Immeuble Riga, Suikerrui 18 — Anvers

Apartment building with a shop in the Art Deco style, built for Julien Riga after a 1929 design by the architect Louis De Belder, based in Schoten. The travel-goods shop, specialising in "trunks for the Congo", occupied the ground floor and mezzanine, with a dwelling at the rear, and the three upper floors held six rental flats. Of four bays and four storeys plus a mezzanine under a flat roof, the façade, rendered in imitation stone and now painted, is articulated by fluted colossal pseudo-half-columns and topped by an attic that rises over the two central bays into a shouldered pseudo-pediment; the granite cladding of the ground floor is recent. The frieze carries four reliefs of means of transport — ocean liner, train, car and aeroplane — referring to the trade of the J. Riga firm. It is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.