A study of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde by Victor Horta

A study of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde

by Victor Horta written by Farida Elghamry

©Farida Elghamry.

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING SCIENCE RAYMOND LEMAIRE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR CONSERVATION KASTEELPARK ARENBERG 1 – POSTBUS 02431 3001 LEUVEN, BELGIUM

A Study of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde by Victor Horta

Thesis to obtain the degree of Master of Science in Conservation of Monuments and Sites Presented by Farida Elghamry

Promoter: Barbara Van der Wee

Leuven, June 2022

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All architectural drawings are made by the author unless stated otherwise.

Photographs by the author were taken using a Cannon EOS M3 camera with a 15 mm lense. © Copyright KU Leuven Without written permission of the thesis supervisor and the author it is forbidden to reproduce or adapt in any form or by any means any part of this publication. Requests for obtaining the right to reproduce or utilize parts of this publication should be addressed to KU Leuven, RLICC, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, B-3001 Heverlee (Belgium), +32-16-32 17 48 or by email rlicc@kuleuven.be.

A written permission of the thesis supervisor is also required to use the methods, products, schematics and programs described in this work for industrial or commercial use, and for submitting this publication in scientific contests.

Zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van zowel de promoter als de auteur is overnemen, kopiëren, gebruiken of realiseren van deze uitgave of gedeelten ervan verboden.

Voor aanvragen tot of informatie i.v.m. het overnemen en/of gebruik en/of realisatie van gedeelten uit deze publicatie, wend u tot de KU Leuven, RLICC, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, B-3001 Heverlee (België), 32-16-32 17 48 of via e-mail rlicc@kuleuven.be.

Voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de promoter is eveneens vereist voor het aanwenden van de in deze masterproef beschreven (originele) methoden, producten, schakelingen en programma’s voor industrieel of commercieel nut en voor de inzending van deze publicatie ter deelname aan wetenschappelijke prijzen of wedstrijden.

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Preface

Abstract

Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde in Brussels was built in 1896 by architect Victor Horta for Georges Deprez, the director of the Val-Saint-Lambert crystal glass company. The corner plot of the building allowed Horta to let his famous Art Nouveau style run wild on the grand facades, which contain such features as Euville and blue stones, bay windows, and floral motifs in the drainpipes and chimney.

After its construction, the building has been remodeled and expanded and has changed owners many times, however. As a result, many original Art Nouveau details, especially in the interior, are lost to history. It could have been worse, however. Like many of Horta’s buildings, Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde was saved from demolition by Horta’s student Jean Delhaye, who turned it into office space and whose family still owns the building today.

This master’s dissertation provides a holistic study of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde’s past, present and future for the first time. Using a variety of sources and methodologies, it reconstructs the different building phases from Horta’s original design until the present, all the while remaining conscious of the evolution of the social and urban context in which the building is embedded. Moreover, the thesis also presents a value assessment and an exploration of the potential future uses of the building. Ultimately, the goal of the study is 1) to understand the motivations that gave rise to the several adaptations in the building’s history; and 2) to analyze how these adaptations could inform future Art Nouveau preservation practices, both generally and specifically in relation to Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde.

4

Preface

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all employees at the South Denmark Office for always welcoming me and sharing with me their experience inside the building. My gratitude also goes to the owner, Madame Cahen-Delhaye, who allowed me to work on her building, welcomed me in her home, and shared with me all the information she could provide. Additional thanks to the neighbors who permitted me to take pictures from their windows.

On a professional level, I would like to extend my gratitude to Prof. Barbara Van der Wee, my promotor at the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (RLICC) and a practicing conservation expert who has worked on the restoration of several of Horta’s buildings. She shared her expertise and guided me through the drawing process. Many thanks also to Prof.

Francis Tourneur, for sharing his expertise about the Belgian stones used in Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde with great enthusiasm. I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. Christian Ost as well, who showed great interest and helped me in framing the final chapter of this thesis. Last but not least, thanks to everyone who helped me struggle through the archives of the Horta Museum, the Brussels City Archives (AVB), Urban Brussels and CIVA. On a more personal level, words cannot express my gratitude to Bas whom I could not have undertaken this journey without. Thanks also to my friends Salma and Sahar for their amazing support and help. Finally, I want to thank my family and friends in Egypt, whose encouragements and faith in me always pushed me to try my best and make them proud.

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Table of content

Introduction

Chapter 1:

Literature review

___________________

___________________

page

page

8

17

Chapter 2:

Urban context

Chapter 3:

Building’s history

___________________

___________________

page

page

37

57

6

Chapter 4:

Architecture

Chapter 5:

Value assessment

___________________ page

___________________

113

165

Chapter 6: Future

page

Conclusion

___________________

___________________

page

page

175

196

7

Introduction

Research question The first time I planned to enter Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, I was standing awkwardly on the pavement of Palmerston Avenue, thinking the words over which I was going to use to ask the then occupants for their permission to do hand surveys inside the building. Finally, I decided to move when an employee entered the porch for a new day at work. “Ah, this building?”, he exclaimed. “Tour guides always pass here and tell their audience: ‘this is how you ruin heritage.’”

This encounter has stuck with me throughout my research. Was this verdict correct, or is there more to the story? Were there perhaps tradeoffs between adaptation and demolishment that the owners and renovating architects had to take in mind? Don’t most landmark buildings – excepting those very few that continue to be celebrated as museums, theaters, art galleries, and the like – all face difficult dilemmas between preservation and profit? Or are such dilemmas just a bad excuse for failing to conserve valuable heritage?

Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, the topic of this dissertation, is but one of the 40 buildings that the famous Belgian architect Victor Horta introduced into the urban landscape of the Belgian capital. These 40 buildings, in turn, are only a small part of more than 500 Brussels buildings in “Art Nouveau,” an avant-garde style that flourished very briefly around the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. This artistic phase has greatly shaped Brussels’ architectural landscape, not in the least because it coincided with a great construction boom in the capital city of a young but wealthy nation. However, the late nineteenth-century urban sprawl was not the last construction boom in the city. Moreover, the intrusion of European Union institutions in the capital put further pressure on the pre-existing building stock. This is especially true for the Squares Quarter, the neighborhood in which Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde is located and which lies only a couple of hundred meters away from the Schuman Roundabout and the Berlaymont building; that is, from the heart of the European Quarter.

8

Introduction

Fig. 1: Palmerston Avenue 3, and corner of Boduognat Street 14. © Ch. Bastin & J. Evrard, MRBC.

9

Introduction

Four of Horta’s major townhouses, all in Brussels, are UNESCO world heritage sites. But Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde is not one of them, although it has been listed as a monument by the Royal Commission of Monuments and Sites since 1971. The building has been remodeled, expanded and has changed owners several times. It is located in the City of Brussels on a corner plot on Palmerston Avenue 3 (side entrance on Boduognat Street 14) – right across Hotel Van Eetvelde, one of Horta’s admired masterpieces and a UNESCO world heritage site.

Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde was built in 1896 for Georges Deprez, the director of the Val-SaintLambert crystal glassware company. It functioned as a weekend house for Deprez and his wife, who had their main residence in Liège. Unlike some of Horta’s other landmark buildings, such as Hotel Aubecq and Maison du Peuple, his student Jean Delhaye was able to save the house from demolition. He purchased it, extended it and turned it into office spaces in the early 1960s, and his family still owns the building today. It was thanks to Delhaye’s efforts that the building was classified as a protected monument in 1971.

Here we start to encounter the dilemmas introduced above. On the one hand, as will be described in detail later, Delhaye engaged in a crusade to safeguard whatever he could from Horta’s built and even written legacy. On the other hand, he intervened heavily in Horta’s undoubtedly flamboyant interior and changed the building’s functionality from an elite residence to office space for medium-sized companies. Clearly, Delhaye’s conservation efforts faced certain limits there where the building in question moved downward in the rank order of Horta’s oeuvre.

If we want to gain deeper insights about the conservation of Art Nouveau buildings in Brussels, Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde therefore provides a much more representative case study then, say, Hotel Van Eetvelde. What can Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde teach us about preservation practices of Art Nouveau heritage in Brussels? This dissertation studies but ultimately moves beyond the technicalities of the different building phases. It does not just take the building’s survival as a given but investigates how and why it evolved over time. This exercise, in turn, hopes to contribute to the continued survival of the building. Indeed, in addition to the past and present, I am interested in the future. What will the functionality of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde be in the future? And how can future interventions help in this regard while simultaneously sustaining the heritage value of the house, which has been affected by past meddling? This additional research question is highly relevant because the previous tenants, a consortium of EU-linked Scandinavian companies, moved out of the building in April 2022. So far, there are no new tenants yet.

10

Introduction

The four major townhouses of Victor Horta in Brussels listed as UNESCO world heritage sites.

Fig. 2: (Top left) Hotell Tassel, Paul-Emile Janson Street 6, Ixelles. © Karl Stas Fig. 3: (Top right) Personal house and atelier of Victor Horta, American Street 23-25, Saint Gilles. © Paul Louise Fig. 4: (Below left) Hotel Salvoy, Louise Avenue 224, Brussels South extension. © Pinterest Fig. 5: (Below right) Hotel Van Eetvelde, Palmerston Avenue 4, Brussels East extension. © Farida Elghamry.

11

Introduction

Sources, methods & chapters overview Just like an Art Nouveau Gesamtkunstwerk, this thesis aims to paint a holistic picture of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. The evolution of the urban context in which the building is situated receives equal attention as the artistic whiplash motives on its facades. This ambitious scope of this dissertation demands a diverging set of sources and methodologies, however.

The first three chapters have a historical perspective and are built on secondary literature and extensive archival research in the archives of the Horta Museum, the City of Brussels (AVB), the Royal Commission of Monuments and Sites (CRMS), the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), and the CIVA library. Authoritative books, more obscure publications, old photographs and administrative archival documents complement the incomplete body of drawings from the several architects who have worked on the building throughout its history. A literature review of Art Nouveau, fin-de-siècle Brussels and Victor Horta (chapter 1) is followed by a study of the history of the Squares Quarter (chapter 2) and historiographical and architectural analyses of the three different building phases (chapter 3).

The next two chapters deal with the present state of the building. Over the course of several months, I went to the building on countless occasions in order to do detailed hand surveys, take photographs, and make sketches. The tenants were so friendly to let me enter the building and take detailed measurements, which was especially helpful because there is unfortunately a lack of historical sources on the building’s interior. The neighbors across the street on the Boduognat Street even allowed me to take pictures from their upper floor window. Unfortunately, there were also limits to what I was able to observe. There is for instance no way to lurk behind some of the added walls, floors and ceilings. Nonetheless, with the gathered information I was able to make

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Introduction

Pre-research

December

Work

January

contact people

writing

archives visits

hand survey

visit libraries collect pictures

photography photogrammetry

Value assessment

Conclusion

Febraury

March

April

May

intermediate presentation

hand survey

drawings

drawings

final submission

drawings

hand survey

writing

presentation

discussions

writing

discussions

hand survey

June

discussions

the plans, sections, elevations and synthesis drawings in AutoCAD. These are presented in chapter 4, which constitutes the architectural analysis of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde in its present form.

Employing the methodology of the NARA grid, I subsequently put forward my value assessment in chapter 5.

Chapter 6, finally, aims at the future. Although the owner remains firm on keeping the building as office space, several scenarios for the future use of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde are juxtaposed. Here, the artistic and technical elements as well as the evolving social urban context are taken in mind in order to propose interventions which can restore and promote the standing of the building as an Art Nouveau landmark without restraining its professional use. Although I will maintain throughout the text that previous architectural interventions need to be understood in light of changing tastes and increasing urbanization pressures, the renovations of Delhaye, and those of Max and Robert Genard before him, will also be critiqued. Just like they adapted the building to changing times in their eras, I will suggest both small and big changes which would bring this piece of heritage in sync with contemporary values. Critically, these include maximizing both the visibility of Horta’s original architecture and the alignment of the building with sustainable development goals.

13

Introduction

Motivation

I moved to Brussels in the fall of 2020, when I started my studies with the RLICC at the KULeuven.

My previous studies and work experience – and indeed my life up until that point – revolved around the Egyptian capital Cairo. Still attached to this great city, I therefore naturally gravitated to analyzing a beautiful but neglected mausoleum complex in Historic Cairo for my master’s dissertation.

However, due to a variety of reasons, not the least of which were practical, I decided to change topic in December 2021.

In the meantime, I had lived for more than a year in Brussels and had become very interested in the city’s rich repository of Art Nouveau heritage. There is something about this lavish style that really sparked my interest. By then, I had also decided to stay in Belgium after finishing my studies.

Delving deeper into a topic so central to Belgian architectural history would help me to acquaint myself with the country, I reasoned.

By choosing Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde and coming up with a research question, I nonetheless remained inspired by my work experience in Historic Cairo. There, I worked at an architectural office which renovates neglected Islamic heritage in neighborhoods that in many ways face a much more challenging urban environment than contemporary Brussels. Still, the office tried to empower the local community by organizing workshops, building community centers, and otherwise involving the local inhabitants in the regeneration projects. These projects sharpened my focus on the social context in which heritage is built and preserved. I have attempted to bring my humble experience to the table in this dissertation.

14

Introduction

Fig. 6: The entrance door of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde (currently not in use), on the Boduognat Street, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

15

Fig. 7: Detail of the chimney in Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, personal sketch.

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Chapter 1: Literature review

1.1. Art Nouveau 1.2. Brussels fin de siecle 1.3. Victor Horta 1..4 Conclusion

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Chapter 1: Literature review

1.1. Art Nouveau Art Nouveau was a cosmopolitan decorative art movement active around the turn of the twentieth century. The designation “Art Nouveau” was taken from the name of a gallery that opened in Paris in 1895, but by that time the style was already taking root in various European cities, including Brussels, Paris, Barcelona, Glasgow, London, and Vienna. In Germany it was called Jugendstil (“youth style”), in France Style Moderne (“modern style”), in Austria Sezessionsstil (“secession style”), in Catalonia Modernisme (“modernism”), in Scotland Glasgow style and in Italy Stile Liberty (“Liberty style”). Generally speaking, Jugendstil is the overarching term used in Austria and Germany, whereas Art Nouveau is more common throughout Belgium, France, and the Anglo-Saxon world.

Despite the flourishing of the movement across Europe in a short spade of time, Art Nouveau’s roots are often traced back to one country: the United Kingdom. In the 1880s, a plea for preserving craftsmanship in the era of factory production had taken hold in Victorian England.

With the industrial revolution in full swing, the advocates of this Arts and Crafts movement stood by and watched how mass production was penetrating all traditional industries, including the decorative and fine arts. The challenge for architects and artists in this era was to adapt their work to the age of electricity, cinema and automobiles. Like in any historical epoch of rapid economic change, those who were outcompeted by the new system railed against what they saw as the dehumanizing impact of society’s transformation. 1

1

Crawford 2004, pp. 20-67.

18

Literature review

Fig. 8: Pictures showing the styles of Art Nouveau, which includes organic lines, curved ‘whiplashes’, Japanese art influence, oriental influences, sensual women paintings, plant like iron-work, and stained glass.

19

Chapter 1

It is no coincidence, then, that the Arts and Crafts movement is to be placed at the intersection of art criticism and social reform, embodied by such philosophers as John Ruskin. In fact, many pioneers of the movement, such as William Morris, were socialists. Morris shared Ruskin’s distaste of industrial society and denounced the modern factory, the division of labor and capitalism for having destroyed traditional handicrafts. He romanticized medieval artisanship and in 1888 joined the Art Workers’ Guild, an organization that had been set up out of inspiration for his ideas. Progressive architects like Arthur Mackmurdo soon followed suit and created their own Century Guild of Artists.

What the protagonists of the movement had failed to take in mind, however, was the costliness of traditional craftsmanship, which put it in stark contrast to the factory-made consumer products that were finally becoming affordable to the common man. Although they aimed to bring quality craftsmanship to that common man, their art, ironically, in the end remained only accessible to the “bourgeoise.” 2 The Arts and Crafts movement spread from Britain to the continent and brought its sensitivity for the impoverishment of the decorative arts with it. In doing so, it influenced a revival of creativity and craftmanship throughout Europe, which was in the middle of accelerating industrialization.3 Since about 1870, a second industrial revolution had set in, which had brought forward new technologies like electricity and the internal combustion engine, new communication methods like the telegraph, radio and railways, and new materials like steel and alloy. Pushback against transformative change was not new in the arts, of course. But in architecture, specifically, this pushback had up until then manifested itself in Historicist genres, be it the 19th-century Romantic-inspired Gothic Revivalism or the numerous Neoclassical imitations of classical antiquity that had been prevalent since the Renaissance. In the realm of politics and philosophy, this emphasis on the past had already come under increasing challenge during the Enlightenment Era. The field of architecture would only fully embrace future-orientedness in the twentieth-century with the rise of Modernism, however.

2 3

Cumming & Kaplan 1991, pp. 9-66.

Ibid., pp. 197-205.

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Literature review

Fig. 9: (Left) John Ruskin 1819-1900.

Fig. 10: (Middle) William Morris 1834-1896.

Fig. 11: (Right) Nikolaus Pevsner 1902-1983.

Fig. 12: (Top) Post Office Savings Bank, Vienna, Austria. Otto Wagner, 1906. The radical church-like banking hall, with its steel frame and glass roof, belongs to the Vienna Secession style which architecturally situated in between Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

Fig. 13: (Down) Palais Stoclet, Brussels, Belgium. Josef Hoffman, 1911. The building was designed in late Art Nouveau but overlapping with and paving the way for Art Deco.

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Chapter 1

It is at this fin-de-siècle watershed between Historicism and Modernism that both the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau are to be situated. From the retrospective lens of the Modernist era, these were seen as final iterations of a bygone era, soon to be swept away by the inevitable emergence of functionalism. The 20th-century art historian Nikolaus Pevsner, for instance, wrote in his influential 1936 Pioneers of Modern Design that Art Nouveau was “outré and directs its appeal to the aesthete, the one who is ready to accept the dangerous tenet of art for art’s sake.”

He considered it to be a “blind alley […] completely lacking in social conscience.”4 Indeed, Art Nouveau’s paradoxical plea for affordable products and emphasis on luxurious ornamentation had not escaped Pevsner’s critical eye.

Yet, contemporary art historians have nuanced the orthodox and teleological view propagated by Pevsner. Colin Davies, for instance, perceives Art Nouveau to be “revolutionary” in its own right, as he considered it necessary to include the style in the first chapter of his chronological history of modern architecture. What made Art Nouveau radical and innovative, according to Davies, was its rejection of history and tradition. Like the conservative past-oriented architectural movements, Art Nouveau sought an escape hedge from the modern world. Yet, it did not find it in the past.

In fact, unlike the more cynical elements within the Arts and Crafts movement, many Art Nouveau artists were progressive and forward-looking. Indeed, the producers and consumers of the genre tended to be free thinkers, socialists, and liberals. They did take over the emphasis on creativity and decoration from the Arts and Crafts movement, but they also embraced modern building materials, such as steel. Art Nouveau artists found their expression of authenticity through their embrace of nature. Of course, natural elements had featured in architecture for centuries. Think no further than the acanthus leaves on the Corinthian capital. But Art Nouveau ornament sought to go beyond the mere featuring of nature, it aimed to imitate not just the forms of fauna and flora but the forces of growth, resistance and asymmetry in the forest. The forces of nature therefore needed to guide the structure of the building itself. 5 Art Nouveau died out as quickly as it had entered the architectural scene. It gradually lost influence in the first decade of the twentieth century, and by the outbreak of World War I it was definitely out of fashion. In the end, it was just that, a passing fashion – perhaps precisely because of its lack of historical roots. The experimentation with naturalism and asymmetry failed to take hold, although the incorporation of less extravagant and more subtle ornamentation found a new place in the Art Deco movement of the interwar period, which became increasingly geometric. With the postWorld War II rise of the Internationalist Style, which adhered to strict functionalism, the rejection of ornament was complete, however. Yet, according to Davies, Art Nouveau was a steppingstone to Modernist architecture. It served as a bridge for progressive architects, for it was the first architectural movement to free itself from the grip of Historicism. After they became conscious of the paradox between their political ideas and the luxurious ostentation of their work, progressive architects decided to go one step further; that is, to discard with ornament altogether. 6

4 5 6

Pevsner 1987, ch. 4.

Davies 2017, pp. 10-22.

Ibid., p. 20.

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Literature review

Fig. 14: (Right) Johann Braakensiek, cartoon of King Leopold’s lash. Leopold explains to Czar Nicholas the deficiencies of the Russian “knout” and “nagïaika” flogging whips compared to the chicotte in his African kingdom. © Weekblad voor Nederland, June 24, 1906.

Fig. 15: (Top left) Victor Horta, Tassel House. Detail of wrought iron banister. Photograph courtesy of the Horta Museum, Saint Gilles. © Bequest Victor Horta, SOFAM Belgium.

Fig. 16: (Top right) Victor Horta, Frison House, 1894.

Detail of handrail. Photograph by Christine Bastin and Jacques Evrard. © Bequest Victor Horta, SOFAM Belgium.

In recent decades, as the Internationalist Style has fallen out of favor as a result of its rigid uniformity, art historians have come to reappreciate the Art Nouveau era. Still, other criticisms have emerged in recent times. The style did not emerge only out of intra-European dynamics. Some artists were influenced by Far Eastern art, which has exposed the movement to charges of Orientalism. Indeed, its flourishing coincided with the third wave of European colonial expansion, which centered around Africa. In Britain, for instance, John Ruskin not only laid the groundwork for Art Nouveau, but he was also an outspoken proponent of British colonialism, influencing such “New Imperialism” advocates as Cecil Rhodes.

