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# France's first glass house, built for Jean Dalsace between 1928 and 1932
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/maison-de-verre-dom-iz-stekla-ambitsioznyi-i-avangardnyi-proekt-pera-sharo-v-parizhe-na-ulitse-sen-giiom-31/
- Published: 2024-02-18T14:19:53.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:47:55.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Architecture, Art, Mores, Paris

Maison de Verre, the House of Glass: Pierre Chareau's ambitious and avant-garde project in Paris, at 31 Rue Saint-Guillaume.

The house was built between 1928 and 1932 for Dr Jean Dalsace, a physician and well-known Communist, and a close friend of the designer Pierre Chareau, with the participation of the Dutch architect Bernard Bijvoet and the engineer Louis Dalbet. The principal materials were steel and glass.

It was the first glass house in France. Inside were movable glass partitions, which made it possible to change the configuration of the rooms, to reveal or conceal the staircase leading to the private apartments, and to hide the working area in which patients were received.

The house was frequented by the leading intellectuals, men of letters, creative figures and artists of the day, from Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lipchitz and Louis Aragon to Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Paul Éluard, Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob.

In the 2000s the house was bought by the architectural historian Robert Rubin, who restored it to proper condition and settled there with his family, only occasionally permitting tours inside. The collection of furniture designed by Chareau for this house, however, held by the heirs of Annie and Jean Dalsace together with furniture from their other houses and apartments, likewise created by Chareau, was sold at Christie's in 2021 for enormous sums, with individual pieces fetching upwards of a hundred thousand euros.

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