Michel-Robert Penchaud
French architect
Michel-Robert Penchaud (1772, Lhommaizé, Vienne – 1833, Marseille) was a French architect.
Biography
Early life
The son of Robert-Louis Penchaud, a provincial architect of Poitou and grandson of a mason who died in Paris, in 1756, his forced enrollment in the Armée de l'Ouest during the Revolution interrupted his studies.
Career
In 1795, he was admitted to the architectural studio, a virtual academy, of Percier and Fontaine in Paris. He was soon employed as a draughtsman by the Conseil des Bâtiments civils and participated in numerous public competitions organised by the Ministry of the Interior. In 1803, A.-C. Thibaudeau, the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhône, named him to the post of architect to the City of Marseille, with as his first grand civil project, the glasshouses of the botanical garden. But, caught up in quarrels between Thibaudeau and the mayor of Marseille, Antoine-Ignace d'Antoine, he found himself replaced by another architect Louis-Gabriel Michaud, 1807-12.
During this period of official ostracism at Marseille he was kept occupied from Paris by the Ministry of the Interior, which commissioned him to act as arbitrator in works in Languedoc and to prepare preliminary studies for the projected restoration of monuments of Roman antiquity in the Midi: the Flavian Bridge at Saint-Chamas, remains at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, the Maison Carrée of Nîmes, the Roman temple at Vernègues, the amphitheatre of Arles. Penchaud visualised collecting his papers into a descriptive work on the Roman monuments of the south of France, as a counterweight to the tour of Italian studies that were considered a necessary preparation for a career as architect in France. These articles were eventually published in a somewhat different form in the Statistique du département des Bouches-du Rhône.
The prefect Thibaudeau, wishing to attach his services more permanently, named Penchaud architect to the département in 1808, and in 1812 Penchaud returned to the civil position from which he had been ousted in Marseille, following the unsatisfactory work of Michaud in transforming the former Hôtel Roux-de-Corse into the seat of the Préfecture.
“Michel-Robert Penchaud” enters the record as french architect. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Michel-Robert, Penchaud and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q940932. VIAF identifies the subject as 39333702. The Library of Congress control number is nr2005016489. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1772, 1833, 1756 and 1795.
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