The
Grands Magasins du Louvre was a Parisian
department store that was founded in 1855, three years after their competitor
Le Bon Marché, and that closed definitively 1974. At the present the building houses the
Louvre des Antiquaires as well as offices. The Grands Magasins du Louvre had inspired
Émile Zola in his novel
Au Bonheur des Dames (1883).
In 1855, Alfred Chauchard, hitherto a clerk in the store Au Pauvre Diable with the salary of 25 Francs per month, joined Auguste Hériot and Charles Eugene Faré to rent the ground floor of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, which had just opened its doors on the Rue de Rivoli in a building built in 1852 at the occasion of the World Fair by the Pereire brothers at the request of the Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine.
At the ground floor of the building, Faré's company, "Chauchard, Hériot, et Compagnie" created a store for fashion, "the Galleries of the Louvre." The buildings were rented by La Compagnie Immobilière de Paris. The Pereire brothers advanced funds for the launching of the business and, in 1860, took shares in the company.
In 1857, Faré withdrew, mistakenly, because commerce did not cease thriving. In 1865, the Grands Magasins du Louvre realised 15 million sales, and 41 million ten years later. At that time they employed 2.400 people. Chauchard and Hériot became extremely rich.
