In Croix, on the Beaumont hill, a modernist château of 1932 and its 72-metre reflecting pool

History

Paul Cavrois ran Cavrois-Mahieu, a firm founded in 1865 that wove high-end fabrics for Paris fashion houses. By 1923 it had five mills and nearly 700 staff. In 1922-1923 he bought land in Croix, on the edge of Roubaix, to house his family of seven children. A first design by the architect Jacques Gréber, in the neo-regional style of the large houses nearby, was dropped.

In 1929 Paul Cavrois gave the commission to Robert Mallet-Stevens, with a free hand and a strict budget. The villa was inaugurated in 1932, at the wedding of Geneviève, one of the daughters. Its front is 60 m long, with 2,800 m² of floor space in two symmetrical wings. Mallet-Stevens also designed the interiors, the furniture and the park.

The park follows the plan of seventeenth-century formal gardens. To the south, the 72-metre reflecting pool continues the axis of the great hall. To the north, a circular drive brought cars under the porch. The swimming pool is 27 m long. To the east lay a rose garden, an orchard, a kitchen garden and a henhouse. During the Occupation the German army used the villa as barracks and filled in the reflecting pool, which was too visible from the air.

After Lucie Cavrois died in 1986, the estate was sold to a developer who planned to divide the park into building lots. The empty villa was stripped and vandalised. It was listed as a historic monument in 1990. The park, once 5 ha, lost more than half its area to housing in the 1990s, including the rose garden, the orchard and the kitchen garden.

In 2001 the State bought the villa and the central part of the park. The regional cultural affairs office first restored the roofs and walls. The Centre des monuments nationaux then restored the park, from January 2012 to April 2013, and the interiors, until May 2015. The reflecting pool was dug out and restored. The work is put at 23 million euros, and the villa opened to the public in June 2015.

The Croix cadastre places the villa on plot BC 345, of 9,647 m². The local development plan zones it UGB6.2, a detached-house residential area, like the houses in the streets around it. Its listing as a historic monument applies on top of that zoning.

Updated 28 October 2026