In Belgium, too, there was considerable synergy between the Art Nouveau movement and Leopold II’s colonial project in the Congo. Debora Silverman has argued in a recent article, titled “Art Nouveau: Art of Darkness,” that the work of Victor Horta and Henry Van de Velde was not only inspired by Belgian colonialism. Indeed, one could see parallels between asymmetry, nature and Orientalist visions of African “barbarism,” which is perhaps most clearly symbolized in the typical “whiplash” motive prominent in the work of Horta and Van de Velde. Some fin-de-siècle art objects inspired by Art Nouveau even literally demonstrate the Belgian colonial project as a battle between the forces of “civilization and barbarism”. Silverman therefore goes as far as to suggest that the curvy form of the Congo rubber plant and the leather chicotte flogging whip used by Belgian colonists are a missing link in explaining the sudden emergence of the predominantly Belgian stylistic innovation of the coup de fouet.7 It is to that Belgian context that we turn to next.

7

Silverman 2013, p. 164.

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Chapter 1

Fig. 17: Palace of Justice, Poelaert 1, Brussels (1862), 2009. ©Martin Mycielski.

1.2. Brussels fin-de-siècle The rise and fall of Art Nouveau took place during the Belle Epoque, the period between 1870 and the outbreak of World War I. For Belgium, the first country on the European mainland to reap the benefits of the industrial revolution, this was an era of rapid economic growth and technological change, but also of the expansion of democracy, social policy, nationalism, imperialism, and popular culture. The creation of the Belgian Workers’ Party in 1885 introduced socialism into mainstream Belgian politics, just as mass consumption was penetrating the lower levels of society. The first baby steps toward the modern welfare state and the reinstatement of protectionist measures did little to curb economic growth and technological innovation, however. Indeed, the Belgian government organized a number of world exhibitions during the Belle Epoque and proudly advertised the image of a young but modern industrial nation. 8

8

Deneckere et al. 2014, pp. 120-5.

24

Literature review

The capital city was the epicenter of this nationalist project, but it was also an important hub of Belgian industry. The establishment of dozens of companies in the city by the Société Générale attest to that, while the Brussels-Charleroi Canal and the Brussels-Mechelen Railway – the first passenger railway outside England – integrated Wallonia, Flanders and the capital economically. Hence, the population of the Brussels Capital Region rose from a mere 80.000 to 625.000 in the course of the nineteenth century. However, this population explosion put increasing stress on the Zenne, the river that ran straight through the historic city but at the time served as the dumping ground of untreated wastewater through effluents. This health hazard gave rise to a grandiose urban renewal project under the mayorship of Jules Anspach, in which the river was completely covered up inside the city center and large boulevards were erected in its stead. Many important landmark buildings, such as the Brussels Stock Exchange and the Palace of Justice, date from this era. The project was inspired by the famous renovation of Paris by Baron Haussmann under the reign of Napoleon III. Leopold II did his own part in modernizing Brussels in Haussmannesque style by commissioning the construction of the 11kms-long Tervuren Avenue in order to connect the capital to his royal estate east of Brussels, where he publicized his “civilizing mission” in the Congo at his Palace of the Colonies.9 In spite of these grandiose state-led modernization projects, expansion beyond the Brussels Pentagon was usually more organic. The urban sprawl that enclosed the boroughs south and east of the center (e.g. Schaarbeek, Saint-Gilles, Ixelles and Uccle) into the capital did not follow a centralized pattern. The division of Belgian towns into individual boroughs made Brussels less of a court city like Paris and more characteristic of the decentralized and chaotic urbanization processes typical of the medieval and early modern Low Countries. The middle classes moreover seemed more interested in “hotels” or townhouses further away from the center than the Parisian-style apartment blocks alongside the boulevards. The masters of Art Nouveau therefore selected the most handsome plots of land on such streets as the Louis Bertrand, Louise, Brugmann and, of course, Palmerston Avenues. 10 Brigid Grauman has argued that the narrow (on average six-meters-wide) plots of land delineated by the borough authorities, together with the individualistic temperament of Belgian house owners – “Belgians are born with a brick in their stomach,” as the popular saying goes –, stimulated the imagination that gave rise to Art Nouveau. Indeed, the restriction of free play in publicly exhibiting the architectural labor put the facade center stage in the creative process. As public spaces became more important in the urban landscape, the facade became the stage from which the artists could express their creativity. That is why corner plots and plots next to a public square were especially sought after. Grauman cites the work of Gustave Strauven, a student of Horta who also built Art Nouveau houses for the less well-off. Strauven used the cheaper brick in the seven houses that he constructed in the neighborhood of squares (including Square Ambiorix), which had a facade of only between 3.5 and 6 meters. Yet, these budgetary issues did little to restrain the importance of artistic quality. Indeed, in the demand for a building permit for apartments on the Louis Bertrand Avenue, Strauven stressed that he needed a full four percent of the total budget to be spent on the facade. 11 9 10 11

De Ridder 2008, p. 83.

Grauman 1988, pp. 43-55.

Ibid.

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Chapter 1

Fig. 18: (Left) Gustave Strauven personal home in Luther Street 28, Brussels.

(1902) Fig. 19: (Right) The facade of Strauven’s Maison in Ambiorix Square is reminiscent of Horta’s linear composition but heavier in detail. He used bricks instead of stone for economic reasons.

Art Nouveau did not completely dominate the urban sprawl of late nineteenth-century Brussels, however. As noted, the predominance of Art Nouveau was concentrated in a few neighborhoods, whereas other styles prevailed elsewhere. In a way, style followed ideology. Whereas socialists and liberals favored Art Nouveau, the conservatives and Catholics stuck to more traditional styles, such as Flemish Renaissance and Neo-Gothic. Gothic Revivalism was championed in particular at the influential architectural school of Saint-Luc in Schaarbeek, where Art Nouveau was banned on the grounds of it being an expression of pagan luxuriance.12 But these architectural feuds should not give the impression of clearly delineated boundaries between the styles of the day, however. Joseph Poelaert designed the Church of Our Lady in Laaken in flamboyant Gothic, for instance, only to return to Neoclassicism later in his career with his design of the aforementioned Palace of Justice. That bombastic building deviated from the Neoclassical paradigm in the sense that it allowed for a personal interpretation of the classic idiom. This expression of individual taste, in turn, profoundly influenced the emergence of Art Nouveau. Experimentation with new industrial materials was not the sole purview of Art Nouveau either. The Botanical Gardens, The Royal Greenhouses and the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries all appropriate iron and glass in their otherwise rather Neoclassical designs. These two themes, individual expression and 12

Ibid., pp. 46-8.

26

Literature review

modern materials, is what bound the Brussels architecture scene of the late nineteenth century together, according to David Dernie and Alastair Carew-Cox. In their book on Victor Horta, they go as far as to say that the differences between Art Nouveau, Gothic Revivalism and Neoclassicism in fin-de-siècle Brussels was ultimately “a matter of emphasis.” All of these styles influenced one another.13 In the same vein, Amy Ogata has nuanced Art Nouveau’s break with Historicism, at least as far as Belgium is concerned. Rather than repudiating history and tradition, the cultural climate of late nineteenth-century Belgium was one of celebrating the continuity between the country’s rich preindustrial history of artisanship and its contemporary industrial success. Indeed, this was a reoccurring theme in the 1880 national exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of independence in the Cinquantenaire Park, which was built for the occasion by Leopold II. The symbiosis between the glorification of the decorative arts and the building of such monumental works as the Cinquantenaire occurred parallel to the emergence of the Arts and Crafts movement across the Channel.

A renewed interest in craftsmanship fit the nationalistic narrative of presenting Belgium as a nation rich in industrial heritage.14 Art Nouveau artists in Belgium participated in this yearning for the past and put their own political twist to it. Indeed, romanticized images of both the urban artisan and rural peasant were commonplace in the art of progressive artistic circles that influenced the rise of Art Nouveau, such as Les Vingts and La Libre Esthétique. For their own ideological reasons of glorifying the common man, they presented their work as a reminder of the supposed age-old vernacular artistic tradition in Belgium.15 Ogata therefore posits that the theme of nature was, at least to some extent, built on a fascination of historical primitivism that fin-de-siècle avant-garde artists shared with their conservative counterparts. Henry Van de Velde, for example, often lectured on such themes as peasants working the land or women absorbed in manual labor at events of Les Vingts, of which he was a member. Horta and Van de Velde may have designed a lot of “hotels” in the city, moreover, they also produced a number of rural townhouses and cottages. In short, the theme of nature had roots that lay much deeper in the political culture than Leopold II’s colonial project in the Congo, although Ogata, like Silverman, recognizes that colonial themes influenced Art Nouveau. Indeed, the exhibition rooms at the Palace of the Colonies designed by Paul Hankar and Van de Velde were suggestively submerged in the new style. Like Art Nouveau, after all, the colonial project was presented as trying hard to bridge past and present – or the primitive and the modern. As the official catalogue put it, the African objects at display – and perhaps the Art Nouveau in which they were presented – offered “primitive, naïve and moving interpretations of nature itself. These models, of an absolute purity, may, though, in an unforeseen fashion aid in the development of our modern aesthetic sense.”16

13 14 15 16

Dernie & Carew-Cox 2018, pp. 14-31.

Ogata 2001, pp.1-20.

Ogata, 1997, pp. 67-98; Block 1984.

Ogata 2001, pp. 21-58.

27

Chapter 1

1.3. Victor Horta Victor Horta (1861-1947) is known to history as the first great master of Art Nouveau. Yet, like the style itself, Horta’s participation in it was fairly short, spanning the years 1894 to 1905. Still, this period was the high mark of his career, where the architect’s confidence came to full expression.

Horta’s work until 1983, the year in which he started working on his first Art Nouveau building, displayed a young architect’s journey towards a unique style. In a sense, this journey is to be interpreted literally, as his travels and work brought him from his native Ghent to Paris, Rome and Cologne during his formation years. After his father’s death in 1880, however, Horta returned to Belgium, married, and moved to Brussels. There, he enrolled at the Académie des Beaux Arts and studied with his contemporary Paul Hankar, who, like Horta, went on to play a pioneering role in the emergence of Art Nouveau.

While a student at the Académie, Horta started working for Alphonse Balat, the king’s architect who designed the aforementioned Royal Greenhouses. From him, Horta learnt to experiment with modern Belgian materials. Another influence was Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the French nineteenth-century architect who restored such famous architectural monuments as the Notre-Dame de Paris and the medieval village of Carcassonne. In spite of his own Neo-Gothic focus, Viollet-le-Duc inspired a wide-range of innovative young architects, ranging from the functionalist Frank-Lloyd Wright to the eccentric Antoni Gaudí, for his theoretical musings about architecture as a medium that reduced nature to geometry. Unlike Viollet-le-Duc before him and Wright after him, Horta chose to accentuate the essence of nature not in its sober rationality but its irrational creativity, however. For him, the forces of nature were not linear or triangular but asymmetric, and this asymmetry needed to guide the artistic expression of the architectural design.17 As he wrote in 1899, “it is not the flower that I like to take as an element of decoration, it is the stem.”18 17 18

Dernie & Carew-Cox 2018, pp. 10-59.

Quoted in Evrard 1996, p. 44.

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Literature review

Fig. 20: Victor Horta 1861-1947.

29

Chapter 1

Fig. 21: (Left) Alphonse Ballat 1818-1895, Belgian architect mentor of Victor Horta.

Fig. 22: (Right) Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814-1879, a French architect and a main inspiraton to Victor Horta.

What Balat and Viollet-le-Duc, but also other nineteenth-century Belgian pioneers such as Joseph Poelaert and Hendrik Beyaert, ultimately impressed on the young architect, was the growing urge for personal adaptations of the prevailing styles, be they classicist, Neo-Gothic or Flemish Renaissance.19 After he was initiated in the Masonic lodge of Les Amis Philanthropes and started to dabble around in socialist and avant-garde art circles such as Les Vingts, the desire to develop a unique style grew stronger. In his early personal work, as he wrote in his memoires, “constructive, architectural and social rationalism guided me and kept me up to date with the time and rhythm of current architecture.” This conformity was eventually discarded.20 Positivism and Romanticism, the two dominant esthetic theories of the nineteenth century, had to make room for a novel revolutionary style: Art Nouveau.

Horta’s completion of a private residence for the progressive engineer Émile Tassel in 1894 marked the transition to his Art Nouveau career (see fig. 25). Indeed, Hotel Tassel is often seen as the first fully developed house in Art Nouveau. The style is pervasive, creating a complete world where every detail from the facade to the interior furniture and the door handle are integrated – making the final picture a piece of Gesamtkunstwerk. The end goal was an organic exclamation of total art, as if the house was “the flesh, bones and membranes of a large animal.” Horta went even further, arguing that Hotel Tassel was supposed to represent a “portrait” of the owners.21 With that magnificent statement, the stage was set. Other townhouses for the industrialists Armand Solvay (1894-98) and Octave Aubecq (1899-1902), the Secretary to the Belgian Congo Edmond van Eetvelde (1895-97), the Belgian Workers’ Party headquarters or Maison du Peuple (1895-99) and Horta’s own studio (1898-1901) soon followed. It is also in this period that Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, the object of this study, was designed and constructed.

19 20 21

Dernie & Carew-Cox 2018, pp. 10-11.

Mémoires 1985, p.12.

Aubrey 2007, p. 10.

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Literature review

Fig. 23: Royal greenhouses of Laeken, Brussels, Alphonse Balat, 1873. As an intern to Balat, this building represents the beginning of Horta’s career.

Fig. 24: BOZAR, Brussels, Victor Horta, 1922. The BOZAR is one of Horta’s main accomplishment after the demise of Art Nouveau.

31

Chapter 1

So, what bound all these buildings together in Horta’s idiosyncratic style? What were the common stylistic elements that distinguished him as an innovative architect? First, of course, the coup de fouet or “whiplash” motive; that is, the arabesque lines that were so central to Art Nouveau. There were several variations on this nature-inspired motive. For instance, Horta often introduced tangency points in his curvy metal structures, in which the ornamental ribs seemed to congregate around a knot before spiraling away. Moreover, he also appropriated pre-existing architectural methods, such as folding and optical correction, by permeating them with his personal asymmetric and curvy features. Second, Horta was in tune with the times because he went into dialogue with modern building materials. He managed to experiment with iron and stone in such an innovative way that forced technological advancement was turned into a matter of satisfaction. Indeed, in Horta’s style the iron liberated the masonry from its rigid structures, thereby bridging the gap between technique and art. Finally, Horta was creative in both his vertical and horizontal spatial design. Vertically, he managed to integrate his main theme of asymmetry without rendering the internal architectural designs disorderly. Horizontally, Horta was famous for his polygonal compositions and transparency. Confined to the typical narrow Belgian plots in which he had to develop his flamboyant style, transparent domes, large and colorful glass, lanterns and ornamental bands, consoles and cornices were all mobilized so as to wage the battle against opacity with success. In Horta’s world, the wall was a manmade obstacle that had to give way for the forces of nature and architecture to triumph.22 These motives combined into Horta’s unique and well-known style only in his industrious years during the 1890s and first few years of the twentieth century. By 1905, the architect had given up on his whiplash motive as he became more mature but also less creative. The first blow to his self-confidence had already transpired in 1897, when he had been rejected for Leopold II’s Congo exhibition in Tervuren in favor of, among others, Hankar and Van de Velde. After the construction of Hotel Max Hallet (1902-05), Horta was contracted for large-scale projects in the course of which he lost his idiosyncratic flavor and fell into lockstep with changing tastes in the architectural scene. Indeed, his most famous post-Art Nouveau building, the Palace of Fine Arts (nowadays more commonly known as BOZAR) (see fig. 24) closely resembled the Art Deco style that reigned supreme in the time that it was constructed. This second part of his career was marked by professional disappointment and personal grief over the loss of his only child, Simone. He even burnt a large part of his drawings’ archive shortly before his death in 1947. 23

22 23

Borsi & Portoghesi 1990, ch. 12.

Dernie & carew-Cox 2018, p.12.

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Literature review

Fig. 25: Main floor landing and staircase of Hotel Tassel by Victor Horta (1893-95) ©Explore Brussels

33

Chapter 1

1.4. Conclusion Victor Horta was simultaneously a child of his time and a great innovator in the field of architecture. The second industrial revolution, the construction boom in Brussels, the political progressivism of the Belle Epoque, the nationalistic melancholy towards craftmanship and the liberal celebration of artistic individualism all came together in the 1890s as explicit or implicit influences on the great Belgian architect. Although Art Nouveau spread across the continent in many different forms in that decade, Horta was nonetheless one of its great pioneers. He managed to create a unique style that combined asymmetry with modern materials to create flamboyant, bright and spacious buildings. His style became well sought after, as a result of which his work and the style he pioneered left a lasting imprint on the urban landscape of Brussels.

It is to that urban landscape that we now turn. As it turns out, the surrounding environment of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde has a particularly interesting history. The common thread is that the area has been a space of elite residence throughout most of its history. Instead of taking the bourgeois character of the Squares Quarter as a given, however, we study its history, present, and future. This holistic background study sets the stage for the historical and architectural analysis of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde in subsequent chapters.

34

Literature review

Fig. 26: Corner of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde main elevation on Palmerston Avenue.

2021 © Farida Elghamry.

35

Fig. 27: Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde: floral corner motif , own sketch drawing.

36

Chapter 2: Urban context

2.1. Location and orientation 2.2. Early history of the neighbourhood 2.3. The creation of the Squares Quarter 2.4. Brusselization & Europeanization 2.5 Conclusion

37

Chapter 2: Urban context

2.1. Location & orientation Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde today lies in a picturesque and calm neighborhood known as the Squares Quarter. Together with the Leopold Quarter, it is part of an eastern extension of the City of Brussels commune commonly referred to as the European Quarter. The Squares Quarter is located between the Leopold Quarter and the European institutions in the south, the city center in the west, Sint-Joost-ten-Node in the north, and Schaarbeek and the Cinquantenaire Park in the east. Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, specifically, is located on a corner plot on Palmerston Avenue, the street that connects the Marie-Louise and Ambiorix Squares. This street and these two squares together make up the core of the Squares Quarter. The hotel thus occupies a central location in the neighborhood. Also, along with Marie-Louise, Ambiorix and Marguerite Squares, Palmerston Avenue forms a set classified as a site since 1994.

Given its proximity to the European institutions, a lot of the buildings in the Squares Quarter are occupied by organizations and companies linked to the European Union, while others remain residential. Yet, the Squares Quarter until today largely retains its characteristic elite residential outlook. As we will see, this is how the neighborhood was conceived in the urban planning of the second half of the nineteenth century. It was meant to house the rich in a quiet residential area close to the city center. Given the timing and social class to which the plans were directed, it was bound to become a center of Art Nouveau.

38

Urban context

Fig. 28: Palmerston Avenue panorama view collage, 2022 © Farida Elghamry.

Fig. 29: Photograph showing Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde on Palmerston Avenue. Dog owners are always coming to the park in front of the hotel, 2022 © Farida Elghamry.

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2.2. Early history

The bourgeois character of the neighborhood is deeply rooted in history, much deeper than the inception of the Squares Quarter in fact. Before the second half of the nineteenth century, the area to the east of historic Brussels was part of the Maalbeek valley. Just like the Zenne left a topographical imprint that deepened the area encompassing Vorst, Anderlecht and the city center, so did the Maalbeek stream create a valley (although to a less extreme extent) that started around the Ter Kameren abbey in Ixelles and ran through Etterbeek, the present-day Squares Quarter, Sint-Joost and Schaarbeek to Laken, where it flowed into the Zenne.

There were dozens of ponds in the valley stretched alongside the route of the Maalbeek. One of the bigger ponds, the Hoeyvijver, was located in the south-east of Sint-Joost. Today, all that is left of this pond is the water reservoir of the Marie-Louise Square. But in its original state, the Hoeyvijver was larger in every direction, especially towards the north and south.24 Judging from historical maps, its east bank was probably located somewhere on the lower end of what is now the Palmerston Avenue. In other words, the historic plot of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde and Hotel Van Eetvelde are situated somewhere on the edge of the pond (see fig. 30)

24

Cavuy & Demeter 1997, pp. 21-34.

40

Urban context

Fig. 30: Detail of the general map of Brussels and its surroundings, by Jacques DE DEVENTER, 1550-1554 © Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, Map Section

Fig. 31: The castle of Cardinal de Granvelle at the great pond of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. Drawing by Émile PUTTAERT, after an original by P. VITZTHUMB from the end of the 18th century © Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Brussels, Cabinet des Estampes.

This Art Nouveau heritage can also not have been situated far from the historic site of the castle of Cardinal de Granvelle, the famous sixteenth-century advisor of the Habsburgs before and during the Eighty Years War. Although he already had a palace located on the site of the current Ravenstein Gallery in the city center since the year 1550, he also obtained a castle on the east bank of the Hoeyvijver ten years later. On the north bank of the lake stood another castle of an even more important statesman, Philip the Good, the Burgundian duke who a century earlier had expanded the territory that would eventually be transferred to the Habsburgs (see fig. 31). Before Philip the Good, this Castle of Sint-Joost had been the main residence of the dukes of Brabant, and between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, it was occupied by a number of noble families.25 All this goes to show that the area east of the Coudenberg Palace, from where the dukes of Brabant, Burgundy and Habsburg consecutively ruled for six centuries, was an attractive area for the Brussels nobility to build manors and temporary residences.26 This attraction is probably to be explained by a combination of the proximity to the city and the rural characteristic of the area, which it would retain until the middle of the nineteenth century. Indeed, whereas the north of Sint-Joost would gradually grow into a village, the area around the Hoeyvijver was long made up of agricultural land for the most part. Through a hydraulic mill built in the seventeenth century, the Maalbeek delivered the Coudenberg Palace and the city with water, while urban dwellers descended into the valley for recreational purposes. 27

25 26 27

Berckmans & Genon (no date), pp. 3-5.; Demey 2007, pp.20-22.

