Château de Fromont

The Château de Fromont (French pronunciation: [otɛl də vil] is a municipal building in Ris-Orangis, Essonne, in the southern suburbs of Paris, standing on Place du Général-de-Gaulle.

Following the French Revolution, the town council initially met in the house of the mayor at the time. After finding this arrangement inadequate, in 1861, the council led by the mayor, André-Marie Charles Gomel, decided to commission a dedicated town hall. The site they selected, on the corner of Rue du Clos and Rue de Paris (now Rue Albert Rémy), was close to the Church of Notre-Dame.^[1]

The design involved a symmetrical main frontage of seven bays facing onto Rue de Paris. The central section of three bays, which was slightly taller than the wings, featured a rounded doorway flanked by a pair of round headed windows, while the first floor was fenestrated by a tall round headed window flanked by a pair of segmental headed windows. There was a pediment above the central bay. The outer bays were fenestrated by square headed casement windows on both floors.^[2] Internally, there was a meeting room, a municipal office and a schoolteacher’s flat. After the building was no longer required for municipal use, it was used as a community centre before being demolished in 1986.^[1]

In the mid-1920s, following significant population growth, the town council led by the mayor, Albert Rémy, decided to acquire a more substantial municipal building. The building they selected was the Château de Fromont. The site was owned by the Knights Templar from at least the mid-13th century. After the order was disbanded, King Philip VI donated the land to the Abbey of Saint-Magloire in the mid-14th century.^[3]

The building was occupied by the president of the Parlement of Paris, Jacques Auguste de Thou, from 1574 and then by his son, François Auguste de Thou, from 1617. After that, it was owned by an advisor to Louis XIV, Jérosme de Nouveau, from 1642, and by a nobleman, Philippe, Chevalier de Lorraine, from 1687.^[4]

Philippe, Chevalier de Lorraine commissioned the current building in the late 17th century. It was designed in the neoclassical style, built in ashlar stone and was completed in around 1700. The design involved a main block with two wings which were projected forward towards the River Seine.^[5] The garden was designed by André Le Nôtre and completed in 1715.^[6]

The house was then owned by a variety of private individuals before being seized by the state and declared biens nationaux in November 1789. The botanist, Étienne Soulange-Bodin, acquired the building and founded the first French school of horticulture there in 1829.^[7][8] It then became the property of the composer, Fromental Halévy, in 1847, before passing to his brother-in-law, Hippolyte Rodrigues, in 1862. After another succession of private owners, it was acquired by the town council in the mid-1920s. After the building had been converted for municipal use, it was reopened by the minister of the interior, Albert Sarraut, on 10 July 1927.^[9]

A monument to commemorate the life of the aviator, Henri Robida, was installed on the edge of the pond in front of the building and unveiled by the mayor, Jules Boulesteix, in October 1934.^[10][11] Following the liberation of the town by American troops on 26 August 1944, during the Second World War, a group from the French Resistance seized the town hall and removed the Vichy regime mayor, Louis Kany, from his post.^[12]