced to 45 metres, and their waters are maintained at an inviting 28° C.

Primarily, the pools are open to guests of the hotel (from €215 per night) and a very select private club. The latter is limited to one thousand members and, in exchange for a €1,200 admission fee and a yearly subscription of about €3,000, provides access to Molitor’s sports facilities and activities (gym, personal trainers, aqua training, courses), a concierge service and cultural events.

Every week, the pools will reserve three time slots for local school children. However, if you are neither a school pupil nor a member of the club and you want to test the water, it will cost you €180 a day per person.

By anybody’s standards, this is rather steep. But as Vincent Mézard, Molitor’s director, points out, it is “largely justified in view of the scale of the investment and the running costs”.

From France Today magazine