inside art nouveau

In 1905 and 1906, Gustave Strauven drew up plans for two groups of rental-apartment buildings, facing each other like fortresses, on the corner of the new Avenue Louis Bertrand and Rue Josaphat.

The ground floor became home to Café des Beaux-Arts, with its elegant wrought-iron canopy. Above were five floors of apartments, whose rents got progressively smaller from one storey to the next. All the materials and techniques conform to Strauven's impetuous, staccato, buoyant style. 

The inventive architect has deconstructed the various elements of the façades to create a design that offers onlookers a form of escapism. He adds interest to the elevations by means of loggias or oriels placed one above the other and pointed balconies with slender cast-iron pillars or sets of corbels between storeys. The skin of the façades vibrates with the colours of the alternating brick and stone layers and of the ceramic panels. Further evidence of the architect's distinctive brilliance can be found in the carved stone, the use of cast and wrought iron, and even the Japanese-style profile of the wooden corbels. 

"Un de plus !" ("Another one!") was the headline in a newspaper in 1983, as it reported on the sorry sight of the canopy lying in pieces on the pavement and tried to alert city councillors to the threat facing Brussels' Art Nouveau heritage, which was still not properly appreciated at the time. Brought back from the brink, the canopy was restored to its rightful place, along with the original joinery that had been stored in the building's cellar.