Herbosch Building — Anvers

Office building in the Art Deco style on the corner of Van Meterenkaai and Sint-Pietersvliet, built after a 1925 design by the architect Louis Hamaide (date stone) for the shipowner Eugène Herbosch, who then had a fleet of 225 inland-waterway vessels; the contractor Gebroeders Grangé carried out the construction. Seven storeys high under a flat roof, with seven by four bays, it has a white-stone façade on a bluestone plinth, whose sober geometric decoration, profiles and mouldings characteristic of Art Deco the inventory points out; lesenes and two- or three-sided projecting windows stress its verticality. The left projection and the corner, both taller, are crowned by a triangular pseudo-pediment; the attic carries the inscription "HERBOSCH BUILDING", the bow of a barge projects from the corner above the ground floor, and a sign of Mercury serves as the keystone of the entrance. The carved reliefs of barges planned at the corner were left out at the request of the city architect Emiel Van Averbeke; converted into apartments with commercial space to a 1998 design, the building then received a set-back top floor. It is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.