The Mother House in Paris, France is the centre of animation and co-ordination, a place of meeting and renewal. It keeps the memory and spirit of the Foundress ever alive and is the sign of unity for all the sisters. She lives because her daughters, from every race and nation and tongue, have but one heart and one soul and continue in the church the work the Lord entrusted to her.
Saint-Joseph de Cluny is located in the vicinity of Faubourg Saint-Jacques, 21 rue Méchain in Paris.
Its head office was founded in 1613 near the old "Capucins Convent". The rue Méchain was once called rue des Capucins. Upon request of King Louis XVIth the Capucins monks left the premises in 1775 to help out the poor on Chaussée d'Antin. In 1813, the grounds became the property of a tree nursery man, the said "Mr. Noisette" who sold it back in 1840 to Mr. Laville.
Mr. Laville built on the premises a vast house for studies and in 1849, the Saint-Joseph de Cluny Sisters bought it back.
In the beginning, the Sisters of Saint-Joseph de Cluny were only nine. They decided to settle in Burgundy. A few of them had moved to Paris to look after a small school for the poor who lived in the "Marais". Mother Javouhey with her Sisters developed their action and transferred in 1879 one of their novitiates rue Méchain.
Mother Javouhey only lived there a few months then died in 1851.
A neo gothic chapel was built during that same year. Its building, due to the many underground catacomb galleries that bristled its subsoil, was a difficult one; it was therefore decided that the crypt should be built under the chapel.
The garden runs alongside the Boulevard Arago to the South.
On the North side it was party wall between the Mouton-Rothschild Baronet property which has now been replaced by a modern building. Some information by Coline Duvall.
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