Heymans 1995, pp. 3-5.; Deliens 1982, pp. 14-9.

Berckmans & Genon (no date), pp.8.

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Chapter 2

Fig. 32: Topographical map showing the Zenna valley (in blue) and the Maalbeek valley (rough sketch in black). Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde is located on the black square.

42

Urban context

2.3. The Squares Quarter In the second half of the nineteenth century, the area south of the Sint-Joost village fell victim to the urban expansion of Brussels detailed in the previous chapter. The castles were broken down one after the other, while the manors and agricultural fields made way for residential buildings.

The main building of Granvelle’s Castle, for instance, disappeared from the map in the beginning of the century, after the land was sold and parceled out in 1813. In its place, the Granvelle Neighborhood emerged, where poor farming and laboring families congregated in small row houses. Because of the absence of proper sewer systems, wastewater from this working-class neighborhood polluted the Hoeyvijver, while typhus and cholera epidemics regularly effected its residents.28 Thus, the dual pressure of demographic expansion and pollution which raised health concerns in the historic center of Brussels were simultaneously emerging in the Maalbeek valley. In the latter, the issue was exacerbated by frequent floods. Just like the Zenne, the problem was solved through the covering of the Maalbeek stream in the 1870s. As a result, today the legacy of the stream is only visible on the surface in the form of a half dozen ponds it has left behind in the Ter Kameren abbey, Ixelles, the Leopold Park, the Marie-Louise Square, and the Josaphat Park.

28

Ibid., pp. 7-8.

43

Chapter 2 Still, the valley remained and started to form a natural barrier to Brussels’ urban sprawl after the luxurious Leopold Quarter had been erected just outside the Pentagon in the first part of the nineteenth century. The builders of the Brussels-Namur railway, construction on which had started in the 1850s, were able to circumvent the topographical problem presented by the valley by curving the railway around the Hoeyvijver. In order to extend the urbanization process beyond the Leopold Quarter downstream into the valley, however, an external incentive was needed. That incentive came in 1952, when the federal government allowed the City of Brussels to annex the Leopold Quarter as well as the area northeast of it, as a result of which Sint-Joost lost more than half of its territory. This move was a compensation for the city’s contribution to the construction works that extended the Law Street eastward across the valley until the present-day Cinquantenaire Park, where at the time a new parade field for the Belgian Army was to be erected. In 1953, the year of the annexation, the City of Brussels also committed itself to the covering of the Maalbeek, which would eventually be completed in its entirety in the 1870s.29 Once the area of the future Squares Quarter was annexed, two obstacles stood in the way of its urban development: the low-lying pond and the new railway that ran straight through the area. From as early as 1842 onward, several architects designed development plans for a posh neighborhood similar to the Leopold Quarter.30 However, it took until the 1870s until a definite plan from the hand of Gédéon Bordiau was accepted. In 1870, this architect and urban planner, who was a student of Joseph Poelaert, submitted his first model. In it, he envisioned the sizing down of the Hoeyvijver and the burying underground of the railway. This first proposal also allowed for the construction of a palace for fine arts on the parade field at the end of the Law Street. Although this palace was never realized,31 Bordiau did propose and eventually design the Cinquantenaire Park that was to be erected in its place.32 A modified plan of Bordiau’s was accepted by the City of Brussels in 1875, although further modifications followed in 1879. In these follow-up plans, the current outlook of the Squares Quarter, with the Marie-Louise and Ambiorix Squares and Palmerston Avenue between them, took shape.

In some subtle ways, it departed from the Neoclassical style of the Leopold Quarter, however. Bordiau tried to preserve some of the rural aspects of the historic area, as evidenced in the multiple water features and greeneries he built into his plans. Some of these plans turned out to be too romantic to be realized, such as publicly accessible gardens that were to be constructed in between the housing blocks. Still, other features were realized, such as the artificial cave on Marie-Louise Square, and stand as testimony of the yearning back to nature that was in sign with the times and would soon also inspire the emergence of Art Nouveau.33 The restriction of the properties for sale to plots of only 3.5 to 6 meter wide further spurred the creative process on the facades and set the stage for the fin-de-siècle architectural style.34

29 Ibid., pp. 11-5.

30 Ibid. pp. 12-4.

31 Victor Horta was later to outcompete him on the honor of designing BOZAR, the Palace for Fine Arts, which eventually was built in the city center adjacent to the Central Station.

32 Heymans, 19995, 17-24.

33 Berckmans & Ganon, pp. 15-9.

34 Heymans 1995, pp. 36-7.

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Urban context

Fig. 33: (Top) Houses on Palmerston Avenue 6 to 10 (opposite from Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde), a few years before their radical transformation into office buildings, 1957. © AVB - TP 67105.

Fig. 34: (Bottom) Palmerston Avenue 6-12, 14 and 16, after the transformation, 1971. © AVB-TP 92051.

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Construction started in the 1880s. The pond was reduced in size, the squares and Palmerston Avenue were constructed along with the necessary public facilities infrastructures and new streets, and the first private houses started to emerge. Only in the 1890s did the building boom kick off in earnest, however. Given that this was the heyday of Art Nouveau, this delay had the effect of turning the Squares Quarter into an area where Art Nouveau became widespread. 35 Tragically, there was one major casualty: the erection of the Squares Quarter led to the demise of the Granvelle Neighborhood, which had long housed working-class families and, in fact, was located just behind the plot of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. It was not wiped off the map by Bordiau’s pen, however. Indeed, he accounted for its continued existence in his original plans. What the architect did not account for, though, was the fact that the construction of the upward-sloping Palmerston Avenue created a situation in which the Granvelle Neighborhood was lying several meters lower than the newly constructed streets. Meanwhile, the underground water pipes that served as surrogates of the Maalbeek proved to be too small. Finally, the downsizing of the historic Hoeyvijver had reduced its capacity to serve as a water reservoir in case of heavy rainfall. All of these interventions had the cumulative effect of frequent floods in the Granvelle Neighborhood, which gradually became uninhabitable. The City of Brussels solved the problem by expropriating many houses and redeveloping the space on a higher plain. 36 In short, the neighborhood that had historically housed the castle of an important noble but over time had morphed into a working class district eventually had to make way for housing projects designed for the nouveaux-riches. Thus, the construction of the Squares Quarter was a quite perverse – though unintentional – example of gentrification and revitalized the area as a space of elite residence.

35 36

Berckmans & Ganon, pp. 21-2.

Berckmans & Ganon, pp. 23-4.

46

Urban context

Fig. 35: Palmerston Avenue view from Square Marie-Louise. On the right side of the picture you could see part of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. ©AVB - CP Voies publique IV.

Fig. 36: View from Square Marie-Louise, towards Palmerston Avenue bordered, on the left, by the Van Hoorde property, 1888. ©Collection of Dexia Banque, nd.

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Fig. 38: Plan for the development of the Squares Quarter, by Gédéon Bordiau, 1879. ©AVB/PP 956.

Fig. 37: An earlier plan for the Squares Quarter by Gédéon Bordiau, 1875. ©AVB - PP 953

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Urban context

Fig. 39: Palmerston Avenue and the Van Hoorde property, just before its disappearance, detail of the map “Brussels and its surroundings”, made by the Military Cartographic Institute in 1894. ©AVB-TP 16767.

Fig. 40: Aerial view of the squares in 1953, before the wave of apartment building construction. Photograph by Polyfoto ©Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, Cabinet des Estampes.

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Chapter 2

2.3. Brusselization & Europeanization The core area of the Squares Quarter around the Palmerston Avenue retains its elite residential character until today. Yet, this secular trend in the neighborhood’s history was not written in the stars. In the second quarter of the twentieth century, the quarter was again under threat of losing its bourgeois reputation. Indeed, many upper-middle-class families moved out to the suburbs in order to flee the increasing crowdedness of the expanding city, just like they had preferred the novel Squares Quarter to the Parisian-style apartments in the city center a couple of decades earlier. The result was that much of the townhouses were subdivided into several living units for the lower middle class. Others were demolished altogether to make room for apartment buildings.37 From the 1960s to the 1980s, this process accelerated as Modernist apartment blocks started to pop up on the outer ends of both the Maria-Louise and Ambiorix Squares. This epoch in the architectural history of the Belgian capital, defined by a chronic lack of urban development and planning, has gained global infamy under the derogatory title “Brusselization.” According to the Historical Dictionary of Brussels, this term describes “the indiscriminate and careless introduction of modern high-rise buildings into gentrified neighborhoods [which stand] in stark contrast to the city’s traditional architectural landscape.” The resulting juxtaposition of historical buildings and modern office blocks was caused by a combination of a laissez-faire approach to city planning, a lack of zoning regulations, the desire of the municipal authorities to cater to national and international political interests at the expense of local residents, and ineffective conservation programs.38

37 38

Heymans 1995, pp. 46-8.

State 2004, pp. 51-2.; Stubbs & Makas 2011, pp.120-1.

50

Urban context

Gradually, the Brussels municipal authorities started to heed the call of architects and preservationists to roll back, slow down or at least manage Brusselization. As far back as 1965, the demolishment of Victor Horta’s Maison du Peuple sparked protests against the disheartening trend. In the 1980s, the municipal authorities agreed to improve the livability of the European Quarter, but it was not until the 1990s that words followed deeds.39 In 1992, the government of the Brussels-Capital Region adopted a decree about the neighborhoods around the Ambiorix Square and the Cinquantenaire Park, which restricted the amount of novel construction and encouraged renovation of existing buildings.40 In the 21st century, this legislative measure was succeeded by an exhaustive urban redevelopment plan for the whole European Quarter. In 2006, a memorandum of understanding to that effect was reached between the federal government, the government of the Brussels-Capital Region and the communes of Brussels City, Ixelles, and Etterbeek. Two years later, five principles were agreed upon: 1) sustainable development, 2) improving mobility, 3) strengthening the functional mix between residential, retail, and office spaces, 4) improving urban quality through the preservation of heritage, and 5) renovation of cultural and recreational places such as the Leopold and Cinquantenaire Parks. In the last decade, the principal parties have further engaged with the residents and users of the European Quarter as well as private consultancy agencies in order to turn the plan into concrete projects.41 Independent from the Brusselization process, the postwar transformation of the Squares Quarter was of course marked by the encroachment of the expanding European institutions, too. Indeed, even if its townhouses did not have to make way for apartment projects, many were still turned into office spaces for organizations and companies linked to the European Union. But the two processes also went hand in hand. Aside from the Northern Quarter, the European Quarter is often cited as a cornerstone of the Brusselization phenomenon. 42

39 40 41 42

Ibid., p. 52. http://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/cgi_loi/change_lg.pl?language=nl&la=N&cn=1992022742&table_name=wet https://perspective.brussels/nl/stadsprojecten/strategische-polen/europese-wijk State 2004, p. 52.

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Chapter 2

Although the construction of the Berlaymont Building in 1959 set the stage for the Europeanization of the Leopold and Squares Quarters, for the latter neighborhood the real threat came in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the height of the disregard for Brusselization, the construction of the Charlemagne Building in 1967 had set the first precedent for the centralization of as many European institutions as possible around the Schuman Roundabout in the European Quarter. In 1971, the federal government proposed to continue this process of centralization through the construction of additional offices for the European Commission behind the Berlaymont Building with a monumental front on the Ambiorix Square. Eventually, priority was given to expand the European district on the front side of the Berlaymont Building – that is, on the other side from the perspective of the Squares Quarter.43 Still, the European Council of Ministers expressed its own interest in expanding its premises all the way to the Marie-Louise Square in the late 1970s. If this would have happened, the tentacles of the European institutions would have reached through the historic Granvelle Neighborhood up until the backside of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. The City of Brussels voiced strong opposition to these plans, however, on the basis that further northward expansion would require the expulsion of another 100 families and compromise the prestigious character of the Squares Quarter.44 Because of this opposition, the expansion was never realized, and to this day a residential buffer comprising the area between the Joseph II and Stevin Streets on the one hand and the southern edge of the squares on the other remains intact.

43 44

Demey 2007, pp. 278-9.

Ibid., pp. 279-80.

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Urban context

Le comité du Quartier européen de la Ville de Bruxelles The residents' committee of Brussels' European Quarter Het buurtcomité van de Europese Wijk van de Stad Brussel

Carte des lieux jeunesse du quartier Map of Spaces for Young People in the European Quarter Ruimten voor jongeren in de Eurpese wijk in kaart

Créches et maisons d’enfants Ecoles

Aires dejeux et terrains de sport

Enseignement supérieur

Musées en famille

Activités extrascolaires

Associations et institutions jeunesse

24

25

Fig. 41: Map obtained from the residents committee of Brussels’ European Quarter Bulletin n. 31, 2019

Fig. 42: Signs of Brusselization at the Schuman Roundabout behind Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. © Farida Elghamry.

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Chapter 2

2.4. Conclusion If you would walk through the Squares Quarter today, having read the above, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Brusselization and Europeanization processes were halted just in time before they would have impacted Palmerston Avenue, the core street that connects the Marie-Louise and Ambiorix Squares. While apartment blocks increasingly took over the outer edges of the two squares, the historic townhouses on Palmerston Avenue, safe one or two exceptions, survive until today and are often protected as heritage. Thus, while resisting the destruction of the heritage, the owners of these townhouses were able to enjoy the advantages that urbanization and Europeanization brought with them in the form of the increased value of the buildings. Once again, this has enabled the safeguarding of the neighborhood’s prestigious reputation. The flip side of the coin, however, is that the Squares Quarter became difficult to afford for less affluent people for a second time in the neighborhood’s history.

Although the future is reserved for the final chapter, a few words should be dedicated to the future of the Squares Quarter. Looking at the five principles for the future development of the European Quarter agreed upon by the federal, regional and local governments, the most relevant for the purposes of this chapter is probably the improvement of urban quality through good preservation practices. A 2008 report of the Brussels-Capital Region in the framework of the urban redevelopment plans for the European Quarter underlined the importance of preserving the historic outlook of landmark entities such as the Squares Quarter.45 Although governmental authorities failed to do so half a century ago, it therefore seems likely that the basic tenets of the urban surroundings of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde – a picturesque, green, calm and heritage-rich neighborhood impacted by the proximity of the European institutions but without losing its traditional residential landscape – will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

Having discussed the urban and social context in which Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde was, is and will be embedded, it is now time to delve into the historical and architectural analyses of the building itself. Before the contemporary architecture is discussed in chapter 4, chapter 3 provides an overview of the three distinct phases in the history of the Hotel. Indeed, after the original construction of Horta’s townhouse, the building was renovated two times; in the 1910s by Max and Robert Genard, and in the 1960s by Horta’s student Jean Delhaye. For each of these three phases, both the motivations behind the renovations and their architectural specificities will be discussed.

45

https://perspective.brussels/sites/default/files/documents/EW_Richtschema.pdf.

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Fig. 43: Map showing the Juridical status of the area and the heritage inscribed by the UNESCO, 2000. ©UNESCO.

55

Fig. 44: Details on third floor of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Blocked windows in the corner. The plant motifs at the window columns might be inspired by pharonic Egyptian architecture. Own sketch drawing.

56

Chapter 3: Timeline of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde

3.1. Original construction, (1896), Victor Horta 3.2. Transformation (1910), M & R Genards 3.3. Extension (1963), Jean Delhaye 3.4. The synthesis drawings

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Chapter 3: History of the building

3.1. Original construction - 1 896 3.1.1. Background In his memoires, Horta talks about Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde only briefly. However, he does not mention the transformations that were later applied to the building in 1910. This suggests that the modification either did not bother him, or, more likely, that he did not consider the building as one of his prime achievements. Indeed, in his memoires, he placed more emphasis on the important connections he made through this commission. Horta was embarrassed that he did not know at the time that George Hobe, the architect and cabinet maker, was the one who had suggested him to Georges Deprez. If he had known this, Horta recalled, “he surely would not have ordered the woodwork from someone else.” 46 In any case, Horta was very happy to meet Deprez, whom he described as “even more wonderful than the house”. Deprez was a valuable and “charming” client according to Horta. It appears that because of his satisfaction with the house, he also asked Horta to design the Val-Saint-Lambert pavilion at the Brussels World Fair in 1897. After all, glass manufacturing was one of the most successful national industries at the time (see fig. 47, 48).

46

Mémoires 1985, p.307.

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Fig. 45: An old photograph of Georges Deprez, general manager of Val-Saint-Lambert from 1894 to 1908. ©Philippe, Joseph. Le Val- Saint-Lambert: Ses Cristalleries Et L’art Du Verre En Belgique. 2e éd. ed., Wahle, 1980, p.154.

Fig. 46: Northern elevation of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde.. ©V. Brunetta & M. Eberlin.

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Fig. 47: Vases designed by Horta in 1897 for Val Saint-Lambert. ©Les Cristalleries et L’art Du Verre En Belgique.

Georges Deprez started working in the Val-Saint-Lambert glass factory in Belgium in 1887, when his father was the director. He became its director in 1894 and remained in that capacity until 1912.

Deprez’s ambition, and openness and capability to adapt to the emergence of new styles at home and abroad (especially America), made his 25-years-long career at the company a success. Indeed, in 1913, the Parisian daily Le Temps described the company as “probably the most important producer of crystal and glass for daily use in the world.”47 Regarding Deprez’s private life, he married Louise Van de Velde on 29 January 1912, the year he went in retirement. This is quite extraordinary, since they were around 50 years old at the time. 1912 was also the year that the couple opted for Liège as their permanent residence. During Deprez’s career, at least in the final decade of his directorship, the (unmarried) couple appears to have liked to spend the weekends in Brussels, although their main residence, where they lived throughout the week, always remained in Liège. As Horta confirms in his memoires, Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde was a secondary and occasional residence for the owners. The house was “destined to serve him as a pied-à-terre in Brussels,” Horta wrote in his memoires, “to where he [Georges Deprez] would come from Liège from Saturday to Sunday and sometimes in the week.”

The luxurious life of the Deprezs is exemplified by the fact that a “modiste” and two or three servants lived in with them in the Hotel.48 Still, it appears that Deprez did not own the residence for very long, because he was registered in the Brussels population registry in the Franklin Street in 1902, and in the Jacques Jordaens Street in 1910. This suggests that he was not the occupant of the house for very long. A new occupant, called Van Volxem, is listed as early as 1907. This is two years after the first request for modifications, as revealed by the Brussels city archives, were made (see Annexes). The request concerned the establishment of a car garage in the vast courtyard, a first sign that the building was being adapted to changing times. 49

47 48 49

The corning museum of glass annual report 2005, p. 10.

Goslar 2012, p. 198.

AVB / TP 18571 (1905).

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Fig. 48: The electric chandelier in the dining room of Hotel Salvoy is designed by Horta through Val-Saint-Lambert glass manufactury. It is a Gild metal setting with reflecting plates in clear crystal. H 2.73 m x L 1.85 m © KIK-IRPA - Urban.Brussels, 2017.

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3.1.2. Architecture My reconstructed drawings of Horta’s Hotel are based on three sources: the secondary literature, the drawings by Horta, and black-and-white photographs. These sources were collected from the Horta Museum as well as the CIVA, CRMS and KIK-IRPA archives. Old photographs were only used to observe the facade and compare its past state with the present situation. Unfortunately, no photographs from inside the building that could have assisted me in tracing the history of the interior have survived. Also, drawings from Horta’s, found in the Brussels City archives, were limited to a ground floor plan, two elevations, and one section. These drawings were not the actual as-built drawings but were drawn up in the process of requesting a building permit. If and when Horta changed his mind in the construction process, they could therefore diverge from the final construction.

Indeed, there is a big discrepancy in Horta’s original plans for and the final construction of the third bay of the northern facade on Palmerston Avenue. Black-and-white photographs found across different archives capture a door that leads to a porch on the ground floor on the facade’s third bay.

Yet, this observation cannot be made from Horta’s own drawings. In his elevation drawing, in the place of the porch’s door, a window is depicted instead. Its actual door as shown on the photographs had elegant “colonettes” adjoined with an iron grill which opened into the small exterior hall. Conversely, in the final construction there was a window right above this porch on the first floor similar to the ones constructed in the second bay. But in his original drawings Horta had envisioned a loggia on both the first and second floor of the third bay, while a terrace would be erected on the third floor. In the end, the second-floor loggia and third-floor terrace were erected as planned, that window was identical to the one on the bay window at the floor level.

As far as the building’s exterior is concerned, the third bay of the northern facade is the exception to the rule. For the rest of the exterior, the combination of the photographs, the two elevation drawings and its observable contemporary state makes it possible to deduce an accurate depiction of the northern facade on Palmerston Avenue, the eastern facade on the Boduognat Street, and the corner facade in between the two. The corner facade was borne out of Horta’s decision to cut off part of potential building space in order to make a little bit extra room for the front garden. A fence was constructed along the entire length of this garden in residential style, but it was already demolished as soon as 1898.50 The photographs further show that the terrace on the third floor of the northern facade had a curved zinc brisis, similar to the one found in Horta’s Maison Frison constructed in 1894. The balustrades of the loggia and terrace were moreover not the same but complimented each other. The second bay at the northern facade is characterized by its large bay windows on the first and second floor and the balcony above them. The bay looks like it is supported by stone motifs that frame the window below it, and its corners are highlighted with the Art Nouveau detailed “drainpipes”.

