Henri Deneux

Henri-Louis Deneux is a French architect (born the October 16th 1874 with Rheims - deceased the April 15th 1969 with Paris)

It is born above the grocer which his/her parents held, street Saint-Guillaume, in the district of the Town hall. Emigrated from the Aisne, its great-grandfather had come to be established with Rheims at the beginning of the century. Well quickly, the family moves, with the goodwills, towards the south of the city to come to live and work street of Jard. One sends the child to the school of the nuns close to at his place. He will keep all his life in memory the memory of a good priest which will draw in the table a house; a simple and banal gesture, but which will fascinate it at the point, said it, to determine its vocation. Very early, it is impassioned for the drawing and the Aquarelle. The worst of the punishments than one could inflict to him was to confiscate its colored pencils to him. His/her parents intend it for the career of draftsman in the offices of the Genius.

It enters at seventeen years the workshop of the architects Thierot and Margotin, persons in charge of the agency of work on the religious buildings. Edouard Thierot, the Architect diocesan charged with the Cathedral and professor at the regional School of the Industrial arts which has just opened in 1889, takes it under his wing. In 1894, after one year spent in this school, suggested by its Master, it is named there assistant professor, load which it will occupy at the same time as his employment at Thierot and Margotin until 1898.

Among its owners, it becomes acquainted with Denis Darcy, the architect as a chief who with the upper hand on the cathedral. Under its direction and its councils, it will start to carry out, of splendid statements of the Cathédrale and has to study the work completed by the architects in load of the cathedral at the 19th century: Eugene Purple-the-Duke, Millet, etc It is an artist of talent: the watercolours which it at that time makes of the cathedral, now preserved at the Museum the Dandy roll with Rheims, are of any beauty and testify to its attachment for this monument.

In 1898, Deneux gains the capital, encouraged per Darcy which recommends it to Holy-Anne Louzier, architect as a chief of the cathedral of Toulouse. It will spend from now on its time between the agency Louzier, the School of the Art schools where it is registered, and monuments which it studies and raises. In 1905, with the contest of Architect as a chief of the historic buildings, it is received first on 46 candidates. One entrusts the Département of North, the Somme, Saint-Quentin and the Saint-Martin-of-Fields abbey to him with Paris. In 1912, it builds its own building of which it will occupy the last levels in the 18th district. Construction is out of reinforced concrete and the frontage decorated with blue and green earthenware.

Succeeding the architect max Sainsaulieu, Henri Deneux, true saver of the cathedral, in 1915 architect as a chief of the cathedral of Rheims was named. He directs rebuilding works because thus it is necessary to call certain restorations so much the damage on the building bombarded during nearly four years are important. It gives up its other files then to devote itself to this heavy work. The idea to preserve the cathedral in ruin, like a witness of the hecatomb and Cruelty, makes its way in certain spirits… but not in that of Deneux. If one gives him the means of them, it will return to its cathedral its gloss of formerly.

Starting from March 4th, 1919, helped of his friend Albert Nigron, appointed contractor of the monument, with the assistance of the German prisoners, he undertakes clearing of it. With his Yvonne wife (born Héuze) whom it married on December 27th, 1921 with Vincennes, it occupies two small parts of which one is used to him as workshop, under some rusted sheets, in the ruins of the Palais of the Tau to a few meters of its building site: “I live opposite at home”, said it.

Of 1919 with 1921, one classifies and inventories the remains before reconstituting Statue S and Chapiteau (architecture) X; the walls and Voûte S are repaired, the Contrefort S and propping up consolidated.

In 1924 - 1926, the architect reconstitutes the Charpente in elements of reinforced concrete assembled and dismountable (according to the principle of the “frame to the Philibert Delorme”), proceeded that it had applied to the frame of the Saint-Jacob church of Rheims in 1920-1921.

It covers Plomb the roof and restores on the ridge the alternation of flowers of lily and clover gilded with the sheet which had been removed with the Revolution. The bell-tower with the Angel and the chime are accurately reconstituted. The high gallery of the nave went up in its form first.

The stained glasses which could be recomposed scrupulously by the Master-glassmaker Jacques Simon, thanks to copies carried out formerly by his/her father, regain their place in the high windows. Others are replaced by creations: the pink of the southern arm of the transept, and three windows of the tympanums of the western frontage.

Between 1919 and 1930, archaeological excavations under the pavement of the 18th century update vestiges of the foundations of the former buildings, in the middle of Roman constructions which invite to conclude with the presence formerly from thermal baths. Henri Deneux could thus establish a plan of the last cathedral allotted to Saint Nicaise and cathedral of Ebbon. The excavation brought the discovery of the caveaux ones and tombs of the archbishops buried in the chorus of the Carolingian cathedral.

The pavement of the chorus had been raised by the remains of jubé built in 1417 by Collard de Givry and demolished in 1744; many fragments authenticated by the drawings of Jacques Cellier of 1580 were found, they are preserved at the Palate of the Tau.

Of Rheims, simultaneously with the restoration of the cathedral, Henri Deneux took care of the rebuilding of the basilica Saint-Remi and the church Saint-Jacob. The whole of its work were worth to him to be promoted chevalier of the Legion of Honor, then officer in 1927.

During 10 years still, work will continue inside and on the frontages and it is only on July 10th, 1938, which during imposing ceremonies, the Cardinal Suhard and Albert Lebrun, president of the Republic, will inaugurate the large monument ressuscity.

Its finished mission, Henri Deneux is 65 years old, the retirement age. It is withdrawn with greatest discretion. It finds in Paris its apartment where it will live during thirty years in a quasi-destitution, without another resource that the thin incomes of its small building and practically in loneliness. Yvonne died in 1955. When it leaves this world, on April 15th, 1969, it was completely forgotten. It will be buried beside his wife with the cemetery of the south in Rheims after a ceremony with the Cathédrale in the presence of forty people. Thus the life finishes, thus begins death for Henri-Louis Deneu, the sixth architect of the cathedral of the Kings.

See too

Purple-the-Duke

External bonds

Portrait

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