Henri Joseph François Beyaert, born July 29, 1823, in Kortrijk, was the son of Louis Beyaert, a modest printer, and Sophie Feys.
In 1850, he married Joséphine Fontaine, a shopkeeper, with whom he had one child in 1851, Léon Eugène Beyaert, who died in 1857.
He attended the Collège Saint-Amand in Kortrijk. He also took drawing classes at the local drawing academy, where he won first prize in 1838.
He discovered his passion for architecture at the age of 19, while working as a bank employee in his hometown of Kortrijk.
He then moved to Brussels, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts from 1842 to 1846. He won first prize in architecture there in 1846.
Heavily influenced by his professor, Tilman-François Suys, from whom he admitted spending the second half of his life trying to forget what he had learned in the first, he began by reviving the Louis XVI style.
The restoration and conversion of the Halle Gate into a museum (1868-1871), which he subsequently undertook under the admiring supervision of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, was a pivotal moment in his development.
As a true representative of the eclectic movement of the late 19th century, this led him to boldly adapt decorative elements typical of the Flemish Renaissance to buildings of a completely different style, ranging from Neoclassicism to Italian Baroque.
He built the Tournai train station and customs warehouse between 1874 and 1879.
Beyaert is depicted on the last 100-franc Belgian banknote issued by the National Bank of Belgium.
He died on January 22, 1894, in Brussels from bronchopneumonia.