50

Inventory of Architectural Heritage of Brussels-Capital Region.

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Fig. 49: Original Ground floor plan by Victor Horta, AVB-TP 2965 (1896).

Fig. 50: Original Section drawing by Victor Horta , AVB-TP 2965 (1896).

Fig. 51: Original Eastern and Northern Elevations by Victor Horta, AVB-TP 2965 (1896).

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Fig. 52: Palmerston Avenue 3 and Boduognat Street 14. The Hotel is being enlarged, from Boduognat Street, ©KIK-IRPA.

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Historical context

Fig. 53: Green marks show what has not been constructed exactly as the drawings.

South Elevation

East Elevation

bay 1

North Elevation

bay 2

bay 3

bay 1

0

1

5m

3

bay 2

bay 3

Fig. 54: Autocad drawings of the main three elevation based on the black and white photographs.

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Generally speaking, we can say that the Hotel had many openings, as much as 28 on the Boduognat side and 20 on the Palmerston side. As we would expect from an Art Nouveau building, however, Horta managed to soften the symmetry that such a large number of openings would otherwise incline towards with the help of curvy window profiles, bended iron grills, details on the drainpipes, steel and stone columns, and additional motifs under some of the windows. All window and door frames were moreover dark brownish, reflecting the naturalistic tendency of Art Nouveau.

The Hotel originally had two doors, both of which were located on the eastern façade. The main entrance clearly was one of the defining characteristics of the Hotel. This door, still in existence but nowadays unused, has two mirrored narrow side windows. It has a frame and is surmounted by a short diagonal canopy, all made in blue stone. Incidentally, a university student has made a mini replica of this door, which is kept in the Horta Museum in Saint-Gilles. The second door served as the entrance for the servants. Unsurprisingly, therefore, it was much less ornamental than the building’s main entrance, although it was boxed in by a modest frame, too.

The second door led to the servants’ staircase, the windows of which followed the stairs’ pathway, further strengthening the asymmetrical style of the exterior. The windows above this staircase were not only on the same level, they were also not identical in length. On each of the three floors above the ground floor, a series of four narrow windows of diverging sizes, heights and even glass panels were juxtaposed to one another. The final result, it should be mentioned, differs from how Horta drew the windows on his elevations. All these windows had bow arches on top of their frame with whiplash motives on the side. Except for the highest four windows on the third floor, these top windows are the only series in the middle bay that have survived until the present, albeit in modified form. The original windows above the main door, which are stacked on a semi-recessed bay, on the other hand, are conserved until this day as well. However, the decorative motif below the window lintel on the third floor is gone now, and so are some details framing the window on the first floor.

The corner facade does not have idiosyncratic features of its own. It exists of one bay, and this bay is almost an exact copy of the third bay on the eastern facade as well as the first bay on the northern facade. In other words, three quasi-identical bays enclose the building’s corner. Before one would rush to the conclusion that at least part of the building is reminiscent of the repetitive and symmetric architecture of the Renaissance or of Modernism, a few subtle features on these three bays confirm the Art Nouveau style of the Hotel. On each edge of the small corner façade, curved floral motifs on the ground floor join the corner facade together with the other two facades. These floral motifs, in turn, flow over into what appear to be drainpipes that reach all the way to the top of the building.51 Finally, typical Art Nouveau motives are situated around the windows of first, second, and third floors of the corner facade.

51 Although we cannot be 100% sure that these long motifs were actual drainpipes, one author has described them as such: Forshaw, Brussels Art Nouveau Architecture & Design 2016, p. 59.

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Fig. 55: Personal attempt to sketch the handrail of the third floor balcony in Hotel Deprez - Van de Velde.

Fig. 56: Personal attempt to sketch the handrail of the second floor loggia in Hotel Deprez - Van de Velde.

Fig. 57: (Below left) Zoom in on the upper part of the third bay of the northern facade of Hotel Deprez Van de Velde (now demolished).

Fig. 58: (Below right) Maison Frison by Victor Horta showing the top floor also in curved zinc, like what used to be in Hotel Deprez- Van de Velde. (now reconstructed). ©IRPA collection

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Of the southern facade, at the back of the building, the only information I was able to gather was a photograph (see fig. 52). I have made a rough drawing (see fig. 54) of the back side of the building, but not much more can be said about this facade. Last but not least, we cannot finish the description of the Hotel’s exterior without mentioning the stone chimney at the top corner of the roof, another distinguishable feature that is still with us in the present. The chimney is in fact a double chimney connected by a stone bridge that overhangs the corner facade and imposes itself as a true sculpture and confident statement of Art Nouveau. Horta’s chimney is similar to the one he constructed at the Kindergarten in the Saint-Ghislain Street in Brussels City, but this one appears to be much more extravagant.

In contrast to the building’s exterior, very little is known about the interior of the house. There are no photographs that can be of assistance, and we only have a plan of the ground floor. This is too little information to be able to make visualized reconstructions of the interior. We do however have some textual information. Indeed, Horta himself remarked in his memoires that he did not design furniture for this house. It was “re-employed” from somewhere else, and he described the imported furniture as “sober.”52 From these comments, it is not a long shot to assume that the furniture did not blindly follow the Art Nouveau style of the building’s exterior. It is possible, therefore, that Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde was not a Gesamtkunstwerk in line with some of Horta’s other houses, such as Hotel Tassel, Hotel Solvay and Hotel van Eetvelde.

From Horta’s own recollections, we also know that, except for a few differences in the corridors, all floors had an almost identical layout.53 The layout of the ground plan thus served as a blueprint for the other floors. But it is only with regard to the ground floor that we know specifics on the functionalities of the rooms and the decoration of the interior. The first drawing of the synthesis plans based on my own hand survey and the documents found in the archives, shows what has been demolished of Horta’s original construction on the ground floor in subsequent renovations.

From Horta’s memoires, it can be deduced that his conception of the bel-etage of the Hotel was this ground floor – not the first floor, as I had initially assumed. Indeed, he described his bel-etage as a “partly buried floor for the service rooms, a living room, a beautiful boudoir, a dining room, a terrace and staircases.” An interesting piece of information on the ground floor plan are two columns that Horta are colored in blue (see fig. 49). Usually, Horta colors steel structures in blue but on this plan, he writes the word “Euville limestone” on them. The places of these two columns are still existing today, almost on all floors which suggests that they may still exist until this day.

52 53

Mémoires 1985, p. 76.

Ibid, p. 75.

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Fig. 59: Entrance to porch at the northern facade in Palmerston Avenue (now demolished) ©Horta Museum.

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Fig. 60: Detail of the first two original bays on Boduognat Street., 1902. ©REHME, W.

70

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Fig. 61: Detail of the first two original bays on Boduognat Street. ©Museum Horta.

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Chapter 3

Fig. 62: During the expansion of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. It is worth noticing that the porch iron grill is different than that in figure 42 and 55. Reference photo: ACL 102030 M. ©Museum Horta.

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Fig. 63: During the expansion of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Reference photo: ACL 102032 M. ©Museum Horta.

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3 . 2 . Tr a n s f o r m a t i o n - 1 9 1 0 3.2.1 Background Max Genard was born in Mons on 27 August 1882. After his studies at the Académie des Beaux Arts in Brussels, he built many houses in Brussels. In some of his projects, including the transformation of Hotel Deprez Van de Velde, he collaborated with his brother Robert Genard. It was not easy to acquire a lot of information about these two architects in any archives. I was only lucky to find a document with a list of their work at the CIVA Library in Brussels.

According to this document, some of their work includes the Castle of Charmes in Arquennes and the covered tennis courts on Avenue des Cerisiers in Brussels. Max Genard was also the architect of the Philatelic Exhibition in Brussels in 1924 and in Paris in 1925. Apparently, his father, Hector Genard, honorary general inspector of bridges and roads, was the promoter and builder of the famous La Louviere elevators, which are admired all over the world. 54 At this stage of the building’s history, the Hotel was being transformed from a pied-à-terre to a large family house. The new owner, Henri Renkin, was an arms manufacturer. He also purchased the house next doors, a typical Belgian rowhouse, had it demolished, and asked the Genard brothers to enlarge Horta’s original building. The transformation was a huge one, since it took three years to complete. One interesting detail, at least for the time: due to the height of the building, it appears from documents in the CRMS that one of the four contractors, Francois & Fils, had to ask for an authorization to install a freight elevator in the Boduognat Street.55 Renkin remained the owner until 1928, when his widow, Mrs. Nossent, sold the building to Major Cayen. In 1943, Major Cayen’s widow in turn sold the house at a public auction to Paul D’Hondt.56 During the Second World War, the house number was changed from 34 to 14. In 1959, the hotel was acquired by the family of Jean Delhaye, to this very day still the current owners.

54 55 56

Email found in CIVA Library 2014.

AVB / TP 6202 (1910).

Goslar 2012, p. 204.

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Fig. 64: Renkin Jean Henri Francois (1861-1928). © littlegun.com

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Fig. 65: Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde northern elevation expansion. ©KIK-IRPA

76

Historical context

Fig. 66: Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde expansion. © KIK-IRPA

77

Chapter 3 3.2.2. Architecture Max and Robert Genard changed the Hotel so much that we can speak of a major transformation.

The information that we possess, is based on their drawings at the Brussels city archives, which were however not very detailed, and the information on the website of Urban Brussels.

Although the building’s exterior retained an Art Nouveau touch, some of the extravagant characteristics of the style, like curvy features and most importantly, the whole third bay on the northern facade, which included the porch, loggia and terrace, were demolished. On the inside, both staircases by Horta were removed.

There are also changes that are deduced when we look at the black-and-white photographs. However, because the photos are not dated, it is not certain if those changes happened during the transformation in 1910. For example, we can see that the roof tiles have been changed from clay tiles to grey slates. It is also worth noting that the gables of the windows were changed, too. The motifs below the windows at the third floor on all facades are removed. The windows on the three upper floors on the corner facade as well as on their mirrored bay on the Boduognat Street were blocked, but they were kept open in the other mirrored bay on Palmerston Avenue.

All widows that followed the servants’ staircase on the first and second floor of the eastern facade were demolished, too. The four windows on the top floor were kept, however, but they seem to have been altered and shortened from the bottom. Even the servants’ door was demolished. The asymmetry of Horta’s staircase bay was replaced by a bay with two symmetrical windows on each floor. Interestingly, the iron grills used by Horta on the ground floor in the eastern façade were reused by the Genards but turned upside down.

We can also see from the photographs that much of the stained glass and window grilles was changed by the Genards. The one stained glass found inside the interior today serving as a door to a meeting room on the first floor was in fact part of the frame of the loggia on the second floor.

Finally, the basement was enlarged and one more room was added another deeper level in order to expand the wine cellar. The original structure of the interior was not spared either. A huge new staircase was erected, this time in Gothic style57 – thus showing the demise of Art Nouveau in the interior, too. A new secondary staircase, probably functioning as new stairs for the servants, was also constructed by the Genard brothers and is the only one that survives until the present.

The walls and staircases designed by the Genard brothers but not found in the building today are marked in red in the synthesis drawings, which constitutes my own drawing of the ground floor after the first transformation. It is important to note, however, that we cannot be entirely be sure whether or not the proposed changes on the drawings of the Genards were actually realized, because no pictures for the building’s interior were found.

57

Ibid.

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Historical context

new existing demolish

Fig. 67: Basement plan transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910).

Fig. 68: Ground floor plan transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910).

Fig. 69: Eastern Elevation transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910).

Fig. 70: Northern Elevation transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910).

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Fig. 71: Section transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910).

Fig. 72: Before the transformation, the cornice at the Boduognat facade was flat © KIK-IRPA.

80

Fig. 73: The cornice is now recessed above the bay where we have the main door and the windows in the corridors. © Farida Elghamry.

Historical context

Fig. 74: The door used to be no. 34 Boduognat street, now it is 14 and the frames are painted in white instead of brown.

Fig. 75: The Genard architects reused the irongrills by Horta on the ground floor windows but turned them upside down.

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Fig. 76: Drawing of Palmerston Avenue 1 before it was demolished by the Genards to expand Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. AVB-TP 02974 (1898).

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Fig. 77: Overlay of the ground floor plans of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde and the house nextdoor overlayed on the ground floor plan of the Genard architects. © Farida Elghamry.

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3.3. Extension- 1 963 3.3.1. Background The last changes were carried out by Jean Delhaye, who was in fact a student and fervent admirer of Victor Horta. Delhaye played a key role in the efforts to save his master’s works from demolition, which was commonly happening after Horta’s death. Unfortunately, he was unable to save Hotel Aubecq and Maison du Peuple from demolition after World War II. But from the 1950s onwards, he successfully devoted a large part of his activity and resources to the preservation, restoration and enhancement of Horta’s work. At the same time, he built a pioneering career devoted to the realization of apartment buildings in the Brussels region. These two activities, as we will see, came into conflict on Palmerston Avenue and exposed the dilemma between preservation and profit.

Delhaye trained from 1929 to 1933 at Académie des Beaux Arts in Brussels, where he followed the last years of Horta’s teaching. He joined Horta’s office in 1934 and worked there until the military mobilization of 1939, only to return to his post for a year after World War II. In 1950, scandalized by the destruction of the Hotel Aubecq, he engaged in a tireless fight for the preservation of Horta’s buildings. His obstinate action allowed him to save and restore buildings of exceptional historical value: Hotel Tassel in Brussels, whose interior he restored identically in the 1980s; Hotel Dubois in Vorst; Hotel Van Eetvelde and Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde Hotels in Brussels, which lie across the street from one another; and finally, the master’s personal house and studio in Saint-Gilles, which on his initiative became the Horta Museum in 1969. 58 On top of that, he succeeded in having some significant parts of the Maison du Peuple and a facade of Hotel Aubecq dismantled and kept in warehouses in Brussels. He also saved what remained of Horta’s written work, his memoirs. He collected and preserved numerous pieces of furniture, fragments of destroyed buildings and many plaster casts from Horta’s studio, which he donated to the museum. He furthermore obtained the classification of the architect’s major achievements as historical monuments. In fact, Delhaye’s actions played a considerable role in the international recognition of Belgian Art Nouveau. This was recognized in such authoritative books on the movement as Borsi and Portoghesi’s Victor Horta and Borsi and Wieser’s Brussels: Capital of Art Nouveau.

58

https://monument.heritage.brussels/fr/buildings/501.

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Fig. 78: Jean Delhaye (1908-93)

Fig. 79: Book cover for L’appartement D’aujourd’hui” Jean Delhaye 1946.

Fig. 80: Jean Delhaye made sure to collect and safeguard the stones of Hotel Aubecq as it was being demolished. In this picture V+ Architecten have reconstituted the facade and exhibited it in 2012.

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A final testimony of Delhaye’s admiration of Horta is the fact that he himself purchased at least four buildings in Brussels that were designed by his master, all of which he was able to get officially listed by the Royal Commission for Monuments and Sites in 1971. One of them was Atelier Dubois on Brugmann Avenue in Vorst. This building had served as the workspace of the sculpturer Fernand Dubois, whose style, like Horta, was to be situated in the Art Nouveau movement. Another, Hotel Tassel, is one of Horta’s most lauded achievements and is a prime example of Gesamtkunstwerk.

The two other ones are located Avenue Palmerston in Brussels: aside from Hotel Deprez Van de Velde, he also bought the extension of Hotel Van Eetvelde across the street.

All of the above goes to show how devoted Delhaye was in trying to preserve Horta’s architectural legacy. But his initial plans for the extension of Hotel Van Eetvelde demonstrates that his tireless efforts had limits. After he bought this building in 1958, he intended to demolish it and construct a tall apartment building of six to ten floors in its stead (see fig. 83). In the end, however, he changed his mind. Delhaye’s inheritors sold the building in 2005, and it retains its original structure until today. This little anecdote provides a window into Delhaye’s pragmatic mindset. Without a shred of doubt, he fought very hard to safeguard the legacy – both physical and immaterial – of Horta.

Nevertheless, in his career Delhaye also had to content with an ever changing urban landscape.

Horta’s “hotels” were a sign of a bygone age. After World War II, apartments became the new dominant living style in the city. Not only did Delhaye recognize this by making the construction of apartment buildings key in his personal architectural career, he even wrote a book about it.

The concept of this book, called L’appartement d’aujourd’hui, was conceived during his war-time captivity in Germany. Like many young Belgian men, Delhaye fought as a soldier in World War II and ended up as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany. According to the book’s preface, he escaped “from the enemies’ hands,” however, after which he spent the rest of the war in France. He finished the study after his return to Belgium following liberation.

Although this background provides an interesting side note, the context of World War II is important for another reason. Delhaye felt the rising tide of change sweeping through the world of architecture. He noticed, and in many ways anticipated, the rise of the apartment as a common way of living in modern twentieth-century life. What’s more, he was of the opinion that the tragedy of war was going to exacerbate this movement. The aristocratic house of old housed not only the family but also the house personnel, which often lodged in the “hotel”. Because of the destruction that the war caused, however, a lot of hands would be needed in rebuilding the country, Delhaye reasoned. The male work force would not suffice for this task, so the female work force would inevitably be drawn away from domestic servant jobs and toward industry, too. Indeed, although Delhaye does not mention it himself, this already happened in some sense during the war. Because young men were sent to the front, their wives were forced to go work in the factories in order to be able to make a living. In conclusion, the 1946 book was meant to “guide [Delhaye’s] colleagues” in designing apartments. In a broader sense, it was a handbook for architects to prepare themselves for the postwar changes that were about to whirl through the architectural world.

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Fig. 81: Maison du Peuple by Victor Horta (1896-1965) Fig. 82: Hotel Aubecq by Victor Horta (1899-1902)

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These transformations did not leave Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde unscathed. Indeed, after World War II the function of the house was gradually changed. The functionality of the building appears to already have started to transform from a residential “hotel” to office space before Delhaye’s interventions. So, all known occupants of the building from 1950s onwards, such as the Ministry of Reconstruction and the Ministry of Health and Family in the 1950s, STIB (the Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company) in the 1990s, or the Scandinavian governmental organizations until recently, used the Hotel in a professional capacity. Although the destiny of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde was thus office space instead of apartments, the functional transformation was clearly underpinned by the same gradual functional diversification of the European Quarter away from spacious townhouses to a combination of residential, office and, retail space.

As soon as his family acquired the building in 1959, Delhaye planned for the interior to be transformed into offices on the ground floor and into apartments on the four upper floors. Unlike the extension to Hotel Van Eetvelde, he wanted Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde to retain its outward appearance as an Art Nouveau building, however. According to Goslar, Delhaye wished to give back to the facade its Hortalian cachet, in particular by restoring part of the staircase windows on the eastern facade, which the Genard brothers had removed. In March 1960, the city reported that Delhaye’s projected renovations had not yet begun. A year later, the work had still not started, and the file was closed. The owner lacked the financial means to carry out the work.

In 1963, a new attempt was made to adapt the building to office space, this time on all floors. Additionally, a fourth floor beyond the second cornice on the northern facade was to be added. Delhaye also envisioned a reorientation of the building towards the busier Palmerston Avenue, where a new door was to lead towards a redesigned lobby on the ground floor. The rooms adjacent to the small Boduognat Street, where the historical door is situated, would become a more private back end and would include space for the janitor’s residence. The installation of an elevator was also planned. These proposed interventions suggest a deliberate commercialization of the premises.

The city was opposed to this project, however, because, interestingly enough, it was not Delhaye but the city government that wished to reserve the area around the Ambiorix and Marie-Louise Squares for residential purposes. A nuancing of the alleged neglect of the city authorities for the encroaching “Brusselization” is therefore in order, as the city position showed that the seeds for the renewed push for preservation were already present in the 1960s. The city also objected that there was no room for parking on the site itself. For these two reasons, the renovation request was refused at first.

88

Historical context

Owners 1900

1928

1943

Henri Renkin

Major Cayen

Paul D'Hondt

1897 Georges Deprez

1959 Jean Delhaye

Occupants (population register) 1900 Louise Van de Veklde

1907

1910-28

Van Volxem

Henri Renkin

1953-8

1992

Ministry of STIB reconstruction and Ministry of health

2002

South Denmark office

2022

?

Funtion

1897 residential

1959 commercial

89

Chapter 3

But Mrs. Delhaye-Keller, Jean Delhaye’s wife, did not give up and protested to the Permanent Deputation of Brabant, arguing that the residential use had already been envisaged by her husband in the previous request. In addition, she argued that the parking was unthinkable on a corner plot of just 200 m2. And as far as the apparent preservation concerns of the authorities was concerned, she countered that two recent requests had been granted for the construction of vast offices that “ruin the harmony of the place.” She further specified that the family acquired the building in 1959 in order to save it from destruction, implying that they themselves were doing their best to preserve the authenticity of the neighborhood. She even went as far as to claim that the same preservation drive led the family to buy the extension of Hotel Van Eetvelde, although, as we have seen, her husband almost had that building demolished in favor of a modern apartment block. Nevertheless, regarding Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, she underscored her “concern to save a building with a nice facade and an entrance door that is an internationally appreciated architectural jewel.”59 Madame Delhaye’s persistence seems to have convinced the city government. The authorization was granted on 29 August 1963. A month later, the city found out that work had not begun, however. This was still the case two years after the building permit was granted. The reasons for these delays are unknown. What we do know, is that the work was finally carried out by the end of the decade.60 It is after this restoration work that the Hotel was officially classified on 21 June 21, 1971 “because of its artistic value.” 61 A final modification request was presented in 1994, again by Mrs. Delhaye, this time to restore the northern facade on Palmerston Avenue. This time, the authorities were more forthcoming. In fact, the Municipality of Brussels and Province of Brabant expressed their interest to take up 42.5% of the operational costs, estimated then at 716,000 Belgian Francs.62 In the written source material, I have not been able to confirm whether this restoration project has been carried out. Yet, Prof.

