Joseph Ramée

by Paul Venable Turner

Joseph Ramee: International Architect of the Revolutionary Era is the first comprehensive study of an architect and landscape designer who was largely forgotten by history because of the precarious circumstances in which he lived. Forced to flee France during the Revolution, Ramee spent his life as a nomad, working in Belgium, Saxony, Hamburg, Denmark, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and the United States. Staying only briefly in most places, he was soon forgotten and his works sometimes attributed to other architects. In this reconstruction of his career, Paul V. Turner demonstrates how Ramee, in the process of his travels, transmitted innovations from country to country and created a unique synthesis of the design currents of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This study, the result of a decade of research, brings to light not only Ramee's lost works but also his relationships with diverse clients, including aristocrats, merchants, poets, educators, American land developers, a