(b Avignon, 1862; d Paris, 1935). French architect. He entered the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1881. He studied there under Drouillard and Victor Laloux (the architect of the Gare d’Orsay). Astruc received his diploma in architecture in January 1889, submitting a collection of designs for a railway station ‘following German principles’—a plan that he had presented to the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français in the previous year. He went on to design a large number of private buildings, but he is chiefly known for the church of Notre-Dame du Travail (1899–1901), 59, Rue Vercingétorix, 14e, Paris. Like Victor Baltard’s church of St Augustin (1860–67) and Louis-Auguste Boileau’s St Eugène (1854–5), Notre-Dame du Travail is built of stone and metal, but unlike them it uses industrial T-section and I-section iron girders, which are riveted and welded together. Its spacious, relatively empty surface at ground level, the openings high up that diffuse an even light throughout the building, and the use of brick and buhrstone make the church seem more closely related to contemporaneous factories than to other Parisian churches built with metal frameworks in various revival styles. The resemblance is intentional as the curate of the parish, Soulange-Bodin, required that the building should reflect, in its structure and materials, the factories in which the parishioners of this working-class suburb worked—hence also the dedication to Notre-Dame du Travail. He launched a nation-wide appeal to raise money by popular subscription so that this universal church could be consecrated on the occasion of the Exposition Universelle (1900). The metal structure of the building, particularly the use of iron arches and iron columns to articulate the elevation of the nave, is incorporated into the design from a largely functional point of view, with a minimum of decorative features. As in the case of St Eugène, two lateral galleries cover the length of the nave and overhang the side chapels, a feature probably inspired by churches of the curate’s native Basque region. The church is built on a conventional basilica plan, with masonry reserved for the choir and the solid structures of the façade. The decorative details include a neo-Palladian Venetian window on the end wall of the choir, Roman arches in the organ loft, and the trilobate windows and neo-Roman decorations of the façade. Astruc was also responsible for the design of a chapel at 18, Rue Lhomond, Paris, the schools of Notre-Dame in the Rue des Ursulines, Paris, and at the château of Presles, Val d’Oise. As assistant Architecte Voyer to the sixth arrondissement of Paris, he had an extensive practice in the southern districts of the city.