Maximilian Godefroy

Who was Maximilian Godefroy?

J. Maximilian M. Godefroy was a French-American architect. Godefroy was born in France and educated as a civil engineer. During the French Revolution he fought on the Royalist side. Later, as an anti-Bonaparte activist, he was imprisoned in the fortress of Bellegarde, then released about 1805 and allowed to come to the United States, settling in Baltimore, Maryland, where he became an instructor in art and architecture at St. Mary's College, the Sulpician Seminary. By 1808, Godefroy had married Eliza Crawford Anderson, a member of one of Baltimore's prominent families.

While in Baltimore, he designed a number of important and famous structures including the St. Mary's Seminary Chapel, of St. Mary's Seminary and College along St. Mary's and Orchard Streets in the Seton Hill neighborhood in the northwest city, the Battle Monument, in the old Courthouse Square of the central city