Major work in the late 19th and 20th centuries
Almost half a century later, in 1871, Baron de Haber (1812-92) acquired the estate and restored it with the help of Hippolyte Destailleur, a leading architect of the time, who also worked extensively at Vaux-le-Vicomte. Along with his son-in-law, Octave de Béhague, Destailleur invented an archetype of Henri IV-Louis XIII style architecture by adding a brick and stone facade; they also built very large outbuildings (which burned down in 1976). On the park side, they planted box trees and copied the horseshoe staircase from the Château de Fontainebleau.
Berthe and Martine inherited from their grandfather in 1892. The elder sister, Berthe, was given Courances. She and her husband Jean de Ganay reinvented the park à la française with the help of the Duchêne landscape gardeners, father and son, from 1899 to 1914, while admirably respecting the original genius of the place. This is why it is easy to imagine that the water features of the Horseshoe and La Baigneuse could have been designed by Le Nôtre!
Pictures: Samuel de Haber / Martine de Béhague and Hubert de Ganay / Jean and Jean-Louis de Ganay