Victor Laloux
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Victor Alexandre Frederic Laloux (Tours, 15 November 1850 – Paris, 1937) was a major French Beaux-Arts architect and teacher.
Life
Born in Tours, Laloux studied at the Paris École des Beaux-Arts atelier of Louis-Jules André, with his studies interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War, and was awarded the annual Prix de Rome in 1878. He spent 1879 through 1882 at the Villa Medici in Rome.
On his return to France Laloux rose quickly through the academic system, serving on many juries, societies and foundations. As practitioner, he produced major commissions in a highly ornamented neo-classical surface style, collaborating with sculptors and muralists squarely in the Beaux-Arts tradition, but doing so on innovative cast-iron frames. Metal framing allowed higher interior spaces, more generous fenestration, and glass roofs, notably in the sunlit barrel-vault of the Gare d'Orsay.
Laloux was awarded the American AIA Gold Medal in 1922, and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1929. In 1936, the year before his death, his successor as head of the atelier was Charles Lemaresquier.
Work
Laloux's work includes:
- the neo-Byzantine Basilica of St. Martin, Tours, in Tours, 1886-1924
- Gare de Tours, in Tours, 1896-1898, with four allegorical limestone statues of cities by Jean Antoine Injalbert (Bordeaux and Toulouse) and Jean-Baptiste Hugues (Limoges and Nantes)
- the Paris Gare d'Orsay, now the Musée d'Orsay, 1900
- Hotel de Ville, Roubaix, 1903, with architectural sculpture by Alphonse-Amédée Cordonnier
- Hotel de Ville, Tours, 1904, also with sculpture by Cordonnier
- completion of the Crédit Lyonnais headquarters, Paris, 1913
- the U.S. Embassy, Paris, with his student, American architect William Delano, 1931
- Palais du Hanovre, Paris, with his student Charles Lemaresquier, 1932
