Hovsep Aznavur [SEP] place of death
Hovsep Aznavur
Hovsep Aznavur (; 1854, London - June 1935, Cairo) was an Ottoman Armenian architect. He is noted for his construction plans for the Bulgarian St. Stephen Church of Istanbul, Turkey.
Biography.
Born in London in 1854, Aznavur's family moved to Istanbul in 1867. Aznavur completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. He was active in Armenian community life. In 1921, he became a founding member of the Ramgavar Party, one of the three major historic Armenian political
became an important site of the Bulgarian National Revival. The Ottoman royal decree of 28 February 1870 establishing the Bulgarian Exarchate was first read in the church.
After the original wooden structure suffered from a fire, the larger current building was constructed at its place. An iron frame was preferred to concrete reinforcement because of the weak ground conditions. The construction plans were prepared by the Istanbul-based Ottoman Armenian architect Hovsep Aznavur.
An international competition was conducted to produce the prefabricated cast iron parts of the church, won by