The history of Maison Levesque

Listed as a historic monument, the residence that is home to Villa Myriam today officially bears the name Maison Levesque. It was long known as the Falaise house, then as the Colardeau house. Behind its façade on rue Augustin-Archambaud, more than two centuries of Saint-Pierre history have unfolded. Here is what the archives, the architecture and family memory have told us.

A house born of the sea

It all begins in Saint-Servan, at the gates of Saint-Malo, in a family of ship captains. Julien Falaise is described there as a former captain of merchant ships. His son Guillaume, born around 1742, would not stay in Brittany.

Around 1770, he lands on Bourbon Island. On 7 January 1772, he marries Anne Charlotte Bardinon in Saint-Pierre, the daughter of a local family. The marriage record states that the ceremony took place with the permission of Monsieur de Bellecombe, the king’s commanding general of the island, an authorisation then required for newcomers. Five months later their son, Guillaume François, was born. The man from Saint-Malo would never leave. He died in Saint-Pierre in 1803.

The builder

It is to his son, Guillaume François Falaise, born in 1772 and died in 1826, that the historic monuments protection file attributes the construction of the house, at the turn of the 19th century. The records describe him as an « habitant », the term then used for the island’s landowners.

In January 1800, he married Marie Geneviève Josèphe Sidonie Pellier. On his death, on 15 December 1826, she took over the house and appears in the records as its owner under the name Sidonie Falaise. Already, a woman was watching over these walls.

A Creole residence built in two stages

Maison Levesque is a fine example of the Creole architecture of Réunion’s towns. A close look at its roof reveals a construction in two stages, with a first main building followed by an extension carried out in the 1820s or 1830s.

Its signature feature is the screen façade facing the street, a device also found at the neighbouring Motais de Narbonne house. On the ground floor opens a varangue, the veranda characteristic of the Réunionese house, punctuated here by wooden pillars of neoclassical inspiration. Upstairs, the gallery above it, now enclosed by windows and louvred shutters, was probably open in the 19th century. The main building, set slightly back, is crowned by a tall four-sided roof.

The house, its grounds and its enclosure walls have been listed as historic monuments by decree of 14 August 2000.

A succession of owners

After the Falaise family, the house changed hands several times: Jean-Baptiste Lecocq in 1849, René Pouget in 1856, Augustine Mélanie Ferrère in 1885, then Alfred Motais de Narbonne in 1895, whose family gave its name to the neighbouring residence.

Of these owners we still know little. Their stories remain to be written.

The mayor’s house

In 1910, the house passed to Charles Louis Victor Le Vigoureux de Kermorvan. Born in Saint-Pierre in 1877 and a solicitor by profession, he became a town councillor, then mayor of the town from 1919 to 1937. Eighteen years at the head of Saint-Pierre earned him the honour of giving his name to one of the main streets of the commune.

Throughout the interwar years, the house on rue Archambaud was thus the mayor’s house.

Two lawyers under the same roof

His daughter, Marie, wanted to plead. In October 1930, the Réunion court of appeal refused her the right to take the oath, on the grounds that the legal profession was a « male office » and that the 1900 law opening the profession to women had not been promulgated on the island.

She did not give in. She obtained from the governor the decree that finally extended this law to Réunion Island. In May 1931, the Court met in extraordinary session, in the presence of the governor, to receive her oath. Marie became the first woman to take the lawyer’s oath in Réunion and, more broadly, in France’s overseas territories.

In 1936, she met a lawyer from New Caledonia in Paris, Fernand Colardeau, a First World War veteran decorated with the Croix de guerre. They married the following year and he settled in Saint-Pierre. He became mayor of the town at the Liberation, then represented Réunion in the Council of the Republic from 1946 to 1948.

Both practised law in Saint-Pierre. Their story continues that of a house long tied to the public life of the town.

A family home

In 1997, Denis and Myriam Levesque took over Maison Levesque. The project was ambitious. The residence, left without upkeep for many years, needed major work to regain its former glory. The family carried out major projects on the main house and its other buildings, to reawaken what needed reawakening and preserve what could be preserved.

For many years, the residence remained what it had always been: a family home. Denis and Myriam raised their four children there. To this day, their fifteen grandchildren still find in it a place of life, laughter and family gatherings.

In 2021, the family chose to open it to the public. Villa Myriam was born of this desire to share a place where today’s comfort converses with more than two centuries of history.

A name, and the women behind it

The residence bears a heritage name, Maison Levesque, and a welcoming name, Villa Myriam. The family chose this first name as a tribute to Myriam, the lady of the house, who devoted nearly thirty years to caring for and deeply loving this place.

It is no coincidence that the rooms also bear women’s first names: Coralie, the eldest daughter, and Muriel, Marie and Chloé, the family’s daughters-in-law.

From Sidonie, who became its owner in the 19th century, to Marie Colardeau, pioneer of the bar, then to Myriam and the women of today, this house has been kept, run and loved by women. The family likes to think it is, in a way, a house that belongs to them all.

A page still being written

This account is the fruit of research in civil records, old newspapers and archives found in the house. It remains incomplete, and that is also what keeps it alive.

If you hold a document, a photograph or a memory connected to this house or to those who lived in it, please write to us. We are looking in particular for a portrait of Marie Colardeau, of whom no image has yet been found in the family archives.

Share a document or a memory