Paris's Phantom Hotel
The building isn’t haunted, it’s the ghost
Notable monuments and architecture define Paris: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Sacre Coeur, the Arc de Triomphe, the Centre Pompidou, I.M. Pei’s Louvre pyramids.
And then there’s the Holiday Inn Express Canal de la Villette.
In February 1990, a fire destroyed one of the two Bonded Warehouses that flanked the Canal de l’Ourcq1. The building had been converted to artist studios, and the fire consumed fifteen years’ worth of paintings, sculpture, and photography (the Parisian firefighters’ YouTube has a short video about the fire).
The remaining warehouse was scheduled for demolition, but the city ultimately decided to rebuild the one that burned down. Finding the right design to restore the symmetry of the two buildings took numerous architectural competitions. In the end, the Chaix & Morel architecture firm’s proposal won in 2004. Their design created a “ghost of the destroyed building,” where the structure’s outline replicates the original building’s shape, but a light-colored metal meshing surrounding the edifice adds a blurred effect. The metal pieces that make up the mesh look like gentle waves, reflecting the water from the Bassin de la Villette and the canal. In 2008, the building opened for business, and the businesses were a youth hostel, a restaurant, and a Holiday Inn Express.
We ended up at this unique Holiday Inn Express thanks to the current heatwave plaguing Europe. In April, taking my niece to Paris to meet up with her mom seemed like a good idea. We planned to stay with friends, but the day before, they warned us that the “temperatures were kind of hellish.” Despite my constant reassurances to my dad that we wouldn’t need a hotel reservation, we decided that staying in air conditioning with a nine-year-old would give everyone more peace. Dad and Holiday Inn Express to the rescue!
We did visit our friends in their apartment, and they pointed out the hotel in an architecture guide book. Our sixth-floor room had a balcony on the basin side, so we could watch the party boats floating by and under a draw bridge. An additional security walkway meant my niece could step outside without me worrying she’d clamber off the edge and into the water below. Not that we spent much time on the balcony, as the temperatures were breaking records during our brief stay.
On the security walkway on the opposite side of our floor, wisteria hung from the awning. Beehives sat at the far end of the walkway, and a locked glass door kept visitors far from the bees.
The reconstructed “ghost” building is actually two buildings, separated by a gap filled with a garden. A youth hostel occupies the street-side building. A glass elevator lifts you above the garden and lets you look out at a slice of the basin.
The combination of the canal, basin, and surrounding trees made a wide, open space that in my mind, made this section for the city a little bit cooler. Despite the heat, we still averaged about seven miles of walking each day, moving slowly to and through La Villette Park, along the shady side of the Seine, and to the Eiffel Tower (closed to visitors after 1 p.m. due to the heat). We sustained ourselves with lots of ice cream and some A/C breaks.
I loved seeing a new part of town and learning about this ghostly hotel, whose air conditioning saved us. I’d be happy to stay here again, but I hope to never return to Paris between June and August.
Today in German: O-Beine and X-Beine
The smartest thing I did for myself right before heading to Paris was schedule a steroid shot for my knee, where the doctor told me I had an O-Bein, a bow-leg. In German, instead of being bow-legged or knock-kneed, you have O-legs and X-legs, O-Beine and X-Beine.
Sources
Accorsi, Florence. “La symétrie retrouvée du bassin de La Villette.” Les Echos, July 1, 2008. https://www.lesechos.fr/2008/07/la-symetrie-retrouvee-du-bassin-de-la-villette-492788.
Le Monde. “La peinture en fumée Après l’incendie de l’entrepôt du quai de Seine les artistes qui l’occupaient s’organisent.” Archives. February 25, 1990. https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1990/02/25/la-peinture-en-fumee-apres-l-incendie-de-l-entrepot-du-quai-de-seine-les-artistes-qui-l-occupaient-s-organisent_3958568_1819218.html.
Martin, Hervé. Guide de l’architecture Moderne à Paris/ Guide to Modern Architecture in Paris. Gallimard, 2009.
Bonnin, Fannie. “Un hôtel en résille.” Maison à part. Accessed June 25, 2026. https://www.maisonapart.com/edito/autour-de-l-habitat/architecture-patrimoine/un-hotel-en-resille-2016.php.
Pompiers de Paris. INCENDIE AUX MAGASINS GÉNÉRAUX À PARIS 1990. 2022. 1:30.
the Ourcq is a river name and not French for orc
I never thought I'd say this, but I definitely want to check out this Holiday Inn lol