Buildings & Gardens

1911-1914

• "Mrs. Reid provided a charming home in her Girl’s Club for about forty art and music students, and many others, living on limited funds or seeking companionship, enjoyed the warm hospitality extended at the Club teas." Dorothy Leet, 1939.

As the Club grew, Elizabeth Mills Reid began planning in 1911 to expand the property, envisioning art studios, more dormitory quarters, and the addition of a new edifice for exhibitions and meetings. Construction of these new spaces, including the maison verte, which served as a clinic for American students was completed in 1913, when she also concluded the purchase of the property she had rented up to that time.

Mills Reid commissioned the construction of a building facing the Rue de la Grande Chaumière for the use of the American Girl’s Art Club. It was designed and built by the expatriate American architect Charly Knight. Educated at the Beaux-Arts and perhaps already working in Paris at the time of Mrs Reid’s commission, Knight’s building seems to have been the first of his many assignments for Americans living in Paris. After 1911, he designed the famous Tiffany & Cie building near the Opéra. In 1915, he became Edith Wharton’s architect and transformed her house at St.-Brice-la Forêt as well her villa at Hyères. In 1927-28, he designed the American Hospital's Memorial building in Neuilly-sur-Seine as well as the International Youth Hostel/Student Residence near the Luxembourg gardens on boulevard St Michel. His Renault showroom (now the Citroen showroom) on Avenue Wagram, completed in 1933, was one of the finest examples of industrial design in its time. All these works are classified in L’Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel.

The new building originally housed 7 art studios on the ground floor and 9 student bedrooms above. Its architecture is a fine example of the Neo-renaissance style in France of which Knight was one of the early proponents. As far as we can tell from the original architectural plans preserved in the Reid Hall archives, Knight designed a two-story building, but by the time the building was completed in 1913, an additional story of rooms had been added. In its completed state, the building housed 20 bedrooms, 7 art studios, and a dining hall that could accommodate up to 100 guests.

Knight was also responsible for designing and building a separate structure, the present Grande Salle, located between the eighteenth-century century building and the new edifice. It was conceived as a Salle d’Exposition, with the main access through the old buildings. A double height monumental space, it was decorated with wood-paneling and covered with a glass ceiling. Adjoining it was the furniture depot, above which Knight designed a handsome library overlooking the Grande Salle. The Library has been conserved in its original state to this day.

In addition, a small building was added to the second garden (known as the "Maison verte", which served as a clinic for American students in Paris through 1939. An American graduate nurse was in charge of the clinic, and an American doctor in Paris generously gave of his time for medical advice to the students.

The women artists in residence only enjoyed the new facilities for one year before World War I broke out.

1929

During the year, Reid Hall underwent a major facelift. The roof and the rooms with the dormer windows in the 18th-century structure were completely revamped, with new floors supported by steel beams.

In addition, a fourth floor was added to the current Institute building in order to create artist studios. Those that had been on the ground floor were transformed into a dining hall.

1936

In a January 1936 letter from Miss Leet to Dean Gildersleeve in which she outlines possible plans for integrating the American Library in Paris into Reid Hall, Miss Leet casts doubts upon the proposal because of the size of the Library's collections and the hectic foot traffic of patrons:

“Mr. Knight, the architect of the club when the big hall was built in 1913, looked over the building yesterday, and is sending to his archives in the country for the plans. If there are quarries under that part of the building, it would be very expensive to touch that section. When we rebuilt in 1929, we did not do anything to those rooms except to paint them. The floors are not strong and would not carry the weight of books without steel supports, and the building would not carry steel supports without deep foundations through the quarries.”