Ar Nouveau in Antwerp

Antwerp is a rich and port city, the second largest city in Belgium.
A very dynamic development at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries should have had a large number of buildings built in the Art Nouveau style, the style in which the industrial bourgeoisie and the working class built during this period. However, Ar Nouveau is usually spoken of in Brussels rather than Antwerp, and even the Belgian architects mentioned - Horta, Van de Velde, Strauen, Ankara - are Brussels, not Antwerp. What is it? Are there no decent buildings? There are many, and it is remarkable that they are located, with a few exceptions, in one place, so we will be very comfortable to see them during a tour of Antwerp. Unlike Brussels or Liege, where Art Nouveau houses are scattered in different neighborhoods, in Antwerp they are concentrated in a small block southeast of the center. To understand why this happened, we need to make a short excursion into the history of Antwerp and the history of the evolution of its defensive structures. The fortress walls of Antwerp, which passed along the place where the Boulevard Ring now runs, were built in the middle of the 16th century to be accurate - from 1542 to 1555, in the Spanish period, during the time of our glorious Charles V. Only Scheld and 5 city gates allowed to leave Antwerp. Reform and counter-reform, which I will be sure to mention during my tour of Antwerp, played a terrible role. If in 1568 the city numbered more than 100 thousand people, then in 1585 - 80 thousand and only a year later, in 1586 - 42 thousand people. Only in the second half of the 19th century, Antwerp again managed to surpass the symbolic figure of 100,000 inhabitants. As a result, despite all the changes in the appearance of the city that have passed over the centuries, and even during the period when Bonaparte made from Antwerp "a dagger aimed at the heart of England", and then William I developed the importation of colonial goods from the Dutch Indies, Antwerp did not grow. The city did not have a population that needed new land to build, nor did it have a desire to go beyond the walls. Only in 1864, Antwerp, having bought from the young Belgian state the walls built at the expense of the city and on the city land (they were nationalized by Napoleon, and Belgium decided not to return for nothing) and, having destroyed them, began to creep in all directions. As General Totleben said, the hero of the defense of Sevastopol, who inspected them at the request of the Belgian king, his comrade-in-arms, “the walls of the 16th century in the 19th will not save anyone.” But as early as 1852, Napoleon III came to power in France, and Belgium, after a few years of his expansionist policy, became concerned that a strong neighbor would not again seek its territory. We needed new walls. The new walls, the longest in Europe at the time, were laid, completed in 1875, and were supposed to make Antwerp completely impregnable. In fact, they became obsolete at the time of laying the first stone. If in 1858, when Brialmont presented his project, smoothbore guns carried out aimed shooting at 900 meters, then already during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Krupp put rifled guns and siege mortars into the army, which provided up to 7.5 kilometers of aimed shooting. Bringing such guns to the new walls even for 2 kilometers could destroy the center of Antwerp. Nevertheless, the walls existed and made a very reliable impression. The area between the old and new walls began to be populated, as the bourgeoisie preferred to avoid social unrest in the densely populated quarters of the center, where almost medieval buildings remained and where the mounted police were ineffective. (It must not be forgotten that in Brussels, the People’s House, designed by Victor Hort, from 1900 to 1914 was the permanent bureau of the 2nd International.) The supporting structures of this building, unfortunately destroyed in 1965, were brought to Antwerp, and perhaps we can dine under these vaults, still remembering Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Plekhanov and Lenin. So the uprising could break out at any minute, there were enough detonators. As is often the case in Belgium, the development of the city was left to private investors, who, having received permission from the district administration, paved new streets, failed communications at their own expense and sold houses built on this already gentrified territory. So it was in that part of Antwerp, where since the 16th century there was a farm Zurenborg. The land here was acidic, infertile, and only by digging a system of drainage channels and planting about 180 poplars, the farm owner managed to make the land suitable for farming. Then the farm changed owners, was an amusement park, until in 1837 it was bought by Senator and President of the Bank of Antwerp Joseph Rainier Ozi. The present intersection of Kogels-Ozilei was formed on the site where the main building of the farm was located until 1894. His children were not poor either. His son Edward becomes governor of Antwerp, and his daughter marries John Cogels, a Catholic senator. Edward Osey and John Cogels founded the East Antwerp Development Company. They contributed land, a group of Catholic aristocrats and the upper Antwerp bourgeoisie contributed money, and so was born the miracle that you should see on an excursion to Antwerp. The houses under construction were supposed to give the impression of wealth and have obvious aesthetic value. 70% of the houses built were designed for individual occupancy and were rented or sold finished, with furniture and curtains. There were small gardens in front of the houses (quite unusual in Belgium, where the garden, a former garden, is usually hidden behind the facade). All the gardens were separated by bars, which were forged by the only local blacksmith. Until 1929, all gardens were served by gardeners hired by the joint-stock company. It was forbidden to plant trees with high trunks that could cover the facade. The only tree allowed was the white acacia, which easily tolerates annual trimming. You can still see it here and there on the block. Miraculously escaped destruction in the late sixties, the Zurenborg quarter was protected by royal decree in 1980 and 170 buildings were declared architectural monuments. But is it real Ar Nouveau and how it differs from Brussels, and the answers to many other questions you will learn during the tour