Maison Willems, Jan Van Rijswijcklaan 206 — Anvers

Town house in a sober Art Deco style ("sobere art-decostijl"), built for G. Willems after a 1927 design by the architects Paul Smekens and Carlos Van der Voodt, one of their first joint projects after the Verswijver double house; Smekens extended it with a garage in 1938. The inventory places it within the personal idiom with Art Deco features that Smekens developed from 1924 under the influence of the Amsterdam School and Dudok. Four storeys high in all and joined to the Freedman house by Joan Coninck Westenberg, it stands out for the articulated relief of projecting and recessed volumes, buttresses and short canopies, notably the three-sided corner bay window and the tall pseudo-mansard. Red brick, white stone facing the street front up to two-thirds of its height and the slate roof support this asymmetrical composition, whose openings of varying sizes, upright or horizontal, follow the interior layout. The original windows have been renewed, but the Art Deco ironwork of the door, balcony, window grilles and front-garden railing survives. The house is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.