Francis Tourneur, an expert in Belgian stones, agreed to take a look at the current condition of the facade with me. In his estimation, the facade has been cleaned and restored several times.

59 60 61 62

Centre de Document (BXL20011); AVB / TP 94949 (1994).; Goslar 2012, p. 205.

Ibid.

Protection - Hôtel Deprez-Van de Velde, Bruxelles (1971). - 1f. (2043-0029) Centre de Document (BXL20011); AVB / TP 94949 (1994).

90

Historical context

Fig. 83: Jean Delhaye’s design in 1957 was to demolish the Extension of Hotel Van Eet Velde and build an appartments building instead. Thankfully, he later changed his mind and decided to restore and safeguard Horta’s building. AVB/TP 64723 (1957).

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Chapter 3

3.3.2. Architecture Unlike the previous two phases in the Hotel’s history, all of Delhaye’s drawings were found in the Brussels City Archives. His architectural interventions can thus easily be deduced, especially in light of the fact that his were the last major modifications in the building’s history. However, there is still a possibility that there were other modifications made between the renovations of the Genard brothers in 1910-1913 and Delhaye’s purchase of the building in 1959. Several owners occupied the Hotel between Renkin and Delhaye, after all, so they could have initiated changes of their own. Unfortunately, however, no information about such changes were found in any archive.

One example illustrates this hypothetical scenario. From surviving photographs, we can deduce that the windows at the north façade on the third floor above the first cornice were different at some point. Because the dates of these pictures are unknown, it is difficult to pinpoint when these changes were made. Most likely, they occurred before Delhaye. Before Delhaye transformed them into flat windows, which copy the style of the windows on the other two bays on the same floor, they were divided into three bay windows topped with arches and were part of the attic, according to the photographs.

We do not know who these windows were added by nor how long they stayed in the building, because they do not appear on the elevation drawings of the Genard architects. Although it is likely that the brothers were the authors of the changes but simply did not include them in their drawings, there is at least a small chance that these windows were constructed after 1913 but before 1959 by someone else.

In any case, the synthesis drawings p.101 indicates the architectural elements that Delhaye claims to have demolished on his drawings. He does not mention that he removed the big Gothic staircase of the Genards. If not by an intermediary architect, it must have been him that removed it, however. Goslar seems to think so, too, because in her book she states that it was Delhaye who demolished the staircase. As already mentioned above, among Delhaye’s major additions we can count the construction of a fourth floor, an elevator, a new entrance on Palmerstone Avenue, and a new lobby on the ground floor. For this lobby, he had light curved walls erected that hide some of the main structure. Finally, he also changed the levelling of the ground floor, thereby lowering the ground floor but also rendering part of the basement inaccessible.

92

Historical context

Fig. 84: Jean Delhaye added a fourth floor to the roof, but he has also changed the openings on the third floor. These openings were not on the drawings by the Genard architects, so it is not sure whether they were the creators of these windows. he old attic, used to be in brick, now the fourth floor addition is in zinc.©KIK-IRPA

93

Chapter 3

Fig. 85: Ground floor plan by Delhaye, AVB-TP 75153 (1963).

94

Historical context

Fig. 86: Third floor plan by Delhaye, AVB-TP 75153 (1963).

95

Chapter 3

Fig. 87: Elevations and section drawings by Delhaye scanned, AVB-TP 75153 (1963).

96

Historical context

97

Chapter 3

©CIVA.

98

Historical context

3.4 The synthesis drawings

Horta’s walls demolished by the Genards architects.

99

Chapter 3

The Genards architects walls and staircase demolished by Jean Delhaye

100

Historical context

The walls that Jean Delhaye indicates as demolished on his own drawings

101

Chapter 3

Kept from Jean Delhaye Kept from Victor Horta Kept from M. & R. Genard

102

Historical context

The walls that Jean Delhaye indicates as demolished on his own drawings The Genards architects walls demolished

by Jean Delhaye Horta’s walls demolished by the Genards architects.

Kept from Jean Delhaye Kept from Victor Horta

+0.0

Kept from M. & R. Genard

-0.46

103

Chapter 3

104

Historical context

Kept from Jean Delhaye Kept from Victor Horta Kept from M. & R. Genard

Basement plan

105

Chapter 3

Kept from Jean Delhaye Kept from Victor Horta Kept from M. & R. Genard

Kept from Jean Delhaye Kept from Victor Horta Kept from M. & R. Genard

106

Historical context

Kept from Jean Delhaye Kept from Victor Horta Kept from M. & R. Genard

Kept from Jean Delhaye Kept from Victor Horta Kept from M. & R. Genard

107

Chapter 3

Demolished

by Genards.

New by Genards.

108

Historical context

109

Chapter 3

3.4. Conclusion

Delhaye’s interventions conclude the building history of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. One common thread that ran through the chapter is the sparce information on the interior. It seems that this was not a coincidence, but rather a result of the limited attention or deliberation that the architects devoted to it. Horta himself described the interior as sober, an adjective generally not associated with his style. A Gothic staircase was placed in an Art Nouveau home by (probably) the Genards.

And Delhaye opted for a generic interior suitable for companies, thereby finalizing the functional transformation from residential to office space. Thus, it appears that, unlike some of Horta’s other townhouses, the Hotel was never a piece of Gesamtkunstwerk.

While the interior was adaptive, much of Horta’s exterior work has survived. The most damage was done by the Genard architects, who, among other interventions, removed the terrace and loggia on the northern facade and the unique servant staircase windows on the eastern facade. Given that they renovated the building shortly after Art Nouveau had fallen out of favor, it is likely that they – or their clients – found some of the Art Nouveau ornamentation excessive. Delhaye was a great admirer of Horta, however, and decided to leave the facades unchanged as he found them. Although Horta’s student made big changes on the interior, his protection of the exterior is in keeping with his efforts to conserve the legacy of Horta.

Delhaye’s architectural interventions have purposefully not been discussed in detail in this chapter.

After all, his adaptations form the last phase in the building history and therefore largely correspond to the present state of affairs. In the next chapter, an in-depth study of the current architecture is presented.

110

Historical context

Fig. 88: The bayon top of Horta’s door in the East elevation at the Boduognat Street. © Farida Elghamry.

111

Fig. 89: Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, own sketch drawing.

112

Chapter 4: Architectural analysis

4.1. Hand survey 4.2. Interior 4.3. The facade 4.4 Conclusion

113

Chapter 4: Architectural analysis

4.1 Hand survey After having completed the historical overview of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde in the previous chapter, it is time to turn to the analysis of the building’s current state. In a way, we already got a sneak peek into the present through the synthesis plans, which were in large part based on my survey drawings. This chapter is divided into three parts. First, all of these survey drawings will be listed, thereby giving us an insight into the inside and outside of the building as it stands today. Second, the interior’s circulation, materials, structural elements and spatial qualities are described floor by floor. Finally, we turn to the outside of the building. The facades have already been described in detail in the previous chapter. Here, I present my survey of the elevations, including measurements of the stones and their pathologies.

Before turning to the survey drawings, a brief explanation of the methodology is in order. For the plans, I chose to measure the building by hand, using basic tools (such as laser meters and water levels) and methods (like triangulation). I also compared my measurements with Jean Delhaye’s drawings. Based on these two elements, I drew my own updated version of the drawings on AutoCad. The choice of the hand survey was based on practical reasons. I judged a total station and laser scanner to be an unnecessary addition for the purposes of my thesis and research question.

But also, I believe that this way of surveying has allowed me to develop a personal relationship with the building and a deeper understanding of each and every corner on the inside and the outside of the Hotel.

For the elevations, I carried out a photogrammetry, which was complemented by a hand measurement of the accessible stone facades (i.e., on the ground floor and close to windows). The elevation on the Boduognat Street can be said to be more accurate because I was able to access a high point to take photographs; that is, from the second floor windows of the neighbors’ building across the narrow street. Unfortunately, I was not able to do the same for the elevation on Avenue Palmerston, given the great distance to the opposite side of the street. As a result, the roof and the third and fourth floors were not captured from a good angle for the purposes of an orthophoto. The southern elevation was based on the one by Jean Delhaye found in the archives as well as my own hand measurements, while the western elevation was based on the projections of my drawn plans.

114

Architecture

Fig. 90: (Top) Photogrammetry of northern elevation on Palmerston Avenue.

Fig. 91: (Bottom) Photogrammetry of eastern elevation of Boduognat Street.

115

Chapter 4

Fig. 92: Northern elevation on Palmerston Avenue © V. Brunetta & M. Eberlin, 2009.

116

Architecture

Fig. 93: Southern elevation from Boduognat Street, 2022. © Farida Elghamry.

117

Chapter 4

8.5 2.0

Room 0.4

area 17m2

4.8

3.3

area 15m2 CH 2.85

1.6

0.3 3.3

Room 0.02

Room 0.04

area 5m2 CH 2.2

0.5

CH 1.35

3.6

Room 0.03

area 17m2 CH 1.45

Room 0.01

area 10m2 CH 2.0

4.9

3.3 0.7

Room 0.05

5.8

3.3

3.9

Room 0.9

Room 0.08

area 12m2 inaccessible

area 19m2

CH 1.84

0.5

4.9

Room 0.10

area 12m2

area 15.8m2 CH 2.24

Room 0.07

area 12m2 inaccessible

3.7

Room 0.06

BASEMENT PLAN

118

2

3

5m

8.8

N

1

area 32m2

Architecture

1.1

B

2.4

C

10

.3

2.6

6.2

6.4

0.3 0.6

11

0.8

1.7

1.1

4.6

0.9

0.9

1.2

0.8

0.4

-0.28

10 9

+0.0

8 7

+0.0

6

0.8

5

3.5

3.6

0.7

A

+0.18

1.5

-0.46

A'

2.0

1.1

2.7

5.0

0.9

+0.0

1.6

+0.18 4.5

3.0

8.5

0.6

0.4

10

0.6

.6

+0.0

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0.9

0.9

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0.7 0.2 0.7

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0.9

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0.9

1

1.4

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3.5

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1.6

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1.8

0.9

0.9

0.8

5.8

0.6

1.

4

1.5

2.6

2.7

0.9

0.9

2.7

1.6

0.9

2.2

1.2

C'

0.6

0.9

0.6

1.8

0.6

2.2

0.6

0.2

4.5

0.6

0.9

0.6

0.6

0.9

0.6

B' 0.2 0.6

0.6

0.9

0.6

7.0

0.4

0.6 0.2

1.3

0.2 0.6

0.5

0.5

9.1 16.1

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

0

1

3

5m

N

2.6

0.6

3.8

-0.46

2.3

-0.46 2.7

1.6

+0.0

119

Chapter 4

1.4

C

B

0.9

7

2.7

7.1

27 26

+2.7

0.6

3.5

0.9

1.1

25 24 23 22 21

1.7

+3.9

A

4.6

1.7

1.5

1.48

0.3

1.7

1.1

1.1

0.9

1.0

6.7

0.5

1.5

1.3

3.8

1.97

0.3

1.0

A'

1.9

0.5

1.5

2.6

16

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0.5

0.9

0.9

4.5

4.7

0.7

18

2.7

12 13 14 15 16 17

20 19

1.0

3.0

3.0

1.2

1.45 7.2

2.0

1.7

1.7 1.2 1.1

0.08

2.5

2.0

6.0

1.

4

3.4

8.9

3.4

0.65 1.6

0.9 0.3

C'

1.0

0.82

1.2

0.76

0.45

0.15

1.3

0.15

0.76

0.82

1.0

0.9

2.3

1.

6

6 1.

B'

2.4

9.2 16.1

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

120

0

1

3

5m

N

2.6

1.26

Architecture

B

0.7

1.4

C

2.4

7.1

+6.4

1.2

0.6

51

0.9

1.1

50 49

28

48

29

47

33

43

34

1.9

35

0.5

37

0.7

2.0

1.0

0.9

3.0

3.0

3.0

1.0 2.6

2.7

1.0

2.7

0.9

0.6

1.

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1.3

2.6

1.5

0.8 5.8

0.9

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0.9

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0.8

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1.3

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3.0

1.6

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0.6

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36

1.6

2.6

A

1.5

38

1.3

16 .8

41 40 39

0.9

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1.0

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42

4.5

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31

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30

46 45 44

0.7

0.5

1.1

0.6

1.0

1.2

1.2

1.

6

6 1.

1.0

0.2

B'

1.0

1.2

1.0

1.5

2.4

9.2 16.1

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

0

1

3

5m

N

C'

1.3

0.9

2.4

0.3

121

A'

Chapter 4

B 0.4

+10.4 2.4

0.74 71 70 69

2.2

0.48

52

55

2.7

54

65

3.3

53

68 67 66

0.7

3.5

0.85

7.1

0.7

1.4

C

56

64

57

1.9

58 62

61

2.0

59

60

0.5

1.1

4.7

A'

2.0

1.8

1.6

3.9

SH 1.9

0.5

1.5

2.6

16 .8

A

1.6

0.9

SH 1.9

1.1

0.6

3.3

0.9

5.8

6.7

3.0

0.6

0.2

0.6

0.6

4.5

63

0.3

+12.5

1.6

0.2

0.6

0.2

SH 1.10

5.8

0.9

0.4

1.3

2.9

2.4

2.3

0.9

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0.8

0.9

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1.3

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1.0

2.6

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0.3

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6.5

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0.8

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1.2

0.3 0.5

1.5

0.4

3.0

0.4

1.5

1.1

0.6

0.6

0.10.5 0.2 0.5 0.2 0.5

C' 1.

7

6 1.

B'

2.4 9.2

16.0

122

0

1

3

5m

N

THIRD FLOOR PLAN

Architecture

C

B

2.1

0.6

+13.4

0.7

72

3.6

73 74

76

5.7

77

1.1

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82

81

80

79

3.3

78

5

2.0

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0.7

0.8

0.9

0.7

A' 2.9

0.

8

A

2.3 0.8

0.8

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0.7

0.3

2.6

1.3

75

0.

1.1

8

1.0

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1.3

1.3

4.8

4.1

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8.6

1.5

2.8

0.3

2.0

1.7

2.7

C'

B' 7.1

8.6

16.4

0

1

3

5m

N

FOURTH FLOOR PLAN

123

Chapter 4

C

B

A' 5.5

A

C'

B'

124

0

1

3

5m

N

ROOF PLAN

1.4

Architecture

1.4 2.8 3.2

1.4

+15.7

+12.5

1.2

19.9

5m

4.4

3

+8.2

4.3

2

+3.9

3.8

1

N

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

+0.0

Section AA' 0

1

3

5m

125

2.4 2

3

5m

2.8

1

N

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

3.2

+15.7

4.3

+8.2

3.4

+3.9

-0.46

2.1

2.6

2.9

Section BB' 0

1

3

126

5m

20.3

4.4

+12.5

1.5 2

3

5m

2.8

1

N

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

3.2

+15.7

4.4

+12.5

4.3

+8.2

3.4

+3.9

2.3

-0.28

Section CC' 0

1

3

5m

127

3.4

Chapter 4

4.4

20.0

+12.5

4.4

+8.2

3.4

+3.9

North Elevation 0

128

1

3

5m

3.9

Architecture

12.2

+12.5

+8.2

3.5

+3.9

East Elevation 0

1

3

5m

129

Chapter 4

+12.5

+8.2

+3.9

0

1

South Elevation

130

3

5m

Architecture

+12.5

+8.2

+3.9

West Elevation 0

1

5m

3

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Chapter 4

4.2 Interior 4.2.1. The ground floor The ground floor is situated on two main different levels. That is mainly due to the natural state of the sloped topography of the plot, but both the Genard brothers and Delhaye have indicated the height differences in their drawings. In the Genards’ phase, the northern room was already lower than the rest of the ground floor. Delhaye then expanded this lower area (-0.46m) to include room 0.2 in addition to rooms 0.1 and 0.3 in order to create a large reception area with high ceilings. This reception area is shaped by curved walls, which separate the reception from two small offices (rooms 0.1 and 0.3) on each side. From the reception area, you can also access a toilet, the elevator and room 0.8, which used to be the main entrance hallway when Horta’s main entrance door was still in use. Both room 0.8 and 0.2 have marble floors added

by Delhaye.

Although there are three points of access from which you could enter the building, only one is currently in use. This is the entrance porch created by Delhaye on Palmerston Avenue. Horta’s main door on the Boduognat Street is completely unused. The third entrance is a back door, which you could access from the garage on the southern edge of the Boduognat Street. This door is barely used.

There are only two rooms which are more or less original to Horta in the corner between the Boduognat Street and Palmerston Avenue (rooms 0.4 and 0.5). This area, along with the kitchen and toilet to the south of them added by the Genards (room 0.6 and 0.7) has a feel of a small studio to it, since it is more or less secluded from the rest of floor.

Finally, the southern part of the building has the staircase, the garage and room 0.9, which was last used as storage. It is divided into two by a partition wall, and not a lot of sunlight comes in because of the garage ceiling. The staircase leads to the next floors, but also provides access to the basement.

132

Architecture

133

Chapter 4

1

2

4

134

3

5

6

7

Architecture

2 8 3

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

1

1

2

3

5m

3

5m

N

8

9 4

9

10

1

2

N

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

10 6

11

5

7 11

1

2

3

5m

N

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

135

Chapter 4

Windows that are double-glazed between 2005-2016

4.2.2. The first, second and third floors Except for a few partition walls, the main layout of the first, second and third floors is the same.

These floors can be accessed through either the elevator or the staircase, which are situated next to each other in the southeastern edge of the floors. On each floor, they lead to a corridor embellished by Horta’s remaining windows on the eastern facade. The toilets are also always located in the same place on the eastern facade accessible from the corridor. The area comprising the corridor and ground floor on all floors have a false ceiling. It is worth mentioning that on the first and second floors these false ceiling hide a part of the eastern facade’s windows, which are moreover all translucent.

The rest of the three floors are made up of three large rooms and one small transition room, which in each case leads to the one room that is original to Horta. Just like room 0.4 and 0.5 on the ground floor, this Horta-era rooms are located on the corner facade. Their shape is unique and is characterized by the bay windows (on the first and second floors) and balcony (on the third floor) on the northern facade. These provide a lot of natural light, making them the most prestigious rooms in the building. For instance, the previous tenants used the room on the first floor for meetings with visitors. However, all the original windows by Horta on the corner and eastern facades that would have provided even more sunlight are now blocked.

The two other large rooms, situated in part in the extension of the building, are usually used as either offices or meeting rooms. These are almost identical on all floors, except for some partition walls that sometimes further divide the rooms. The large room on the first floor of the northern facade has a balcony added by the Genards. The rooms on the southern facade, on the other hand, have a bow window that provide a lot of sunlight. The transition rooms between the corridor and Horta’s room, lastly, differ in functionality. On the first floor, it was used as a cloakroom, on the second as a kitchen, and on the third as a printing room.

On a final note, the staircase and all of the floors are covered in carpet, and all walls are painted in white plaster. The toilets are the exception, however. They have tiles on the floor and the walls.

Perhaps, when the white panels that hide the staircase balustrades are taken out, we could discover an outstanding wooden staircase.

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4.2.4. The fourth floor The upper floor stems from the last extension by Delhaye. He added a fourth floor to what used to be the attic. It is similar in layout to the floors below. However, the corner room is replaced by a hexagon-shaped dim room with no natural light and a low ceiling. Between this room and the corridor, there is a kitchen and two small toilets. On the other side of the building are two big offices, with the one on the north having access to a roof terrace. All of the openings on this floor are double-glazing.

4.2.4. The roof The roof has not been restored since the extention of the fourth floor by Jean Delhaye in the 1960s. It is made out of slates, probably already since the Genards’ intervention. Slate roofing is more valuable than clay tiling because it does not need to be changed as often, although its installation are higher. It also offers many benefits, including natural fire resistance and resistance to mold. Because of its low water absorption, finally, slate roofing is resistant to frost damage from freezing. It is accessible through a ladder inside a small closet in room 4.1.

4.2.5. The basement The basement is very big as it covers the whole building plot, including part of the front garden.

Only the space of Horta’s original building on the east-side is painted and appears habitable, however. Still, there are a number of other rooms in the western extension, but two of them (room 0.03 and 0.08) have a low ceiling due to Delhaye’s change of leveling on the ground floor. As a result, room 0.08 has even become inaccessible.

The Genard brothers have also constructed additional basement rooms, which are lying lower than the rest of the floor, and which extend into the area of the front garden. Room 0.06 is accessible through a stair situated underneath the current main entrance on Avenue Palmerston, while that room leads you through a second stairs to room 0.07, which is situated underneath the overall basement level. Rooms 0.05, 0.06 and 0.07 all have wine-racks, suggesting that the Genards added the latter two rooms to increase the space for a vast wine cellar. The previous owners used these rooms as storage, however.

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4.3. The facade 4.3.1. Horta’s stones Horta, as in most of his work, chose to have a facade all in stone. Of course, having an all-stone facade showed the luxury the commissioner, in this case George Deprez, was able to afford. Horta moreover made sure to sculpture every rock with a smooth edge joints at the corner, in line with his Art Nouveau style. This technique was common in the past but is nowhere to be found anymore in modern architecture.

