Commercial Building — Anvers

Art Deco commercial and office building, erected for Frans Daelemans of the lift company Liften Daelemans to a 1925 design by the architects Jan Vanhoenacker, John Van Beurden and Jos Smolderen; the contractor was Van Riel & Van den Bergh, licensee of Hennebique reinforced concrete. Conceived largely as a property investment, it comprised two shops and offices on the ground floor and mezzanine, and office floors to let on five storeys; it was converted into apartments in the early 2000s. The façade of five bays, six storeys and a mezzanine under a flat roof, on a reinforced-concrete frame, is symmetrical and divided into base, upper storeys and attic, crowned by the inscription "COMMERCIAL BUILDING"; the inventory attributes its Art Deco character to its structure, decoration and ironwork. The decoration is limited to spiral motifs on the window parapets and pilaster capitals in the form of a stylised flower basket, a motif repeated in the wrought-iron window railings; the building is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.