Paul Cavrois (1890-1965) was a textile industrialist from northern France who owned modern factories for spinning, weaving and dyeing cotton and wool.

In the early 1920s he bought a site located on the hill of Beaumont, in Croix, not far from his factories situated in Roubaix, in order to build a mansion able to receive his family of 7 children and the servants.

[1] At the completion of the work the villa was astonishing for its bravery and modernity, and its style was a total break from that of other neighbouring houses in the suburb of Croix, even those of the same era.

Clear guidelines governed the design of the building, which was commissioned in 1929, included: "air, light, work, sports, hygiene, comfort and efficiency".

In this way two independent habitations were created in the west wing of the building while Paul and Lucie continued to live in the east section of the villa.

On December 18, 2008, the Ministry of Culture entrusted villa Cavrois to Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN), with the purpose of restoring it and opening it to the public.

CMN conducted the restoration of the interior spaces and decor (floors, wall coverings, paintwork, furniture), in order to recreate, as closely as possible, the condition of the building in the 1930s.

The Villa Cavrois is a testimony to the modernist vision of the 1920s as it was conceived by designers such as Le Corbusier, Pierre Chareau and the Bauhaus school.

The large modern mansion was organized to offer the best possible lifestyle to the nine members of the family and to facilitate the daily work of the household staff.

The choice of materials (concrete ceiling, metal, steel, glass, green Swedish marble in the main dining room, yellow Siena marble in the fireplace alcove of the hall-salon, parquets of oak, iroko, zebrawood, Cuban mahogany) and the furniture of the rooms echoed the hierarchy of space: everything was conceived and adapted for use in place.

The French firm Bonzel produced twenty-six moulds of different form in order to make bricks capables to cover the diverse areas of the villa.

The black door that opens to the hall-salon is framed by a pair of light boxes which look like those that Mallet-Stevens designed for the set of Marcel L'Herbier's movie Le Vertige.

Thanks to a sliding door situated on the west side one can reach the parents' dining room, which is characterised by the walls and the floor in green Swedish marble and the black lacquered pear wood furniture.

This spaces demonstrate the importance of hygiene in the conception of a modern house by Robert Mallet-Stevens as it is shown by the presence of a metal furniture, easy to clean, the black-and-white chequerboard floor and the walls covered with white tiles bringing additional luminosity.

In the parents' wing, the master bedroom presents itself with a furniture in palm wood and the walls painted beige, which give it elegance et refinement.

De Bruijn also insists on the black mirror found in “the young master’s bedroom on the ground floor,” creating “an impression of darkness and mystery.”[5]