César Daly

César Denis Daly (17 July 1811, Verdun – 11 January 1894, Wissous) was a French architect, publisher, and writer. He was one of the most important figures in the architectural press in nineteenth-century France, whose role as owner and editor of the famed periodical the Revue générale de l'architecture et des travaux publics shaped several generations of architects in France and beyond.

Biography Son of John Daley, a British food commissioner who was taken prisoner of war at Verdun during the Napoleonic Wars, and Française Calle Augustine Bernard, César Daly grew up in Douai. He became interested in architecture and pursued his studies in Paris in the atélier of Félix Duban at the École des Beaux-Arts (but he did not pass the entrance exams to formally study at the Ecole).

A precursor to Viollet-le-Duc, César Daly worked as a diocesan architect from 1843 to 1877, principally on the restoration of the Cathedral of Sainte-Cécile in Albi. He was named a member of the Commission des arts et édifices religieux (Commission of Arts and Religious Buildings) in 1848.

A supporter of the communal living embodied by the phalanastère and the socioeconomic theories of Charles Fourier, he founded in 1848 the ephemeral Société d'artistes décorateurs et industriels, and the same year, during the upheaval of the French Second Republic, stood as a candidate for the National Constituent Assembly.

During his travels, Daly visited the utopian colony of Icarians in Texas founded by Étienne Cabet. Later, he played a minor role in the establishment of the La Réunion colony in Dallas County, Texas.

Daly was named to the Légion d'honneur on 13 August 1861 and received the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal in 1892.

More than a practitioner on the ground, César Daly was also influential through his activities in associations and the publishing world of architecture. He was the secretary of the Société centrale des architectes, the Ecole's official alumni association, a remarkable achievement considering he had not even been admitted to the Ecole's course of study. He is best known today, however, for being the owner and founder of the Revue générale de l'architecture et des travaux publics (1840–1888) and the somewhat-less-known La Semaine des constructeurs (1877–1895), publications whose distribution was wide and frequently read by those in the design professions. He was also known as the author of several references works on architecture.