modern architecture, his co-owners sought permission to name the street after him. In 1926, Mallet-Stevens described “his street”: “It is exclusively reserved for habitation, for repose; one should find there real calm, far from movement and noise…If the house plans are not alike, the requirements of each of the inhabitants are the same: air, light. Also, all the doorways, windows and other openings are vast, very vast…It is constructed of reinforced concrete, enabling great areas without intermediate supports, spaces free of columns. All the houses are covered with terraces…And all the terraces are at different levels, stepping down, over the entire street, achieving an ensemble of greenery that harmonizes with the calm lines of the architecture….” Finally, the architect paid homage to his enlightened clients, who trusted him completely. “Renouncing an individualism often detrimental to general harmony, my clients accepted that their respective dwellings, even while keeping their own characteristics, were part of an ensemble, that is to say, one indivisible body of architecture.”

The Villa Martel adjoins Mallet-Stevens’s own studio-residence, which articulates the corner of the rue du docteur Blanche. It is distinctive within the heart of this homogeneous grouping mainly because it is the only building that has been completely preserved. Unfortunately, with the addition of upper floors to most of the houses, radical exterior modifications to several of them, the destruction of the street furniture designed by Mallet-Stevens and the covering over of the original plaster and brightly colored accents, it is difficult today to conjure the harmony of the ensemble designed with so much care by the architect. In 1975, a request for landmark status was made to the French Monuments Historiques, but only the Villa Martel, whose interior layout had not been modified since 1927, finally obtained full protection from alteration or destruction in the late 1980s. Over the past decade, nevertheless, the tenacious efforts of several new owners