In 1923 the Martinez group commissioned the architect Henri Porteau, to build a luxury home in the place of the old private residence of Count Tolstoi.

[citation needed] In a book collecting the memoirs of US Army veterans, Chicken Soup for the Veteran's Soul,[2] Jean P. Brody tells that in 1945, when the war ended, her husband Gene stayed at the Napoléon and had a fond memory of the doorman Jean Fratoni, who was very kind to the American soldiers.

The winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, tells about his "extraordinary" memory of his first trip to Paris, which he won at a literary contest organized by La Nouvelle Revue française: “I stayed at the Napoléon, and there I remember meeting Miss France for 1958, Annie Simplon.” [3] One story involving the hotel connects Alexander Pavlovitch Kliaguine, a rich Russian businessman and a young Parisian, a student of literature (later to become the baroness de Baubigny).

As proof of his love, Kliaguine offered the young student the Napoléon Paris so that she would be able to entertain the high society of the time.

[citation needed] The Napoléon Paris is the only hotel completely decorated with Napoleonic art, and furnished in the Directoire style.