 He built a series of "hôtels particuliers" in Paris as speculative business enterprises.Of the inventive spatial arrangements in the hôtel that swiftly became the Hôtel Amelot de Gournay, Germain Brice remarked in his early 18th-century guidebook that "one will note some remarkable and daring lay-outs, which however appear rationally based, providing several amenities".Boffrand's pavilion of 1712–15 that inaugurated the new quarter of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré was purchased and became the Hôtel de Duras.