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(b Strasbourg, March 2, 1815; d Paris, March 20, 1896).
French architect and restorer. After training as a mason, he visited Munich in 1836 and then studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in the studio of Henri Labrouste. He soon joined the group of Gothic Revival architects that formed around Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus and Eugène-Emanuel Viollet-le-Duc, and from 1843 he worked for the Commission des Monuments Historiques, with which he spent a large part of his career. He built very little, apart from the church of Ste Eugénie at Biarritz, but restored a large number of buildings, including the cathedrals of Toul and Laon (see Laon, §1, (i)) and the churches at Montiérender, Avioth (Notre-Dame), Chaumont (St Jean-Baptiste) and Guebwiller (St Léger). Boeswillwald began his career in the administration of diocesan buildings as Inspecteur (1845) at Notre-Dame, Paris, with Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc. He was successively appointed diocesan architect to Luçon (1846), Bayonne (...