Background
Maximilian Godefroy was born outside of France.
architect military engineer painter
Maximilian Godefroy was born outside of France.
Godefroy was educated as a geographical/civil engineer. According to Godefroy's own statement, he entered the “Corps du Génie” at seven, and later served as “gendarme de la Garde du Roi” and as “Capitaine du Cavalier et du Génie. ”
Though the nature of his subsequent activities is uncertain, before he emigrated to the United States in 1805, he had been three times wounded and had served for six months as a prisoner of state.
In 1806, Godefroy was teaching architecture, drawing, and fortification “au Collège de Baltimore”. In the following year, he designed the chapel of St. Mary’s Seminary, the first church of the Gothic Revival to be executed in America. He used French Gothic forms, not wholly understood.
In 1811 and 1813, he exhibited in Philadelphia a number of projects. For the competition for the Washington Monument in Baltimore, in 1813, he submitted a triumphal-arch design of the restrained classic character.
In 1814, he designed the First Presbyterian Church, which, like his Commercial and Farmer’s Bank, has long vanished. When Baltimore was threatened by the British in the same year, Godefroy was employed in devising the fortifications, which successfully sustained the attack of September 12, and later, he designed the Battle Monument erected by the city.
In 1815, after the destruction of the Capitol in Washington, when the reappointment of B. H. Latrobe, its former architect, was under discussion, Godefroy was approached indirectly to take the post but replied to the President with the most generous recommendation and praise of Latrobe.
From July to September 1816, he was in Richmond, Virginia, designing the Court House and the formal terraces of the Capitol grounds, as well as proposed internal changes in the Capitol itself. His chief surviving work is the Unitarian Church in Baltimore, begun in 1817.
The façade has an arched loggia crowned with a pediment of relief-sculpture by Capellano. The interior, subsequently remodeled, had originally a Roman dome. Godefroy had collaborated with B. H. Latrobe since 1815 on preliminary drawings for the Exchange group in Baltimore, for which their design was accepted in 1816 over that of Joseph Ramée.
Difficulties arising in this collaboration led to a breach in their relations in 1817, and they were arrayed against one another in the later stages of the work and in the competition for the United States Bank in Philadelphia in 1818.
Always despondent in temper, Godefroy gradually became embittered, and sailed from Baltimore for London, after writing adieux to Thomas Sully on August 22, 1819.
In London from 1820 to 1824, he exhibited several watercolors, landscapes, and architectural views of American subjects. His scene from the battle of Poltava, exhibited in 1821, was identical in the title with one by C. Godefroy in the Paris Salon of 1833.
Godefroy is known for designing the chapel of St. Mary’s Seminary, the first church of the Gothic Revival to be executed in America. He also designed the First Presbyterian Church, which, like his Commercial and Farmer’s Bank, has long vanished. His chief surviving work is the Unitarian Church in Baltimore.
By 1808, Godefroy had married Eliza Crawford Anderson, editor of her own periodical, the Observer and the niece of a wealthy Baltimore merchant.
