Immeuble à appartements Hamspohn — Anvers

Apartment building designed by the architect Joseph Somers and dated 1937 by a façade stone, built for the widow Clémentine Jokl-Hamspohn and completed in 1938; with its architecture "between a sober Art Deco and a moderate modernism", the inventory considers it representative of the ten or so apartment buildings Somers built in Antwerp in the 1930s. The design, which provided an owner's flat occupying a whole floor, was further altered after the permit was granted, notably in the choice of facing, and one floor of rental flats was dropped in 1938 in favour of a rooftop studio. Of three bays, the building has a basement, six storeys and a set-back top floor, with a façade of natural-stone slabs on a bluestone plinth, a combination with brick having first been considered; above a ground floor with false joints, the symmetry is set by two rising rectangular bay windows, linked on the top floor by a balcony. The wrought iron of the central entrance, breastworks and grilles, by the J. Gowie workshop, gives the elevation a traditional touch; the original steel window frames survive in full, and the black flamed-marble hall keeps the original lift, installed in 1938 by E. Thièry. The building is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.