(d 1786). French architect. He was a pupil of Etienne-Louis Boullée and won third prize in the competition of the Académie Royale d’Architecture in 1772 with a design for a palace. Girardin assisted Boullée on the renovation (1773) of the former hôtel of the Marquise de Pompadour (now the Palais de l’Elysée) in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris, for the financier Nicolas Beaujon. Girardin succeeded Boullée as architect to Beaujon, and from 1781 to 1783 he renovated the park of Beaujon’s Palais Evreux, which bordered the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. In this picturesque rustic setting he built a luxurious country house named La Chartreuse, together with a chapel dedicated to St Nicolas. This had a façade in a stripped geometrical style learnt from Boullée, with no portico and virtually no mouldings around the doors and cornice. Inside, the rectangular nave was decorated with two rows of Doric columns, while a rotunda formed by eight Ionic columns surrounded the altar. Girardin also built the Hospice Beaujon (1784; now the Préfecture de Police) opposite the chapel. It is a massive, functional building, soberly decorated. Joint-lines in the stonework give emphasis to the façades, solid consoles support the cornice and two Doric columns mark the entrance across a square courtyard. This former orphanage is the only remaining evidence of the building activities of Beaujon and Girardin in the Roule district of Paris. Girardin also worked for the financiers Taillepied de Bondy and Lepelletier de la Garenne, and in 1785 he built the château of Boulayes at Tournan-en-Brie. Here, the long façade is articulated with a giant order of Corinthian columns framing the arched windows of the ground floor and the rectangular windows of the piano nobile.

• Girardin, Nicolas-Claude
  • Beaujon, Nicolas