Death Anniversary: Victor Horta — September 8, 1947

Victor Horta died in Brussels on 8 September 1947, having watched his own Art Nouveau first triumph and then fall out of favour — in his last decades he had himself turned to a more classical, severe language. Some of his masterpieces, the Maison du Peuple among them, were demolished, and the loss set off the battles that founded modern conservation in Belgium. The anniversary marks his legacy: he was the first to show that industrial iron could become architectural poetry.