Hôtel Jules & Jim

Rue des Gravilliers existed by 1250; the city's street register says the name probably comes from the gravilliers, workers who burned vinegar lees to make an ash called cendre gravelée. In the 20th century number 11 was a metal-treatment workshop trading as R. Pochat, and a company called Pochat, registered in 1958, is still listed at the address. The neighborhood association Vivre le Marais photographed the R. Pochat sign on the low street building in about 2009 and described the building as abandoned for decades.^[1][3][6][7]

The Commission du Vieux Paris, the city's heritage committee, examined an application for the total demolition of 11 rue des Gravilliers on 20 October and 24 November 2005. Its register dates the building to the 18th century. Vivre le Marais wrote that a company called Ornithorynque filed the building permit and that the plot, very narrow on the street, widens behind to take in part of number 7. A property company named after the address and the operating company Oxygène were both created in 2007. The trade magazine Batiactu reported in 2012 that the street building had only two stories, and the co-owner Geoffroy Sciard told the magazine it housed a precious-metals treatment plant when he found it.^{[2][6][4][5][10]}

According to the construction diary the hotel kept on its website, demolition stopped for sixteen months, resumed in July 2009 and finished in March 2010. The contractor Dutheil began digging in May 2010, went about five meters below street level, underpinned the neighbors' foundations and filled in an old well. By October 2010 an eight-story concrete building filled the gap between numbers 9 and 13 and a three-level house stood at the back of the plot. Oak floorboards salvaged from the demolition were relaid in the bar. Parties marked the first concrete on 29 September 2010 and the finished staircase on 10 March 2011. The opening slipped from September to October 2011, and the first guests arrived in December 2011.^[7][8][11]

In 2012 the trade magazine Batiactu named Geoffroy Sciard and Antoine Brault as the owners, and the design blog Silencio described Sciard and Brault as the people behind the project. The hotel's credits name Henrich Fitger as project architect, Natacha Froger of Atome Associés as interior architect, Romaric Midon of Studiom as site supervisor, Michaël Malapert for the bar, Alain Pin of Light & Day for the lighting and Martine Harlé for the signage. Sciard told Batiactu that one courtyard building was fully renovated and the other built from scratch; the hotel says the only old structure left is the frame of the 18th-century house that holds the bar and the Duplex. Vivre le Marais noted that the new street front repeats the vertical lines over three levels of the Pochat workshop.^{[8][9][10][11][6]}

The name is that of François Truffaut's 1962 film Jules et Jim, adapted from a novel by Henri-Pierre Roché. The hotel's website does not say why it chose the name, and nothing links the film, the novel or the people who made them to the building.^[13][12]