Jan Stuyt

Who was Jan Stuyt?

Jan Stuyt was a Dutch architect.

Stuyt started his architectural career in 1883 at the office of A.C. Bleys, whose neo-Romanesque style would become of great influence on Stuyt. In 1891 Stuyt joined the Cuypers office in Amsterdam, where he became an overseer of the building of the Cathedral of Saint Bavo in Haarlem between 1895 and 1898. In 1899, after a short career as an independent architect in which he built his first church, he formed a partnership with Jos Cuypers, son of Pierre Cuypers, which lasted until 1908. It seems that the architects in this period mostly worked on their own. Jan Stuyt mostly designed neo-Romanesque churches, often decorated with chessboard-like tile-decorations, which are present in many of the churches both during and after the partnership. Cuypers chose a more neo-Gothic approach, closely related to the work of his father. Stuyt's style was greatly influenced by Mediterranean architecture after his participation in the first Dutch pilgrimage to Palestine in 1903. Several of his most important churches were dome-churches, shaped after the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.