Immeuble à appartements Symbole — Anvers

Apartment building in a restrained Art Deco style on the corner of Helenalei and Marialei, designed by the architect David Moëd and dated 1931 by a façade inscription. The client was the Société Anonyme "Symbole", a diamond-trading company founded in 1926 with its seat in the Pelikaanstraat; the programme comprises two shops and five flats, and the building is among Moëd's early works. On a reinforced-concrete frame, the corner building with a canted corner, of five bays and six storeys under a flat roof, alternates red brick and stone-imitation render on a bluestone plinth; according to the inventory, this strict horizontal layering, lined by continuous sills and drip mouldings, gives the architecture its sober, streamlined character. Stacked bay windows, three-sided and rectangular, accentuate the second bay and the corner, and a broad, projecting wooden cornice finishes the façade. The wooden joinery of the shopfronts, entrance door and windows survives; the building is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.