Pierre-François-Henri Labrouste () (11 May 1801 – 24 June 1875) was a French architect from the famous

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth century ...

school of architecture. After a six-year stay in Rome, Labrouste established an architectural training workshop, which soon became known for rationalism. He became noted for his use of iron-frame construction and was one of the first to realize the importance of its use.

Biography

Born in Paris, Labrouste was one of five children of :fr:François-Marie-Alexandre Labrouste (in French), a lawyer and politician from Bordeaux and Anne-Dominique Gourg (1764-1851), daughter and granddaughter of cognac merchants. He entered the Collège Sainte-Barbe as a student in 1809. He was then admitted into the second class and the Lebas-Vaudoyer workshop in the École Royale des Beaux Arts in 1819. In 1820, he was promoted to the first class. Competing for the Grand Prix, Labrouste was awarded second place (the Palais de Justice scored first) by

Guillaume-Abel Blouet Guillaume-Abel Blouet (6 October 1795 – 7 May 1853) was a French architect who specialised in prison design. Biography Blouet was born at Passy. He won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1821 at the École des Beaux-Arts, entitling him to five years ...

in 1821. In 1823, he won the departmental prize and worked as a lieutenant-inspector (''sous-inspecteur'') for the director Étienne-Hippolyte Godde during the construction of the Saint-Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou parish in Paris. In 1824 Labrouste won the competition with a design of a Court of Appeals (Cour de cassation). In November, he left Paris for Italy, visiting Turin, Milan, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, Modena, Bologna, Florence and Arezzo. In July 1835 in Paris he was present at the scene when

Giuseppe Marco Fieschi Giuseppe Marco Fieschi (13 December 1790 – 19 February 1836) was a Corsican mass murderer, and the chief conspirator in an attempted assassination of King Louis-Philippe of France on 28 July 1835. The attack on the King and his entourage ...

attempted the assassination of King

Louis-Philippe Louis Philippe (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate List of French monarchs#House of Orléans, July Monarchy (1830–1848), monarch of France. As Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartres, h ...

using a home-made, multi-barrel gun fired from an upstairs window. Although the King only received a minor injury, 18 people were killed, including Henri's father, Alexandre Labrouste.

Stay in Rome

Receiving a pension or stipend from the French government for five years, he and the other Académie française laureates stayed in the Medici Villa in Rome. The directors of the Académie stated in correspondence in French about the laureates that, in their studies of antiquity, they "must research the laws of proportion and reduce them to formulas to be used by masters and students in Paris."Correspondance des directeurs de l’Académie de France à Rome, tome 1, p. 28 His work was the subject of "Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light," the first solo exhibition in the U.S. of his work, at The

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York City. His buildings include: *

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

, Paris, built between 1843 and 1850 * The Salle Labrouste, a

reading room Reading room may refer to: * Reference library * British Museum Reading Room * Christian Science Reading Room image:5054_christian-science-reading-room-e.jpg, 400px, A typical storefront Christian Science Reading Room on the main street of a subu ...

in the

Bibliothèque Nationale de France The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...

in the

Rue de Richelieu The Rue de Richelieu is a long street of Paris, starting in the south of the 1st arrondissement at the Comédie-Française and ending in the north of the 2nd arrondissement. For the first half of the 19th century, before Georges-Eugène Haussma ...

, Paris, and built between 1862 and 1868.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Labrouste, Henri 1801 births 1875 deaths Architects from Paris 19th-century French architects French neoclassical architects Prix de Rome for architecture École des Beaux-Arts alumni Members of the Académie des beaux-arts