Maison Mathieu, Elisabethlaan 45 — Anvers

Town house in the Art Deco style built for Francine Mathieu after an April 1929 design by the architect Emiel Janssens (signature in metal letters on the façade); work began on 25 May 1929. The Bosselaar-Mathieu couple, who probably moved in from 1930, fled the German occupation in 1940 thanks to visas issued in Bordeaux by the Portuguese consul Aristide de Sousa Mendes. Semi-detached, with a canted corner and two storeys over a basement under a complex slate pseudo-mansard, it combines red brick with abundant white stone, in an asymmetrical composition and dynamic massing in which two projections with bell gables and curved pseudo-pediments flank a lower corner volume. The main projection carries a three-sided bay window on a semicircular base, whose lower section has a fluted profile that the inventory calls typical of Art Deco; the corner entrance with a parabolic arch is topped by a pseudo-loggia with small conical columns. The wooden front door with ironwork in a fountain pattern, the garage door and the grilles survive, as do, inside, the wooden staircase under a coloured stained-glass skylight, the chimneypieces and the floors; the window joinery has been renewed. The house is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.