Stripping French Homes of History
JOINVILLE, France — The soft- spoken mayor of this ancient village on the Marne River stopped in front of a narrow house. “Are you ready for this?” asked the mayor, Bertrand Ollivier, his expression pained. “It’s violent,” he said.
The mayor’s aide for urban planning, Anthony Koenig, unlocked and pushed open the front door to the 16th- century house. The violence was visible.
The floorboards were gone; the room once used as a kitchen was bare of tiles. Underfoot, there was just gravel and earth. The once wood- paneled walls had been stripped down to the brick and, in some places, exposed to the elements.
Throughout the French countryside, especially in rural areas of eastern and central France, homes have fallen victim to speculators who strip their architectural treasures and sell them, often abroad, leaving once graceful structures little more than empty shells behind gaily painted facades. In other cases, the owners themselves sell the architectural elements to raise cash.
The sales are legal, but the phenomenon is an element in the gradual depopulation of many of France’s villages, and what some fear is an ebbing away of French culture.
“The market for this art- architecture in France is millions, tens of millions of euros each year,” said Emmanuel Étienne of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.
Of the thousands of export licenses sought for such goods annually, only about 10 are denied, Mr. Étienne said.
Most of the architectural elements taken from villages are relatively mundane and have only limited value compared with the art and architecture of France’s grandest homes.
But there is a broader market for such relatively commonplace items as antique tile floors, wood paneling, mantelpieces and chimneys. They end up in expensive homes in Germany, in the United States and occasionally in Japan, but some also go to the South of France, bought by foreigners to redo their vacation homes.
A standard architectural element from Joinville might be a 19th- century terra- cotta tile floor for a kitchen — worth about $6,500. Or a mantelpiece worth as much as $10,000.
The loss to Joinville is greater than a sum of money: A house stripped of such details is almost impossible to sell because of the cost of restoration. The house next door also becomes less desirable and declines in value, and a small town finds it that much harder to retain its population, its attractiveness and its life.
Although France has strict laws to protect national patrimony, few local officials make use of them. In part, that is because restoration and preservation would put them at odds with local developers or hin- der modernizing projects intended to improve economic activity.
Mr. Ollivier hired Mr. Koenig, a 33-year- old with a fervent commitment to preservation, and Noémie Faux, a Joinville native with a love for its old homes. Ms. Faux is compiling a register of every old home in Joinville, including the heritage items inside.
They have turned to a seldom-used law that allows the mayor to intervene when construction (or deconstruction) could make a building unsafe and require renovation. They have also started a program to provide a source of funds for structures in need of repair.
Today, while there are still many “for sale” signs around town, the mayor’s office is often involved in ensuring that the buyer is not a speculator and even uses its limited budget to buy the houses to ensure their preservation, before working to find a good buyer.
Mr. Ollivier said: “When you see all this heritage of the 17th century, the chateau from the 16th century, all that was built, one has an obligation to safeguard it. It’s really our first mission.”