Établissements Carlier — Anvers

Block of flats and shop of the Établissements Carlier, dealers in leather goods and travel articles, designed in 1935 by architect Alfons Van Braekel in a style between Art Deco and modernism, on the corner of Meirbrug and Schoenmarkt, with a wing on Wiegstraat; begun in early 1936, it was completed at the end of the same year by the contractor Van Riel & Van den Bergh. The eight-storey main building, including a mezzanine and a set-back attic with a crenellated parapet, has a streamlined façade of white natural stone centred on a broad rounded corner crowned by a circular loggia on columns, while three-sided oriels articulate the cantilevered upper floors. Damaged in the war, it was repaired in 1947 to a 1946 design by Van Braekel, when the loggias of the first four floors were closed with the present curved windows; the Wiegstraat wing, in cream brick, is rather modernist. Regarded as the architect's most important interwar work, the building is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.