Pershing Hall

Hotel description

Pershing Hall is named for the American general John Pershing, who used this nineteenth-century mansion as his headquarters during the First World War. But anyone expecting this place to be some sort of museum, or a throwback to 1917 and before, will be in for a shock: the hotel as we know it today is the creation of Andrée Putman, the designer and interior architect responsible for some truly striking modern interiors, including that of Ian Schrager’s Morgans hotel, which can reasonably be said to have precipitated the current boutique hotel revolution.

Fears of wacky design excess prove unwarranted, as this space is fastidiously minimal, and yet exceedingly elegant-much the same way a fashionable Parisian man or woman can extract maximum style from the most basic black ensemble. Frankly, it’s refreshing just to find a hotel in this city that’s not stuffed with reproductions of centuries-old antiques, but Pershing Hall goes beyond spare modern design into the realm of the artful.

There are only 26 rooms, all as meticulously ordered as the lobby-the smaller doubles maximize space through economy of decor, and the larger suites feel positively vast. The palette is muted, the polar opposite of the blinding gilt-and-velvet approach of the traditional Parisian hotel, and also miles ahead of what passes for minimalism these days-most egregiously, the sterile white-on-white that Mme. Putman says “makes you feel like you’re in a refrigerator.”

This is minimal modern hotel design before it lost the plot, harkening back to a time when the fittings were chosen for quality ahead of visual impact, furnishings custom-made for the hotel, and simplicity pursued for calming effect, not cheapening effect. Of course it’s not all quite as deadly serious as it sounds-the centerpiece of the hotel is the inner courtyard, featuring the delightful conceit of an entire wall covered in tropical foliage, a thirty-metre vertical garden. And there’s more to Pershing Hall than design, including a restaurant directed by a former student of Alain Ducasse, and an 8th-arrondissement location which places guests in one of the city’s most upmarket neighborhoods. Definitely enough to impress the most jaded traveler-unless you’re absolutely addicted to that ever-present Louis XIV style.