Antwerp · cultural
Ancien cinéma Tokio — Anvers
- Architect
- Hendrik Driesmans (contractor)
- Date
- 1922
- Type
- cultural
- Style
- Art Deco
- City
- Antwerp
- Status
- inventoried
- Address
- Verlatstraat 20-22, 2000 Antwerpen
Cinema opened in 1912 near the Hippodrome, badly damaged during the First World War and rebuilt in 1922 for Frans De Backer. Ernest Pelgrims's Beaux-Arts design was replaced by more modern Art Deco plans by the Brussels firm Le Plasticolor, headed by the contractor Hendrik Driesmans, with a reinforced-concrete auditorium behind a three-storey front building. The corniced façade, in red brick on a bluestone plinth, carries a wide, strongly projecting oriel; its Japanese-inspired decoration disappeared after the Second World War, when the cinema was renamed "Artis", and the façade is now painted entirely white. Used as an auction room in 2012, the building is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.
Translated from the French original.