To get an idea of Horta’s attention to detail vis-à-vis stone design, we can turn to the recollection of one of his collaborators, André Dautzenberg. He described in retrospect the very particular way in which the work proceeded: the sketch of each element was reviewed by Horta, after which revised sketches had to be made. After Horta was satisfied with the sketches of the side, front and top views, a three-dimensional model was constructed in plaster on a wooden core, which in turn was retouched by Horta’s hand himself.1 In his design for Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, Horta primarily used Euville. Most of the facades are made up out of this French limestone but he also employs blue stone in a playful manner. On the ground floor, he heavily alternates between the two. Higher up, he employs blue stone less frequently, but he continues to alternate between the two around the corners and drainpipes all the way up until the cornice. Interestingly, although Horta mentions in his memoirs that he used Gobertange stones in the Hotel2, no traces of it are found. Perhaps this was an error of the mind, given that there was a great temporal difference between the construction of the building and the writing of his memoirs.

The blue stone, also known as ‘petit granite’, is very typical in Belgium. You can find it in most of the buildings in Brussels and other Belgian cities, where it is typically used for the ground floors and also in recessed balconies. The reason for its common occurrence is the fact the blue stone has been locally produced in several Belgian regions since the Middle Ages. Immediately after cutting, the stone’s color is dark grey. However, the color starts to fade and become lighter already after two to three years, as it is affected by pollution, natural wear and tear progresses. The bluish grey color, as for instance in Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, is a result of washing too strong.3 1 2 3

Tourneur 2013.

Mémoires 1985, p.76.

Dolores et al. 2015.

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Fig. 94: Zoom-in on Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde during the transformation in 1910.

The picture shows the stones layering technique. ©CIVA.

The blue stone is much stronger and heavier than the Euville stone, which has a lighter patina, has more pores, and is less compact. That’s why the blue stone is frequently used on ground floors.

After that, like in Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, the use of white ‘Euville’ stone is generally used on upper floors. The color of Euville stone also tends to change over time from grey to beige. In an archival source on the construction of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde obtained from the archives of Horta Museum, a known producer of blue stone located in Hainaut, Directeures des Carrières, is listed.

Also a Brussels workshop by the name of Albert, in the Wéry Street, is mentioned that the architect bought Blue stone from. It is possible that the latter collaborated in the fine-tuning of the stones.4 The stone positioning technique used by Horta is one in which the stones are horizontally and vertically built in varying degrees of thickness, a common method in architecture. it is also possible that the facades were glossier in Horta’s time. During the restoration of Horta’s BOZAR building, Prof.

Tourneur and Prof. Van Der Wee discussed this possibility. According to them, it was possible that Horta polished some stones to have slightly different shining appearance. Therefore, it is an option that he did it in Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde as well.

4

Index, Copies de lettres, volume 1897-1898, Archives du Musée Horta, 47.A.

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Fig. 95: Replica model for Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde’s door by Laurent Chavaux, found in Horta’s Museum, 2022 © Farida Elghamry.

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Fig. 96: Photogrammetry of the door; painted in brown, suggesting the old vibe of the entrance during Horta’s time. © Farida Elghamry.

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Discoloration Biological growth Cracking

Fig. 97: Showing the pathologies on the eastern elevation at Boduognat Street.

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Discoloration Biological growth Cracking

Fig. 98: Showing the pathologies on the northern elevation at Palmerston Avenue.

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Fig. 99: Corner of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde showing graffiti signs, 2008.

4.3.2. Pathologies Finally, some pathologies on the building’s exterior bear mentioning: •

A few cracks can be found in the plinths. But these cracks are non-structural, except for one stone at the second bay in the Northern elevation.

•

Any expert looking at the facade would notice that it has been washed a lot of times and perhaps very strongly. The result is some washed-out patinas and non-homogeneity in the coloring of the facade. Facade cleaners and restorers often stumble on this problem. This is especially true when different types of stones are situated next to each other because each stone requires a different cleaning technique and amount of pressure to be applied to it.

•

Some of the windows have black mold underneath them. This is a common issue on stone walls with deep crevices and uneven joints. While they do not necessarily damage the stone they live on, mold spores can become unsightly and downright ugly.

•

Black crust remains form where stone is protected from the rain, in this case behind the drainpipes mostly at the eastern elevation. This is due to sulphates interacting with air pollution through dry deposition.

•

Due to presence of moisture through rainwater, lichens have developed on the facades, especially on the window-sills. Also, algae thrive in the balcony on the third floor on the northern facade, because it has no drainage hole for the water to fall instantly. Therefore, the water dries slower, and algae grow (see p. 182).

•

There are several different mortars between the stones, which suggests that the facade has been restored several times.

•

In some of the more recent old pictures, confirmed by looking closesly at the facade, we notice some property damage traces of graffiti text. These have been cleaned out, however (fig. 100).

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Fig. 100: The different pathologies on the facades, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

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Fig. 101: View of the chimney from the balcony on the fourth floor (northern elevation), 2021.© Farida Elghamry.

Fig. 102: View of the chimney from the window on the fourth floor (eastern elevation), 2021.© Farida Elghamry.

4.4. Conclusion In this chapter, I mapped the contemporary architecture of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde in survey drawings. These drawings detail the Hotel’s structure, the layout of the floors, and the elevation of the building. As the text walked through the different rooms, I showed the challenging context of the interior and explained what has been restored and what has not. Horta’s materials, particularly blue stone and Euville limestone were also discussed. In spite of a number of pathologies, the stones used on the facades currently do not need restoration. That is good news, because they form one of the most visible surviving characteristics of the Hotel. This begs the question: how do we value the building as it stands today? The next chapter will tackle this question.

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Fig. 103: Stained glass reused from Horta’s era in the interior of the first floor, Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

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Fig. 104: Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Part of the entrance door, own sketch drawing.

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Chapter 5: Value assessment

5.1. Artistic & historic values 5.2. Social & educational values 5.3 . Evaluation plans

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Chapter 5: Value assessment

Almost since its inception, Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde has appeared to have lost value in the eyes of its creators, inhabitants and passers-by since its very inception. Neither Horta nor the architectural historians writing about him seem to have paid much attention to this building.

Georges Deprez sold it and moved away fairly soon after it was finished. The Genard brothers demolished some of its most characteristic Art Nouveau features. Even Jean Delhaye, who otherwise did his utmost best to preserve his master’s tangible heritage, has left very little of Horta’s interior intact and completed the transformation from its original residential to its current professional function. Still, in spite of the building having become more generic over time, my discussions with the people who worked in the office under the previous tenants suggest that the current interior leaves much to be desired in terms of its suitability as office space. Finally, while Hotel Van Eetvelde across the street is much more celebrated, most passers-by are unaware of the fact that Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde is one of Horta’s Art Nouveau buildings.

When the heritage value of the Hotel is recognized, much emphasis is placed on the significance of the façades, including the historical main entrance in the Boduognat Street. Indeed, as noted in the previous chapter, Mrs. Delhaye argued in 1963 that the Hotel has “a nice façade and entrance door that is an internationally appreciated architectural jewel.” Similarly, when her husband managed to get the Hotel listed as protected heritage in 1971, the sole reason that the Royal Commission of Monuments and Site provided was its artistic value (see annexes).

But is the value of this Art Nouveau heritage, except for its obvious economic worth, limited to a few artistic features on the exterior of the building? Or is there more than meets the eye in assessing the value of the Hotel? To answer this question, the NARA grid1 was employed as a guideline. Using the grid as a point of departure, this chapter discusses the four primordial dimensions in assessing the value of a historic building according to this methodology: artistic, historic, social, and scientific. After this, the thinking behind the synthesis plans is explained.

1

Van Balen 2008.

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Artistic

Form & design

Material &

Historic

High level of details in sculpting the stones at the corner plot design while edges are avoided by the creation of drainpipes along the facade and stone motifs on the ground.

Before the building was enlarged, a cornerplot Art Nouveau hotel was situated next to a typical Belgian house. The house was then demolished and the hotel expanded.

Alternations between two stone materials; Euville and blue stone create a playful rhythmic look.

-

substance

Use & function

Tradition & technique

Location & setting

Spirit & feeling

Originally, it functioned as a luxurious The building has always served opulent users. first as a piedpied-à-terre in Brussels. Lata-terre, then as a large famer it was changed to function ily house, and later as an ofas a deluxe family house. fice space for large firms.

The craftsmanship of Art Nouveau manifests in the sculpturing of the stone details on the facade, the iron grills, motifs on the windows, and the one remaining stained glass.

The level of detailing and sculpting of the stone is an old technique that is not found in the architecture of the modern world anymore.

Corner location influences the interior space and the appearance of the facade in the neighbourhood, which has safeguarded most of its 19th century buildings.

The neighbourhood of the squares is part of the development of the Brussels extention in the 19th century.

The remaining room designed

by Horta on each floor is a reminder of the building’s original Art Nouvea spirit and its glory.

Large and tall windows characterized the interior, as well as stained glass that is no longer the case and some of the windows upper panes are blocked with false ceilings, before that the interior had a forest-like feel.

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5.1. Artistic & historic values One does not have to look far to discover the artistic value of the Hotel. The historical door, the chimney, the motifs on the façades, the details on the drainpipes, and the curvature of the stones and iron grills all attest to the artistic appearance of the building. These features demonstrate that the Hotel was not an umpteenth reinvention of classical Renaissance or Gothic paradigms. Neither was it a precursor of the reductionist logic of functionalist Modernism. No, they attest to the unique style of Horta, which, thanks to the building being erected on a corner plot, was given enough breathing space to fully unfold.

Later architectural interventions, such as the removal of the loggia and terrace on the northern façade or the demolition of the servant staircase windows on the eastern façade, have done damage to the original exterior outlook of the Hotel. The conversing topoi of asymmetry and nature made the elevations look lively and rhythmic, leading some past observers to describe the façades as “musical.” The original interior, which has unfortunately been all but destroyed, is said to have had paintings, a lot of wood, and stained-glass windows that gave it a “forest-like” spirit.1 Still, although some of these idiosyncratic features are lost to history, enough have survived to stand as testimony of the fact that the building’s encompassing style contains the word “art” in its name.

That style, Art Nouveau, is not only of artistic but also of historical importance. Horta was part of a fin-de-siècle movement that was the culmination point of the nineteenth-century idea of allowing the individual expression of the artist to come to the fore, even in architecture. Precursors can be found in the Arts and Crafts movement and Belgian avant-garde artistic collectives like Les Vingts, but also in influential architects of a generation before Horta who had left large imprints on the Brussels urban landscape, such as Joseph Poelaert. Art Nouveau broke with the architectural fixation on the past and fully embraced progress without abandoning historical inspiration completely.

That is why it made heavy use of new materials brought forward by the Second Industrial Revolution while simultaneously adopting themes of craftmanship, which was idealized in the nationalist collective memory of Belgian history at the time, and nature, which arose in part out of orientalism and the fascination with Belgian colonialism in the Congo.

In the longue durée of architectural history, the heyday of Art Nouveau represented but a fleeting moment. But that makes it all the more remarkable how much of an impact the style has left on the contemporary urban landscape of the Belgian capital. The movement had the luck of coinciding with the large-scale urban expansion of Brussels at the turn of the century. Especially in the areas adjacent to the historic city which around this time were being absorbed into the city did Art Nouveau take hold.

1

Aubrey 2007, pp. 70-1.

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Social

Form & design

Material & substance

Use &

The building takes up a role in the greater neighbourhood’s atmosphere and social cohesion. Its big scale, too, shows value and prestige.

The structural relationship between the original building of Horta and its later extension in 1910, plus later transformations is useful to engineers and the people in the building sector.

The stone façade reflects the high social status of the owners and contibute to the attractive ambiance of the area.

-

The building has always served opulent users whether as residential earlier or as offices later.

How privately owned heritage are managed and dealt with in Belgium is intereting to city planners, economists, students, among other people.

Some of the craftsman workshop and quarries whom Horta dealt with still exist until this day and are part of Belgium’s heritage and local production.

The Art Nouveau detailed stonework of the façade are important to stones enthusiasts, students and craftsmen.

The building fits in the narrative of the internatioal capital city of Art Nouveau that Brussels want to market itself as and attracts cultural tourism and invertment.

The building is part of Brussels 19th century development and the arts central scene back then, which is interesting to historians.

The big scale of this building is a constant reminded for its status and its potential.

Uncovering the original elements & Art nouveau features of the building is an interesting challenge to renovators and heritage enthusiasts.

function

Tradition & technique

Location & setting

Spirit & feeling

Scientific

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One such neighborhood was the Squares Quarter, whose building boom almost coincided to the year with the flowering of Art Nouveau. Although much of the heritage has been demolished on the outer edges of the Ambiorix and Marie-Louise Squares during the height of Brusselization in the 1960s and 1970s, the building styles of the fin-de-siècle, which included but were not limited to Art Nouveau, still dominate the core of the neighborhood on Avenue Palmerston. More specifically, Hotel van Eetvelde and Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde remind us of the flourishing of Art Nouveau during the period in which the Squares Quarter was conceived. While the former is UNESCO world heritage and the latter is not, Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde is nonetheless protected by the Belgian Royal Commission of Monuments and Sites and lies within the limits of the UNESCO buffer zone (see fig. 43). Both stand as powerful testimony of the towering figure of Victor Horta within Art Nouveau – and indeed in the architectural history of Brussels and Belgium.

5.2. Social & educational values As must be true for any building in the heart of the Squares Quarter, much of the social value of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde has to be derived from the social fabric in which the neighborhood is embedded regardless of the building’s specificities. Even before its urbanization, the area of the Maalbeek valley had elite residences in the form of castles and manors. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a modern but quiet neighborhood of townhouses for the bourgeoisie replaced the rural character of the area. Since then, the continued expansion of the city and the establishment of the European institutions nearby has undoubtedly driven up the economic value of the land, and thus of the Hotel. Still, in spite of it being part of the European Quarter today, the neighborhood offers a relatively quiet and picturesque green area with many intact heritage buildings.

Remarkably, Avenue Palmerston has resisted much of the Brusselization to which other parts of the city have fallen victim.

We should remain vigilant not to perceive the posh neighborhood as an ahistorical occurrence borne out of an organic development, however. The Squares Quarter was not erected in a social vacuum, it came into being out of a conscious effort on the part of the City of Brussels to create a prestigious neighborhood. Before its incorporation into Brussels, a few urbanized streets, known together as the Granvelle Neighborhood, had already emerged on the east bank of the Hoeyvijver in the first half of the nineteenth century. The city planners were careful to incorporate this working class neighborhood into the ambitious plans for the eastward expansion of the city. No fears of gentrification effects were raised, though. We could even speculate that socially-conscious Art

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Nouveau architects like Horta thought the working class and the bourgeoisie could live in harmony with one another. As it turned out, however, the sizing down of the Hoeyvijver, the covering of the Maalbeek, and the construction of Avenue Palmerston on an elevated plateau combined to cause frequent floods in the Granvelle Neighborhood, thereby rendering it unlivable. The consequence of poorer families being forced out of their modest houses made it possible to retain the elite character of the neighborhood.

The high-class profile of the Squares Quarter was threatened once again by the middle of the twentieth century, as the townhouses were divided into several living units and started to be replaced by apartment blocks. While this caused upper (middle) class families to move to the suburbs, it perhaps made the neighborhood more affordable to the common man. But after the establishment of the European institutions at a stone throw from the neighborhood, it started to attract expats, which in turn drove up the rental prices and drove out the lower classes.

The fascinating evolution of the social space of the area in the immediate vicinity of the Hotel – from rural residences for the nobility to a working class congregation and back to a bourgeois but urban neighborhood – hints at the scientific value of the building. A historical-sociological spatial analysis is useful in assessing the intangible value of heritage, too. More generally, a broad perspective can inform a value assessment beyond such self-evident parameters as artistic and economic value and provide scientific insight into building and preservation practices. For instance, the adaptability of the Hotel, which is really at the heart of this study, is educational in the sense that it can teach us that there is a wide array of strategies for keeping heritage intact between keeping (and restoring) a heritage object in its original form and destroying it in order to make room for new and modern buildings. I have shown that layers of events have shaped the building as it currently stands. Instead of decrying the modifications after Horta, it might be useful to consider the possibility that the architectural palimpsest is precisely what helped the building in withstanding the winds of change time and again. In short, the Hotel can inform us on preservation strategies for those millions of landmark buildings that have not made it to the UNESCO world heritage list.

Zooming in on the narrow strictures of architecture, finally, studying the Hotel can help us understand the evolution of Horta’ style better. For instance, the curved zinc brisis on the terrace on the northern façade, which is now demolished, is similar to the one found in Maison Frison – a building that Horta designed two years earlier in 1894. In the same vein, we could say that the Hotel’s double chimney is similar to the one he had placed on top of the Kindergarten in the Saint-Ghislain Street, which was constructed during the same times as Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, in the years 1897-1899. The chimney on the Hotel is more extravagant, however, while the Kindergarten chimney appears to be more sober.

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5.3. Evaluation plans With the four dimensions of the value assessment in mind, we can now turn to the heritage valuation of the specific elements of the building. From a heritage perspective, it made sense to label what is left of Horta’s original structure as the elements of the highest value.

In spite of the fact that the Genard brothers destroyed some of the most noteworthy features, thereby devaluing the building, we have nonetheless decided to label the elements from the first transformation as “valuable.” This decision was informed by their attempts to be in harmony with the original design of Horta, the spacious quality of the design, and the date of the transformation, as 1910 still deserves some “value of anciennity” explained by Alois Riegl (1858-1905). 1 As explained in chapter 3, the value of the last phase is debatable. Even though Delhaye was a major advocate of preserving Horta’s heritage, he belonged to a different age. His additions may support the building’s modern office function, but the new partition walls are plain and hide away potential special features. The interior is moreover flat and outdated.

Therefore, the value of this phase is categorized as “neutral” or, in a few cases, “disturbing.”

1

Arrenhenius 2013, p. 52.

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Fig. 105: Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Stone motifs on the drainpipes, own sketch drawing.

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Chapter 6: Future

6.1 Preliminary suggestions 6.2 Scenario one 6.3 Scenario two 6.4 Sustainability 6.5 Conclusion

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Chapter 6: Future

It has been estimated that 80% of the European building stock that will exist in the year 2050 has already been built.1 In fact, when it comes to Brussels, 70% of its buildings were constructed before 1945 and only 6% after 1981.2 This poses both a challenge and a major opportunity to demonstrate that the retention of the historic building stock has a significant role to play in the future. Maintaining existing structures contributes to reducing urban sprawl, prolonging the physical service life of buildings and building parts, supporting waste-avoidance and increasing energy efficiency performances.3 This does not mean that heritage in a continually evolving urban environment has to remain static, however. In order to remain valuable in the future, the building has to evolve with the times.

Changes therefore have to be made with a flexible and timeless mentality so we would not risk that these will be seen as redundant 50 years afterwards. We can see this clearly in the history of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. The Genard brothers removed some of Horta’s most characteristic features, probably on the assumption that Art Nouveau had become outmoded by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Delhaye was much more respectful to safeguarding Horta’s built legacy. Yet, he, too, intruded in the interior and even added now-outdated partition structures, false ceilings and indirect lighting.

Just like the Genard brothers and Delhaye, this chapter seeks to investigate how the Hotel can survive and thrive according to the values of the day. On the premise that we want to preserve as much of Horta’s original architecture, some undoing of previous renovation will be suggested. But the chapter will also make a range of other suggestions, from ideas on how the heritage can be promoted better to enhancements that will make the building more environmentally friendly.

First, a number of preliminary suggestions on the management and interior architecture will be made. Second, two scenarios for future use will be juxtaposed. Finally, these two scenarios will be judged from the point of view of sustainability.

1 2 3

Hermann & Rodwell, 2015; Szmygin p.170.

Bernair et al. 2018, p. 12.

EuropaNostra 2015, p.194.

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Fig. 106: Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde from Palmerston Avenue, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

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6.1 Preliminary suggestions One way to ensure continued interest in conserving the Hotel is good management. As owner, one can work on strategies for popularizing the heritage, which in turn leads to increased rental value. The Delhaye family adopted such strategies in the past. Indeed, they themselves worked hard to have the Hotel listed in 1971. Recent surveys of European white-collar workers have shown that many people like to work in heritage buildings1. The same goes for potential residents. It is prestigious for people to live in a historical neighborhood. After all, townhouses continue to attract rich families on the edges of cities. Thus, Jean Delhaye’s advocacy 50 years ago could still attract organizations, companies and residents to the Hotel today.

Still, more can be done in order to enhance the place of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde in the eyes of the community of Art Nouveau admirers. This could be achieved through embracing the concept of networkification,2 a cultural heritage approach that can serve as a tool to re-establish the degraded or even lost connection between monuments and sites. Victor Horta and Art Nouveau are famous with most people who are even only remotely familiar with Brussels’ architectural history. In walking tours, tour guides and even among experts, Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde remains relatively unknown, however. By actively trying to connect the Hotel with the vast Art Nouveau network in Brussels, more interest in this building might be generated.

Turning from management to architecture, one common practice in conservation renovation is to restore the building to its original state of glory, even if this involves mocking outdated features with modern materials. In Horta’s house and atelier (now the Horta Museum), Jean Delhaye and Barbara Van der Wee employed this tactic during the building’s restoration. This approach is ruled out for Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, however, because unlike for instance Hotel Van Eetvelde, neither does much of the interior survive nor do we have photographs that could help us reconstruct the original interior.

