(b Amsterdam, 1840; d Düsseldorf, 1920). Dutch architect. He studied at the Bauakademie in Berlin (1861–4), then followed courses in mathematics at the University of Münster. Tepe rejected the classical training of the academy in favour of a close investigation of medieval architecture. From 1865 to 1867 he was apprenticed to Vincenz Statz at the Dombauhütte of Cologne Cathedral. In 1872 Tepe settled for the next 12 years in Utrecht, then moved to nearby Rijsenburg until c. 1900. Thereafter he spent the remainder of his life in Germany. During a period of expansion in the Church, Tepe, a Roman Catholic, designed c. 70 churches between 1872 and 1905, all in Gothic Revival style, employing local brick to create buildings that fitted sensitively into the existing urban or rural context. At the outset of his career he established several types based on medieval examples in Rhineland and Westphalia with either the basilica or hall-church format. He designed the churches of St Maarten, Düsseldorf, and St Jozef, Elberfeld. In Utrecht he joined the St Barnulphus Guild, founded in 1869 to invigorate religious art, whose members, including the sculptor Wilhelm Mengelberg, executed the interior decoration and furnishings of most of Tepe’s Dutch churches. Those interiors that have survived remain a testament to the late 19th-century vision of communal art. Among the most important are the severe and vertical St Nicolaas (1874–5), Jutphaas, St Willibrordus (1876–7), Utrecht, St Michaël (1879), Schalkwijk, St Francis Xaverius (1881–3), dubbed the Krijtberg (Chalk Mountain), Amsterdam, and Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception (1893), Heeten. Tepe’s great strength was his ability to produce a monumentality unusual in an age of elaborate eclecticism; his buildings are remarkable for the purity of their Gothic Revival details and the simplicity of the monochromatic surfaces.