Alphonse Defrasse

Alphonse Alexandre Defrasse (30 September 1860, Paris – 18 March 1939, Paris) was a French architect; best known as the Chief Architect for the Banque de France.

Biography His father was a merchant. He entered the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1877, where he was a student of Jules André. His first showing came in 1882, at the Salon des Artistes Français; obtaining a second-class medal. Three years later, his display there earned a travel grant.

He stood for the Prix de Rome three times; winning the Grand Prize in 1886 with a project for the "palace" of the Court of Audit. He was in residence at the Villa Medici from 1887 to 1890. With a stipend from the Académie de France à Rome, he travelled to Greece, where he made studies of various structures at the Sanctuary of Asclepius in Epidaurus. They earned him a medal of honor at the Salon in 1893 then, two years later, were published in a book, with explanatory text by the art historian,