1 2

EuropaNostra 2015, p. 134.

Rigauts 2018, p. 303.

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Emergency exit (ladder on south elevation)

Demolished staircases

Current entrance doors Past entrance doors

Fig. 107:

pre-analysis of space and thinking of circulation.

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What we can do, however, is to unmask some of Horta’s architectural features that have been obscured or hidden. In the same vein, an effort can be made to reintroduce more natural light, which was both a general characteristic of Horta’s building style and was something he pursued in Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde through the myriad of windows he had originally constructed.

Stripping down all white panels, plaster paint and grey carpets in order to expose the authentic materials would already be a big step in the right direction. Doing this would at least bring some Horta back into the interior. Hidden treasures might come to the surface, and, if not, modern architectural techniques can be employed to give the features a proper place without completely hiding them.

Notice that this move would be in sync with contemporary trends of exposing the authentic materials of the main structure. Think for instance of allowing the ducts and lighting wires to remain visible (see fig. 111). This is especially useful because the Hotel’s indirect lighting throughout the building is old-fashioned. Removing the low false ceilings on the middle floors provides another opportunity to merge the original structure with modern trends.

Beyond these low-hanging-fruit interventions, Horta’s main door on the Boduognat Street can be put back in the limelight. The door is maintained until the present but unused. The entrance hall on the inside is still there but serves as a gateway to the staircase. Thus, with a relatively small intervention the door can be turned into the main entrance again. The big room on the northern facade - the lobby with the current main door - could then be turned into a good-quality spacious room overlooking the garden and Palmerston Avenue. In the same vein of grandiosity, a large staircase similar to the one of the Genard brothers can also be reinstated in the southern part of the building.

There are also different opportunities to introduce more natural light into the building. Four actions in particular come to mind. First, as we know, the Genard brothers blocked a lot of Horta’s original windows. These include the windows on the corner and eastern facades in the building’s most prestigious rooms in the corner between the Boduognat Street and Palmerston Avenue.

Unblocking or re-introducing these windows would bring much natural light, enhancing the eminence of the three corner rooms on the middle floors. Second, removing the false ceilings on the first and second floors will allow the heretofore covered upper windowpanes to bring more natural light in the restrooms and corridors. Third, a skylight opening in the roof would bring more sunlight in the lounge area on the fourth floor, which is currently very dark. Finally, the roof of the garage can be removed in order to unblock the natural southern sunlight into the back-end rooms on the ground floor. The garage could remain as an open-roof parking spot or be turned into a small garden.

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Future The ground floor.

Removing the garage ceiling to increase the light to the southern rooms.

Return Horta’s original door in use as the main entrance.

The entrance porch added

by Jean Delhaye should be rethought.

This part was lowered by Jean Delhaye and therefore the basement room below is inaccessible.

Should we change this?

Remove partitioned walls.

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Chapter 6 The first floor.

The elevator is in need for conservation (generally)

Remove the false ceiling that hides half of the windows panes.

Open the corner windows.

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Remove the grey carpets.

Future The second floor.

Remove the false ceiling that hides half of the windows panes.

Remove the partial walls.

A kitchen area is in the middle of the second floor, in the core of the house.

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Chapter 6 The third floor.

The lower panes of the staircase window are hidden behind the slab.

Should we change this?

The window handles in the bathroom are different.

The balcony needs a drainage hole.

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Some of the doors may be originally from Horta.

Future The fourth floor.

Satellite shots from google Roof access.

The lounge room could get access to natural light through making openings in the roof.

The window to the west.

The terrace.

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Fig. 108:

Office in the third floor, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

6.2. Scenario 1: offices The Hotel has stopped being a “hotel” for many years. After the building ended up in the hands of the Delhaye family in 1959, it definitively became office space - and has remained so ever since. In the last twenty years, the building was rented out to the South Denmark European Office, which, in turn, rented out some of the floors to other Scandinavian companies and organizations.

Madame Delhaye, the current owner of the building, has no plans to change the functionality of the Hotel. She wants it to remain as office space. The first scenario, logically, is thus to imagine that a new company, or a number of companies, will become the new tenants.

In this scenario, one suggestion can be made that aligns itself with the preliminary suggestions.

Removing the partition walls would breathe more space in the building and allow for bigger office space. Nowadays, company live has moved beyond the life of secluded cubicles and a flexible open space in an office is often encouraged. These can help to foster better cooperation and coordination. Removing the partitions walls on the ground floor, but also on the floors above, will open up new opportunities to get creative in filling up the office space in line with the changing needs of the users.

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Fig. 109:

Perspective Section AA , with shots of the previous office interior and suspection of materials.

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6.3. Scenario 2: residential According to the Regional Land use plan for Brussels article 0.8, it is possible that a classified heritage building may be assigned to housing, productive activities, small shops, offices or even hotel establishments, provided proofs that such modifications’ first goal is to preserve the heritage, and are not affecting the architectural design. After that, the more challenging part, is that the Royal Commission of Monuments and Sites needs to approve such proposals.1 A second possible scenario is to return the Hotel to its original residential function. However, the future conception of residential would here be more broadly conceived. A century ago, Brussels was much smaller, as a result of which it made sense to erect the Squares Quarter as a sort of elite suburbs on the edge of the historic town center. Today, most communes around Brussels have all been urbanized, leading many old residential houses to be broken up into apartments. Still, reimagining an upper-class “hotel” inside Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde is certainly an option, as the concept of single living unit townhouses has not gone entirely out of fashion in the Squares Quarter.

For Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, however, this scenario is less likely because it is so big – unless it would become a house of an ambassador or something in that vein. One other option, therefore, is to break up the building, which would make it possible, for instance, to revert Horta’s part back to a classic townhouse. It could then be rented out to one tenant or, alternatively, each floor could be rented out separately as apartments.

This is especially relevant because of the demographic changes expected to happen in Brussels Capital Region by 2030, which combine a population increase of 100,000 with a rise of single-occupancy households due to Belgium’s ageing population. Many more residential buildings will consequently be needed. The numbers also show that one million square meters of office space became vacant in 20132, suggesting that in contrast, the amount of office space is saturated.

1 https://urbanisme.irisnet.be/lesreglesdujeu/les-plans-daffectation-du-sol/le-plan-regional-daffectation-du-solpras/prescriptions/a.-prescriptions-generales-relatives-a-lensemble-des-zones 2 Bernair et al. 2018, p. 12..

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Fig. 111:

Collage, re-imagining the office space with the authentic materials and lighting fixture exposed.

Fig. 110:

Collage, reviving the Art Nouveau spirit within the Horta-era rooms.

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A more preferable scenario would be to turn the building into flats or a boutique hotel, which would attract luxurious visitors to the place. This functionality would allow for more creativity in the interior. From this perspective, the Hotel could be really re-imagined as a work of Art Nouveau and revalorized as cultural heritage. Restoring the original interior to its former glory is of course impossible, as we do not know how it looked like. But what could be done, is to remake the interior with Art Nouveau influences. This effort could be spread out across the whole interior or perhaps be concentrated in the most prestigious rooms. Indeed, if the windows of the corner rooms on the middle floors are to be unblocked and their interior decorated in Art Nouveau, they could be promoted as fashionable “Horta rooms.” With the old Art Nouveau on the exterior and the new Art Nouveau in the interior, the hotel would attract art lovers and luxurious guests. Remaking Horta’s original door to the main entrance would further enhance the Art Nouveau spirit of the Hotel.

Finally, a number of functionalities could also be combined. A destination restaurant could occupy the ground floor, for instance, whereas the floors above it would remain residential or hotel space.

If the latter, the restaurant could be connected to the hotel organization. In this scenario, too, it would be prestigious to revert Horta’s Art Nouveau door on the Boduognat Street to the main entrance, while making the area on the northern facade into the dining era with a view on the garden and Palmerston Avenue. The southern end of the building, then, could house the kitchen.

It should be mentioned, however, that this scenario is costly since it requires designers, experts, materials, etc. But it arguably will bring a positive future to the cultural heritage as well as economic turnover. Turning the building into a hotel will also require strict fire safety rules, which would need serious consideration. For example, an existing hotel in a building of more than three levels above the ground should generally be provided with at least two staircases. Currently, we only have one staircase and a ladder on the southern facade, which could be accessed from the far-left windows repeated on each floor. It must also be insured that the fire resistance of the load-bearing components is adequate in order to ensure the structural stability of the whole for a sufficient length of time in the event of fire. The walls’ resistance, doors, signs, and appliances; everything should be strictly adapted in case of fire.

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Fig. 112:

The four domain approach to sustainable development diagram. ©EuropaNostra.

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6.4. Sustainability In this final section, the two above-mentioned scenarios are evaluated from a sustainable development perspective. Specifically, the four oft-mentioned pillars of sustainable development - cultural, economic, social, and environmental - will be discussed in relation to the future use of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde.

In the cultural realm, the sustainability and heritage agendas of course greatly overlap. Increasing the lifespan of a building is one important way to avoid waste in the building sector. As noticed in the introduction to this chapter, in spite of the epithet of “Brusselization,” Brussels already does a fairly good job at promoting the longevity of building life. If almost three quarters of Brussels’ buildings date from before World War II, it should not be all too difficult to keep the Hotel erected for the foreseeable future. Promoting the building as a landmark of Art Nouveau and Horta’s legacy - two central components in the architectural history of the Belgian capital - could help in this regard. Especially if the building would be made into a boutique hotel, the Hotel can be celebrated as an icon of both Horta’s creativity and modern innovation. Even if the building will keep being used as office space, the visual attractiveness of the facades will foster its Art Nouveau identity and embellish the cultural landscape of the Squares Quarter.

Trying to put the Hotel center stage in the cultural landscape, in turn, will enhance its economic value. Investments promoting its cultural identity, or investments aimed at promoting its environmental performance, if done well, will be returned into increased popularity - and hence increased economic value. If the building will be used as offices, a hotel or a restaurant, moreover, it will provide labor opportunities. The residential, restaurant and hotel functionalities would also attract big capital to the Squares Quarter.

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Fig. 113: Diagram showing the repeated corner room with the currently unblocked (yellow) and blocked (orange) windows.

Third, we have to make sure that the Hotel remains firmly entrenched in the social fabric of the neighborhood. We have to avoid the mistakes surrounding the demise of the working-class Granvelle Neighborhood behind the Hotel, which was destroyed due to bad urban planning (see chapter 2). As the European Quarter aims to keep a functional balance between residential, office and retail space, in essence none of the above-mentioned scenarios are hostile to the development plans of the neighborhood. Given that much more office and residential space is envisioned in an already heavily urbanized area, however, a one-living-unit townhouse would be somewhat antithetical to the development plans of the city. But breaking up the large building up into several living units, whether vertically or horizontally, will offer housing to more people. In any case, both the residential, hotel and restaurant functionalities will help to maintain the prestigiousness of the Squares Quarter and thus ensure its social cohesion. In its own way, office space can also promote community development. The Squares Quarter has already been heavily impacted by the European institutions. Hosting EU-linked companies and organizations in heritage locations fit nicely in what has become a very international neighborhood while avoiding the isolated life of EU employees around the Schuman Square. The Squares Quarter offers a good mediating space between expat and local life in Brussels.

Finally, optimal environmental efficiency is needed in order to compliment the Hotel with the sustainable development agenda. Three specific suggestions can be mentioned. First, in agreement with the Build Circular Brussels project, the partition walls, if removed, can be re-used. They can either be re-integrated in the interior or be used to make furniture. Second, given the size of the Hotel, much rainwater can be saved with a better water management system. This extra saved water can be used to make the building plot greener. Finally, removing the false ceilings and re-introducing more windows will increase the amount of natural light that enters the building, as already mentioned. This will have the added environmental benefit of reducing the amount of artificial light and heating, thus reducing energy consumption.

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Fig. 114: ghamry.

The view to the outside on Palmerston avenue through the corner room, 30.11.2021. © Farida El-

To drive home the last environmental suggestion, Sahar Abdalrahman helped me in calculating how much more natural light would enter the “Horta room” on the second floor if the blocked windows would be unblocked.

The diagrams on the right page were developed through a certified software called Climate Studio.

This program measures the annual illuminance by feeding data into it, like the building context, the exact measurements of the windows, the position of the windows in the room, and the orientation of the facade. The analysis compares the current state with the scenario where the two windows originally designed by Horta for this room are reopened.

The results clearly demonstrate that the room would be filled with more natural light if Horta’s windows are reinstated. From an environmental point of view, this would decrease energy consumption. Moreover, it would bring the most prestigious rooms in the Hotel back in sync with Horta’s style of bright and spacious rooms. But it would also improve the living or working experience.

Indeed, a study at Harvard University found that 78% of employees say access to natural light improves their wellbeing. What’s more, 70% reported improved work performance. 3

3

Allen et al. 2015, pp. 805-812.

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Diagrams showing the annual average illuminance in the corner room by Horta on the second floor.

Fig. 115: (top) The room with the windows on the corner and eastern facade still closed. ©Sahar Abdalrahmah Fig. 116: Abdalrahmah

(bottom) The windows of Horta re-opened. ©Sahar

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6.5 Conclusion The gaze of this last chapter was forward-looking. Conscious of the history of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, it has first given a number of suggestions to improve its interior architecture as well as its management. Regarding the latter, more can be done to connect the Hotel to the Brussels Art Nouveau and heritage network. Inside the building, my small-cost/high-gain suggestions have centered around removing barriers to the original architecture and introducing more natural light into the building. Next, I have discussed two scenarios for future use: office or residential space. In the former scenario, a case was made to remove some of the partition walls in order to increase cooperation. In the latter scenario, a broad conception was maintained, allowing for the possibility of the housing of a boutique hotel and/or destiny restaurant. In any case, the one-living-unit townhouse function, for the purpose of which the Hotel was originally built, seems outdated given the continued urbanization pressures. Finally, I have discussed how future renovations can be aligned with the cultural, economic, social and environmental dimensions of the sustainable development agenda.

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2021 © Farida Elghamry.

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Conclusion

This dissertation has examined the history, present and future of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, a grandiose Art Nouveau townhouse of the famous Belgian architect Victor Horta located in the Squares Quarter of Brussels City. The building served as a case study for gaining deeper insights in conservation practices surrounding Art Nouveau heritage in Brussels. Suppose we were to make a ranking list of the more than 500 landmarks in the capital city in this style based, for instance, on a survey of architectural history experts. Unlike Horta’s four townhouses that have made it to the UNESCO world heritage list, the building under study, in spite of being a protected monument, would probably occupy more of a middling position on that list. Hence, the Hotel is much more representative for informing us about conservation of Art Nouveau in Brussels than a Horta Museum or Hotel Van Eetvelde. What, indeed, has this research taught us in this regard?

At base, it is clear that conservation does not always prevail, as the demolishment of Horta’s Hotel Aubecq and Maison du Peuple reminds us. On the other hand, some of Horta’s heritage is very well preserved on the inside and on the outside. There is always pressure emanating from the changing urban and social environment, and some buildings do a better job at resisting than others.

With regard to Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, we should not forget that, originally, it was the urban planners behind the creation of the Squares Quarter who changed the previous rural character of the area and inadvertently destroyed the lower-class neighborhood adjacent to the squares.

Because the building boom in the Squares Quarter coincided with the rise of Art Nouveau, it became a hub of the new style. But when the style was outmoded, it apparently made sense for the owners to renovate the Hotel and get rid of some of its most characteristic Art Nouveau features. Indeed, this was probably the reasoning behind the intervention Max and Robert Genard.

They got rid of the terrace and loggia on the northern façade and the asymmetric windows on the eastern façade. They built the staircase in a Gothic style, a style not particularly commensurate with Art Nouveau.

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It was against these kinds of intrusions that Jean Delhaye fought, they. He engaged in a veritable crusade aimed at saving the built heritage of his master. He played a leading role in the establishment of the Horta Museum out of the house and atelier of the architect. He also lobbied to have several of Horta’s works protected by the Royal Commission for Monuments and Sites, and he even bought a number of his townhouses in the process – including Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Before the Hotel became a protected monument in 1971, however, Delhaye himself carried out a wholesale renovation of the interior. True, much of Horta’s original interior had probably already been changed at that point, but he changed it further in order to accommodate the functional make-over of the building from a townhouse to office space. This architectural intervention, like his aborted plan to demolish the extension to Hotel Van Eetvelde across the street, demonstrates that his conservation efforts had limits.

On the one hand, Delhaye’s pragmatism can be seen as a survival strategy. It is one thing to advocate for built heritage to be preserved. It is something else to resist the pressure, as an owner, to destroy it in favor of potentially more profitable alternatives. Such pressure was certainly around the time Delhaye bought up the Hotel in 1959. In early 1958, the decision had been made to build up the area around the Schuman Roundabout as the epicenter of the EU institutions. It is possible that the renovations of the 1960s were carried out with an eye on the ever-growing impact of these institutions. In 1971, the year that the Hotel became protected as a monument, there was moreover talk of a new EU complex behind the Berlaymont building, which would even potentially reach inside the Squares Quarter. In the meantime, more and more old buildings were razed to the ground to make room for apartment and office blocks against the backdrop of a new urbanization wave in the 1960s and 1970s. This process had started in the interwar period on the two outward edges of the Marie-Louise and Ambiorix Squares, but its impact came ever closer to Avenue Palmerston after the building came in the possession of the Delhaye family. In short, his renovation was a pragmatic solution to the dilemma between conservation and profit.

On the other hand, there are other buildings on Avenue Palmerston that have remained residential, so the choice between destruction or office space was not a definite one. Moreover, more could have been done in order to marry the building’s new function with Horta’s architecture. Delhaye’s partition walls in the lobby on the ground floor and his false ceilings on all the floors hide some of Horta’s original interior. Perhaps, this is to be explained by the typical office architecture of the day, which generally demanded a generic style and was thus antithetical to the individualistic and artistic flavor of Art Nouveau.

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What does the future of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde hold? That, of course, is up to the owners. Still, I have laid out two potential scenarios: keeping the Hotel as office space or returning it to its residential (or hotel) function, perhaps in combination with a restaurant on the ground floor. Regardless of which road is taken, a number of small-cost/high-gain interventions are suggested to revitalize the interior in Hortalian fashion. A good start would be to remove the false ceilings and partition walls, which would not only breathe extra space and light into the building but might reveal some rare original elements of Horta’s interior as well. Next, the windows blocked by the Genard brothers can be reopened, allowing more natural energy into the building and making the Hotel more sustainable. This would especially be welcome on the corner rooms between Avenue Palmerston and the Boduognat Street. This brings me to a final suggestion. The interior of (one of) these corner rooms on the middle floors can be turned into a “Horta room” in Art Nouveau style. In the absence of sufficient information on the original interior, Horta’s well-studied style can here be used as a source of inspiration. Such “Horta room(s)” could also be a central component of a networkification strategy that would try harder to promote the Hotel as a fine piece of Art Nouveau heritage.

One thing has become clear throughout this dissertation: neither the construction nor the preservation of a building takes place in a social vacuum. In the 1890s, the Hotel fitted nicely with the conception of the Squares Quarter as a bourgeois residential neighborhood and experimentation grounds for Art Nouveau. Although Art Nouveau quickly fell out of favour, the elite character of the neighborhood largely survived. That is why the Genard brothers kept the residential function but destroyed what where by then Art Nouveau oddities. Over time, the Squares Quarter became a functional mix of residential, retail and office space – and the Hotel adapted to this changing environment. The interior became more generic, reflecting post-war corporate life but forgetting Horta’s flamboyant style in the process. Recent decades have seen the rise of more open and innovative office architecture and renewed interest in Art Nouveau as an important component of Belgian built heritage. Together with other contemporary values, such as sustainable development, these trends can be capitalized on in working out conservation plans and policies. We should, however, remain vigilant not to impose our current values on the unpredictable future with too much confidence, like Delhaye and the Genards did. In short, the moral of the story is to accept adaptation if necessary while avoiding presentism.

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Fig. 117: Interior shot, corridor on the third floor. Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, April 2022. © Farida Elghamry.

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Grauman, Brigid. Bruxelles Art Nouveau. Archives D’architecture Moderne, 1988.

Hermann, Carsten and Dennis Rodwell. “Heritage significance assessments to evaluate retrofit impacts: from heritage values to character-defining elements in praxis”. In How to assess built heritage? Assumptions, methodologies, examples of heritage assessment systems, ed. Boguslaw Szmygin. ICOMOS, 2015.

Heymans, Vincent. De Squareswijk: Margareta, Ambiorix, Maria-Louiza, Gutenberg. Ministerie van het Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest, Dienst Monumenten en Landschappen, 1995.

Meers, Louis. Promenades Art Nouveau à Bruxelles. Racine, 1996.

Ogata, Amy F. Art nouveau and the social vision of modern living: Belgian artists in a European context. Cambridge University press, 2001.

Ogata, Amy F. “The Decorative ‘Arts & Crafts’ at les XX and La Libre Estéthique.” In Belgium: The Golden Decades, 1880-1914, ed. Jan Block. Peter Lang, 1997.

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Bibliography

Pevsner, Nikolaus. Pioneers of modern design: from William Morris to Walter Gropius. Penguin books, 1987.

Philippe, Joseph. Le Val-Saint-Lambert: ses Cristalleries Et L’art Du Verre En Belgique. Halbart, 1974.

Rigauts, Thomas. Noble residences in Burgundian Bruges: a case study in networkification for cultural heritage. Master thesis, RLICC, 2018.

Silverman, Debora L.,. “Art Nouveau, Art of Darkness: African Lineages of Belgian Modernism, Part III.” West 86th 20 (2013), no. 1: 3-6.

