Biography

Belgian architect, architectural historian, teacher and writer. He was familiarized with architecture at an early age by his grandfather, Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar, and his father, Gustave Saintenoy (1832-1892), also an architect. Paul Saintenoy was trained as an architect between 1881 and 1885, first at the Academie voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, and at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, where he was taught by Felix Laureys (1820-1897).

His early work was in a Flemish Renaissance Revival style, for example, the Delacre Pharmacy (1899), but after 1904 he chose a classicist style for several buildings, (1898) in Rue Montagne de la Cour (now Coudenberg), Brussels. In the 1890s, he also restored a 16th-century house in the nearby Ravensteinstraat, as well as part of the Hotel de Clèves-Ravenstein. He then adopted Art Nouveau for his Old England Store (1899), but after 1904 he chose a classicist style for several buildings, including several banks built in Brussels shortly before and after World War I.

As a young architect, Saintenoy was interested in archaeology and the history of architecture, and he was active as the general secretary of the Société Royale de l'Archéologie de Bruxelles. After 1910 he devoted himself primarily to teaching, research and writing on architectural history. He taught for 30 years at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, and was also active in the Académie Royale d'Archéologie de Belgique, the Académie Royale des Lettres, Sciences et Beaux-Arts de Belgique and the Commission Royale des Monuments et Sites. As a member of the latter, he played an important role in the reconstruction of Belgium after World War I.