Frantz Jourdain was a French architect who began studying at the École des Beaux Arts Paris in 1866. Due to the outbreak of the German-French War in 1870, he never graduated. In 1881 he built l’Imprimerie Nouvelle dans le rue Cadet, and during 1883-91 he several other Paris factory buildings. In his auto-biographical novel L ‘Atelier Chantorel, published in 1892, he harshly criticized the French educational institutions for art. As an advocate of Art Nouveau, he was also active in the fields of social housing, public education and art in schools. He is the father of Francis Jourdain (1876-1958), a well-known furniture designer and interior designer. In 1903 Frantz Jourdain founded the Salon d’Automne, which included applied art and architecture equal to fine arts, and was its first president. His best known building in Paris is the department store La Samaritaine, constructed before World War I and completed in the early 1930s. Frantz was a close friend of writer Émile Zola.
France