State, Paul F. Historical dictionary of Brussels. Scarecrow Press, 2004.

The corning Museum of glass annual report, 2005. https://issuu.com/corningmuseumofglass/docs/ annual_report_2005.

Thiry, Michele. Val Saint-Lambert Art & Design 1880-1990. Bank Brussel Lambert,1990.

Tourneur, Francis. Les Pierres et les Marbres dans les oeuvres “Art Nouveau” de L’architecte Victor Horta. Rêseau Art Nouveau Network, 2013.

Van Balen, Koenraad. “The Nara Grid: An Evaluation Scheme Based on the Nara Document on Authenticity.” APT Bulletin, vol. 39(2008), no. 2/3: pp. 39–45.

Van Loo, Anne. Dictionnaire De L’architecture En Belgique de 1830 à Nos Jours. Fonds Mercator, 2003.

206

Bibliography

Websites BaLaT KIK-IRPA http://balat.kikirpa.be/photo.php?path=M122847&objnr=20065406&nr=1 Major town houses of the architect Victor Horta (Brussels) https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1005/ Topographical map https://nl-be.topographic-map.com/maps/senj/Brussel-Hoofdstad/.

Henri Renkin http://littlegun.be/arme%20belge/portraits/a%20a%20portraits%20fr%20gb.htm Urban Brussels general requirements for Land use area https://urbanisme.irisnet.be/lesreglesdujeu/les-plans-daffectation-du-sol/le-plan-regional-daffectation-du-sol-pras/prescriptions/a.-prescriptions-generales-relatives-a-lensemble-des-zones

Inventory of Architectural Heritage in Brussels Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde https://monument.heritage.brussels/fr/Bruxelles_Extension_Est/Avenue_Palmerston/3/18423 Maison and atelier of Victor Horta https://monument.heritage.brussels/fr/buildings/501 Square Ambiorix https://monument.heritage.brussels/fr/streets/10005002

207

Annexes

Brussels City archives TP 2965 - Hotel Deprez Palmerston avenue - Boduognat street 34 - Property of Mr. Deprez. (20 June 1896) Shown at page. 61 •

Ground floor plan , drawing to obtain the building permit, stamped by Victor Horta.

(41.5 x 53 cm)

•

North and East Elevations, stamped by Victor Horta. (81 x 55 cm)

•

Section A-B, stamped by Victor Horta. (43.x50.5 cm)

TP 2974 (1898) - Avenue Palmerston 1 (21 April 1899) Shown at page. 78 TP 18571 (1 January 1905) - Hotel Deprez Palmerston avenue - Property of Mr. Deprez.

- Demand to obtain a garage for an automobile.

208

Annexes TP 6202 - Hotel Deprez Palmerston avenue - Boduognat street 34 - Property of Mr. Renkin.

(22 December 1910) Shown at page. 77 •

Ground floor plan. Architects M. & R. Genard (61 x 74 cm)

•

Main facade (North). Architects M. & R. Genard (59.5 x 55 cm)

•

Boduognat street facade (East). Architects M. & R. Genard (59.5 x 53.5 cm)

•

Section. Architects M. & R. Genard (64.5 x 54.5 cm)

TP 67579 - Hotel Deprez Palmerston avenue 3 angle Boduognat street - Property of Madame Delhaye Keller (September 1969) [NOT REALIZED] •

Basement plan, Ground floor plan and First floor plan, signed by Delhaye (86 x 96.5)

•

SeconD floor plan, Third floor plan, Fourth floor plan and Roof plan, signed by Delhaye (86 x 96.5)

•

Main elevation (North) Elevation, Back elevation, East Elevation and section AB (126.5 x 57.5 cm)

209

Annexes

TP 75153 - Hotel Deprez Palmerston avenue 3 angle Boduognat street - Property of Madame Delhaye Keller (30 June 1963) Partly shown at pages (90-93) •

Basement plan, Ground floor plan and First floor plan, signed by Delhaye (86 x 96.5)

•

SeconD floor plan, Third floor plan, Fourth floor plan and Roof plan, signed by Delhaye (86 x 96.5)

•

Main elevation (North) Elevation, Back elevation, East Elevation and section AB (126.5 x 57.5 cm)

210

Annexes

211

Annexes

Electrical plans as PDF provided to me by Madame Delhaye.

212

Annexes

213

Annexes CRMS Protection - Hôtel Deprez- Van de Velde, Bruxelles (1971). - 1f. (2043-0029) Also found in: AVB/ TP 94949 - Palmerston Avenue 3 angle Boduognat street (7 October 1994)

214

Annexes

215

List of fugures

page # Figure 1.

Palmerston Avenue 3, and corner of Boduognat Street 14. © Ch. Bastin & J. Evrard, MRBC.

Figure 2.

Hotell Tassel, Paul-Emile Janson Street 6, Ixelles. © Karl Stas

Figure 3.

Paul Louise

11

Personal house and atelier of Victor Horta, American Street 23-25, Saint Gilles. © 11

Figure 4.

Hotel Salvoy, Louise Avenue 224, Brussels South extension. © Pinterest

Figure 5. ry.

Hotel Van Eetvelde, Palmerston Avenue 4, Brussels East extension. © Farida Elgham11

11

Figure 6.

The entrance door of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde (currently not in use), on the Boduognat Street, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

15 Figure 7.

Detail of the chimney in Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, personal sketch.

16

Figure 8.

Pictures showing the styles of Art Nouveau, which includes organic lines, curved ‘whiplashes’, Japanese art influence, oriental influences, sensual women paintings, plant like ironwork, and stained glass.

19 Figure 9.

John Ruskin 1819-1900.

21

Figure 10.

William Morris 1834-1896.

21

Figure 11.

Nikolaus Pevsner 1902-1983.

21

Figure 12.

Post Office Savings Bank, Vienna, Austria. Otto Wagner, 1906. The radical churchlike banking hall, with its steel frame and glass roof, belongs to the Vienna Secession style which architecturally situated in between Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

21 Figure 13. Palais Stoclet, Brussels, Belgium. Josef Hoffman, 1911. The building was designed in late Art Nouveau but overlapping with and paving the way for Art Deco.

21 Figure 14. Johann Braakensiek, cartoon of King Leopold’s lash. Leopold explains to Czar Nicholas the deficiencies of the Russian “knout” and “nagïaika” flogging whips compared to the chicotte in his African kingdom. © Weekblad voor Nederland, June 24, 1906.

23 216

List of figures

Figure 15. Victor Horta, Tassel House. Detail of wrought iron banister. Photograph courtesy of the Horta Museum, Saint Gilles. © Bequest Victor Horta, SOFAM Belgium.

23 Figure 16. Victor Horta, Frison House, 1894. Detail of handrail. Photograph by Christine Bastin and Jacques Evrard. © Bequest Victor Horta, SOFAM Belgium.

23 Figure 17.

Palace of Justice, Poelaert 1, Brussels (1862), 2009. ©Martin Mycielski.

24

Figure 18.

Gustave Strauven personal home in Luther Street 28, Brussels. (1902)

26

Figure 19. The facade of Strauven’s Maison in Ambiorix Square is reminiscent of Horta’s linear composition but heavier in detail. He used bricks instead of stone for economic reasons.

26 Figure 20.

Victor Horta 1861-1947.

29

Figure 21.

Alphonse Ballat 1818-1895, Belgian architect mentor of Victor Horta.

30

Figure 22.

Horta.

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 1814-1879, a French architect and a main inspiraton to Victor 30

Figure 23. Royal greenhouses of Laeken, Brussels, Alphonse Balat, 1873. As an intern to Balat, this building represents the beginning of Horta’s career.

31 Figure 24. BOZAR, Brussels, Victor Horta, 1922. The BOZAR is one of Horta’s main accomplishment after the demise of Art Nouveau.

31 Figure 25.

Brussels

Main floor landing and staircase of Hotel Tassel by Victor Horta (1893-95) ©Explore 33

Figure 26. Corner of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde main elevation on Palmerston Avenue. 2021 © Farida Elghamry.

35 Figure 27. drawing.

Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde: floral corner motif , own sketch 36

Figure 28.

Palmerston Avenue panorama view collage, 2022 © Farida Elghamry.

39

Figure 29. Photograph showing Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde on Palmerston Avenue. Dog owners are always coming to the park in front of the hotel, 2022 © Farida Elghamry.

39 Figure 30. Detail of the general map of Brussels and its surroundings, by Jacques DE DEVENTER, 1550-1554 © Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, Map Section 41 Figure 31. The castle of Cardinal de Granvelle at the great pond of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode.

Drawing by Émile PUTTAERT, after an original by P. VITZTHUMB from the end of the 18th century © Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, Brussels, Cabinet des Estampes.

41 Figure 32. Topographical map showing the Zenna valley (in blue) and the Maalbeek valley (rough sketch in black). Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde is located on the black square.

42 Figure 33. Houses on Palmerston Avenue 6 to 10 (opposite from Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde), a few years before their radical transformation into office buildings, 1957. © AVB - TP 67105. 45 Figure 34.

92051.

Palmerston Avenue 6-12, 14 and 16, after the transformation, 1971. © AVB-TP 45 217

List of figures Figure 35. Palmerston Avenue view from Square Marie-Louise. On the right side of the picture you could see part of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. ©AVB - CP Voies publique IV. 47 Figure 36. View from Square Marie-Louise, towards Palmerston Avenue bordered, on the left, by the Van Hoorde property, 1888. ©Collection of Dexia Banque, nd.

47 Figure 37.

PP 956.

Plan for the development of the Squares Quarter, by Gédéon Bordiau, 1879. ©AVB/ 48

Figure 38.

An earlier plan for the Squares Quarter by Gédéon Bordiau, 1875. ©AVB - PP 953 48

Figure 39. Palmerston Avenue and the Van Hoorde property, just before its disappearance, detail of the map “Brussels and its surroundings”, made by the Military Cartographic Institute in 1894. ©AVB-TP 16767.

49 Figure 40. Aerial view of the squares in 1953, before the wave of apartment building construction. Photograph by Polyfoto ©Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, Cabinet des Estampes.

49 Figure 41. Signs of Brusselization at the Schuman Roundabout behind Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. © Farida Elghamry.

53 Figure 42.

31, 2019

Map obtained from the residents committee of Brussels’ European Quarter Bulletin n.

53

Figure 43. Map showing the Juridical status of the area and the heritage inscribed by the UNESCO, 2000. ©UNESCO. 55 Figure 44. Details on third floor of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Blocked windows in the corner.

The plant motifs at the window columns might be inspired by pharonic Egyptian architecture. Own sketch drawing.

56 Figure 45. An old photograph of Georges Deprez, general manager of Val-Saint-Lambert from 1894 to 1908. ©Philippe, Joseph. Le Val- Saint-Lambert: Ses Cristalleries Et L’art Du Verre En Belgique. 2e éd. ed., Wahle, 1980, p.154.

59 Figure 46.

Northern elevation of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde.. ©V. Brunetta & M. Eberlin.

59

Figure 47. Vases designed by Horta in 1897 for Val Saint-Lambert. ©Les Cristalleries et L’art Du Verre En Belgique.

60 Figure 48. The electric chandelier in the dining room of Hotel Salvoy is designed by Horta through Val-Saint-Lambert glass manufactury. It is a Gild metal setting with reflecting plates in clear crystal. H 2.73 m x L 1.85 m © KIK-IRPA - Urban.Brussels, 2017.

61 Figure 49.

Original Ground floor plan by Victor Horta, AVB-TP 2965 (1896).

63

Figure 50.

Original Section drawing by Victor Horta , AVB-TP 2965 (1896).

63

Figure 51.

Original Eastern and Northern Elevations by Victor Horta, AVB-TP 2965 (1896).

63

Figure 52. Palmerston Avenue 3 and Boduognat Street 14. The Hotel is being enlarged, from Boduognat Street, ©KIK-IRPA. 64 Figure 53.

218

Green marks show what has not been constructed exactly as the drawings.

65

List of figures Figure 54. graphs.

Autocad drawings of the main three elevation based on the black and white photo65

Figure 55. Personal attempt to sketch the handrail of the third floor balcony in Hotel Deprez Van de Velde.

67 Figure 56. Personal attempt to sketch the handrail of the second floor loggia in Hotel Deprez Van de Velde.

67 Figure 57.

Zoom in on the upper part of the third bay of the northern facade of Hotel Deprez Van de Velde (now demolished).

67 Figure 58. Maison Frison by Victor Horta showing the top floor also in curved zinc, like what used to be in Hotel Deprez- Van de Velde. (now reconstructed). ©IRPA collection 67 Figure 59. Entrance to porch at the northern facade in Palmerston Avenue (now demolished) ©Horta Museum.

69 Figure 60.

Detail of the first two original bays on Boduognat Street., 1902. ©REHME, W.

70

Figure 61.

Detail of the first two original bays on Boduognat Street. ©Museum Horta.

71

Figure 62. During the expansion of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. It is worth noticing that the porch iron grill is different than that in figure 42 and 55. Reference photo: ACL 102030 M. ©Museum Horta.

72 Figure 63. During the expansion of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Reference photo: ACL 102032 M. ©Museum Horta.

73 Figure 64.

Renkin Jean Henri Francois (1861-1928). © littlegun.com

75

Figure 65.

Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde northern elevation expansion. ©KIK-IRPA

76

Figure 66.

Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde

77

Figure 67.

Basement plan transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910).

Figure 68.

Ground floor plan transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910).

expansion. © KIK-IRPA

79 79

Figure 69.

Eastern Elevation transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910). 79

Figure 70.

Northern Elevation transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910).

79

Figure 71.

Section transformation by the Genards architects, AVB-TP 6202 (1910).

Figure 72.

Before the transformation, the cornice at the Boduognat facade was flat © KIK-IRPA. 80

80

Figure 73.

The cornice is now recessed above the bay where we have the main door and the windows in the corridors. © Farida Elghamry.

80 Figure 74. The door used to be no. 34 Boduognat street, now it is 14 and the frames are painted in white instead of brown.

81

219

List of figures Figure 75.

The Genard architects reused the iron-grills by Horta on the ground floor windows but turned them upside down.

81 Figure 76. Drawing of Palmerston Avenue 1 before it was demolished by the Genards to expand Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. AVB-TP 02974 (1898).

82 Figure 77. Overlay of the ground floor plans of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde and the house nextdoor overlayed on the ground floor plan of the Genard architects. © Farida Elghamry.

83 Figure 78.

Jean Delhaye (1908-93)

85

Figure 79. Jean Delhaye made sure to collect and safeguard the stones of Hotel Aubecq as it was being demolished. In this picture V+ Architecten have reconstituted the facade and exhibited it in 2012.

85 Figure 80.

Book cover for L’appartement D’aujourd’hui” Jean Delhaye 1946.

85

Figure 81.

Maison du Peuple by Victor Horta (1896-1965)

87

Figure 82.

Hotel Aubecq by Victor Horta (1899-1902)

87

Figure 83. Jean Delhaye’s design in 1957 was to demolish the Extension of Hotel Van Eet Velde and build an appartments building instead. Thankfully, he later changed his mind and decided to restore and safeguard Horta’s building. AVB/TP 64723 (1957).

91 Figure 84. Jean Delhaye added a fourth floor to the roof, but he has also changed the openings on the third floor. These openings were not on the drawings by the Genard architects, so it is not sure whether they were the creators of these windows. he old attic, used to be in brick, now the fourth floor addition is in zinc.©KIK-IRPA 93 Figure 85.

Ground floor plan by Delhaye, AVB-TP 75153 (1963).

94

Figure 86.

Third floor plan by Delhaye, AVB-TP 75153 (1963).

95

Figure 87.

Elevations and section drawings by Delhaye, AVB-TP 75153 (1963).

96

Figure 88. ry.

The bay Horta’s door in the East elevation at the Boduognat Street. © Farida Elgham111

Figure 89.

Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, own sketch drawing.

112

Figure 90.

Photogrammetry of northern elevation on Palmerston Avenue.

115

Figure 91.

Photogrammetry of eastern elevation of Bodougnat Street.

115

Figure 92.

Northern elevation on Palmerston Avenue © V. Brunetta & M. Eberlin, 2009.

116

Figure 93.

Southern elevation from Boduognat Street, 2022. © Farida Elghamry.

117

Figure 94. Zoom-in on Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde during the transformation in 1910. The picture shows the stones layering technique. ©CIVA. 155 Figure 95. Replica model for Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde’s door by Laurent Chavaux, found in Horta’s Museum, 2022 © Farida Elghamry.

156 Figure 96.

220

Photogrammetry of the door; painted in brown, suggesting the old vibe of the en-

List of figures trance during Horta’s time. © Farida Elghamry.

157

Figure 97.

Showing the pathologies on the eastern elevation at Boduognat Street.

158

Figure 98.

Showing the pathologies on the northern elevation at Palmerston Avenue.

159

Figure 99.

Corner of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde showing graffiti signs, 2008.

160

Figure 100. The different pathologies on the facades, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

161

Figure 101. View of the chimney from the balcony on the fourth floor (northern elevation), 2021.© Farida Elghamry.

162 Figure 102. View of the chimney from the window on the fourth floor (eastern elevation), 2021.© Farida Elghamry.

162 Figure 103. Stained glass reused from Horta’s era in the interior of the first floor, Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

163 Figure 104. Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Part of the entrance door, own sketch drawing.

164 Figure 105. Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Stone motifs on the drainpipes, own sketch drawing.

174 Figure 106. Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde from Palmerston Avenue, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

177 Figure 107. pre-analysis of space and thinking of circulation.

179

Figure 108. Office in the third floor, 2021. © Farida Elghamry.

186

Figure 109. Perspective Section AA , with shots of the previous office interior and suspection of materials.

187 Figure 110. Collage, re-imagining the office space with the authentic materials and lighting fixture exposed.

189 Figure 111. Collage, reviving the Art Nouveau spirit within the Horta-era rooms.

189

Figure 112. The four domain approach to sustainable development diagram. ©EuropaNostra.

191 Figure 113. Diagram showing the repeated corner room with the currently unblocked (yellow) and blocked (orange) windows.

193 Figure 114. The view to the outside on Palmerston avenue through the corner room, 30.11.2021. © Farida Elghamry.

194 Figure 115. The room with the windows on the corner and eastern facade still closed. ©Sahar Abdalrahmah 195 Figure 116. The windows of Horta re-opened. ©Sahar Abdalrahmah

195

Figure 117. Interior shot, corridor on the third floor. Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde, April 2022. © Farida Elghamry.

201 221

List of drawings

Synthesis drawings 1.

Re-construction of Horta’s three elevations for Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde

2.

Ground floor plan; underlayer of the original Horta walls demolished by the Ge99

nards.

3.

Ground floor plan; underlayer of the walls and staircase by the Genard architects

that were demolished by Jean Delhaye.

4.

101

Ground floor plan showing all the walls that are kept from the different main 102

phases.

6.

100

Ground floor plan; underlayer of the walls indicated as demolished by jean Del-

haye on his own drawing.

5.

65

The ground floor plans indicating the walls that are kept from the different main

phases as well as those that were removed.

103

7.

Section CC’ indicating the era of the walls and slabs.

104

8.

Basement floor plan.

105

9.

First floor plan.

106

10.

Second floor plan.

106

11.

Third floor plan.

107

12.

Fourth floor plan.

107

13.

Eastern elevation indicating Horta’s demolished parts and the new parts by the

Genards.

14.

Northern elevation indicating Horta’s demolished parts and the new parts by the

108

Genards.

108

15.

Eastern elevation showing what is kept from the different phases.

109

16.

Northern elevation showing what is kept from the different phases.

109

222

List of drawings

Photogrammetry 17.

Northern elevation on Palmerston Avenue.

115

18.

Eastern elevation on Boduognat street.

115

19.

Main door by Horta.

157

Survey drawings 20.

Basement floor plan.

118

21.

Ground floor plan.

119

22.

First floor plan

120

23.

Second floor plan.

24.

121

Third floor plan.

25.

122

Fourth floor plan.

26.

123

Roof floor plan.

27.

124

Section AA’.

28.

125

Section BB’.

126

29.

Section CC’.

127

30.

Northern elevation.

128

31.

Eastern elevation.

129

32.

Southern elevation.

33.

130

Western elevation.

131

Interior detailed plans 34.

Ground floor plan.

35.

First floor plan.

133 137

36.

Second floor plan.

140

37.

Third floor plan.

141

38.

Fourth floor plan.

147

Pathologies 39.

Eastern elevation.

158

40.

Northern elevation.

159

223

List of drawings

Evaluation Plans 41.

Basement floor plan

172

42.

Ground floor plan.

172

43.

First floor plan

173

44.

Second floor plan.

173

45.

Third floor plan.

173

46.

Fourth floor plan

173

Axonometric diagrams 47.

Ground floor plan.

181

48.

First floor plan

49.

182

Second floor plan.

50.

183

Third floor plan.

51.

184

Fourth floor plan

185

Collages 52.

Perpective Section BB’

187

53.

Scenario 1: Re-imagining the office space

189

54.

Scenario 2: Reviving the Art Nouveau spirit within the Horta-era rooms.

189

Own sketches 55.

Reconstion of Horta’s handrail for the loggias on the second and third floor.

67

56.

Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. floral corner motif.

36

57.

Details on third floor of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Blocked windows in the corner.

56

58.

Details of on the ground floor on the Northern facade. Window.

112

59.

Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Part of the entrance door.

164

60.

Details on the facade of Hotel Deprez-Van de Velde. Stone motifs on the drainpipes

174

224

225

226