Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Civil engineer, active in Ireland in the 1840s and 1850s.  Peter Joseph Klasen was born in Prussia circa 1817.   It is not clear what brought him to Ireland, where he became a District Engineer with the Board of Public Works.  In 1851 the Drainage Commissioners published his supplemental report on the '...present state...the expenditure...and the total cost of completing' the drainage works in the district of Brosna (Ferbane), Co. Offaly, and in 1853 he exhibited a model of an unexecuted design for the Chetwynd lattice girder railway viaduct at Ballinhassig, Co. Cork, at the Dublin Industrial Exhibition.(1)  He later returned to - or revisited - Germany but had moved to England by 1871, when the English census records him as living in Lambeth. 
He married at least twice.   By his first wife Mary Elizabeth Geoghegan, he was the father of a son, Louis Joseph Klasen, born in Killarney on 12 March 1843 and a daughter, Francesca Maria, also born in Killarney the following year.  In 1851 he married again in Tullamore.  By the time of the English census of 1871 he had an English-born wife, Sarah, and was the father of another son, Arthur Reginald, born in Schleswig-Holstein in 1870. He had probably died by the time of the 1881 census, which only records the names of his wife and son.

Klasen's pupils and assistants in Ireland included MATHIAS O'KEEFFE. MATHIAS O'KEEFFE.

See WORKS and BIBLIOGRAPHY. BIBLIOGRAPHY.




References

All information in this entry not otherwise attributed is from www.familysearch.org. and www.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords.


(1) Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal 16 (Jul 1853), 272.


1 work entries listed in chronological order for KLASEN, PETER JOSEPH


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Building: CO. CORK, BALLINHASSIG, CHETWYND VIADUCT
Date: ?
Nature: PJK exhibits model of his design for lattice viaduct consisting of two spans of 240 ft each, supported by pier in centre at Dublin Industrial Exhibition, 1853.
Refs: Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal 16 (Jul 1853), 272.

Author Title Date Details
Klasen, P.j. Brosna (Ferbane) District.  Supplemental report to the [Drainage] Commissioners...showing the present state of the works, the expenditure on the works executed, and the total cost of completing the district.
1851 Dublin: H.M. Stationery Office, 1851.