Immeuble de bureaux Ruys & Co — Anvers

Office building in a moderate Art Deco style, built after a 1920 design by the architect Willie Pijl (façade inscription) for the shipbroking and forwarding firm Ruys & Co, as an extension of a former town house on the Oever. It belongs to Pijl's relatively early work, whose output of the 1920s shows, according to the inventory, the beginnings of a classically inspired Art Deco. The five-bay red-brick façade, with bluestone plinth and sills and white-stone string course and attic, comprises a low ground floor with round-arched openings and colossal upper floors articulated by lesenes, with round-arched keystoned windows on the top floor and a blind pseudo-balustrade as crowning. Originally three storeys high, the building is now incorporated in a senior citizens' residence of the OCMW designed in 2002; it was then raised by one storey, the façade composition being retained and the attic reinstated. It is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.