Payen, Auguste-Jean-Joseph

(1801-1877)

   The architect Auguste Payen was born in Brussels on 7 June 1801. He studied architecture in Tourna n 1818 and returned to Brussels in 1823. Appointed architect of the city to succeed Nicholas Roget on 1 May 1831, he was named a professor of architecture at the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts in 1835, a post he retained until 1876. Early commissions included five toll houses at the city gates at portes de Flandre, Canal, Namur, Anderlecht, and Ninove in the 1830s. As architect for the Belgian National Railways, he completed the Gare du Midi in 1869, an impressive edifice that embodied a synthesis of his style—chiefly neoclassical while at the same time functional and modern. Other railway stations at Bruges, Kortrijk, and Verviers followed. He also designed several residences in Brussels, where he died on 16 April 1877.