Vestier, Nicolas-Jacques-Antoine

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Vestier, Nicolas-Jacques-Antoine (1765–1816). French Neo-Classical architect. He designed the Rue des Colonnes, Paris (1793–5), including the primitive unfluted Paestum Doric arcades, one of the most remarkable designs of the French Revolutionary period. He also designed houses in the Rue Mont-Blanc and Rue Caumartin, the Théâtre Gymnase (after 1795), the apartment-block at 1 Rue de Helder, (in which, as in the Rue des Colonnes, miniature Doric columns are used for the balustrades at first-floor level), the Passage Delorme (1808), proposals for a church at Meslay-le-Vidame (1810–16—where square Paestum Doric columns featured), and the Orphanage, Mont-Valérien (1812–14). Two of his sons, the appropriately named Archimède (1794–1859) and Phidias (1796–1874), also became Neo-Classical architects. Archimède designed railway-stations (e.g. Brest) and grand country-houses in Touraine, while Phidias did the railway-station in Tours (1851) and became Inspector of Historic Monuments for Indre-et-Loire.

Bibliography

Architects' Journal, cxc/2 (12 July 1989), 32–41;
AAF, xxiv (1969), 309–21;
J. Curl (2001);
Thieme & and Becker (1940)

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