The Maison Vauquer is a run-down boarding house owned and operated by Madame Vauquer. The building is in a state of disrepair, and the opening pages of the novel explain just how broken, ugly, and unlivable the boarding house truly is; Goriot’s room, for instance, has mold on the walls and broken furniture.

The ugly appearance of the boarding house functions partly as a symbolic extension of the moral rot of the owner, Madame Vauquer. She is obsessed with money and status, and she takes out her frustrations on the poorest boarders in her house. She treats Goriot with utter contempt, for example, because she disapproves of his apparent lack of wealth. The irony of this obsession with appearances is that Madame Vauquer has neither wealth nor status and in fact lives in a dilapidated house in which many rooms are unfit for human habitation. Her cruelty and hypocrisy manifest in the house she runs.

Within the boarding house, the inhabitants are segregated based on their monthly rent. Those with the most money live in the better-decorated, larger rooms on the lower floors. Each ascending level is cheaper and less furnished, creating a visual stratification that mirrors, in inverted form, the French class system.