Maisons de rapport de la Berchemsche Bouwhandel, Pretoriastraat 78-80 — Anvers

Pair of Art Deco multi-family houses, designed in 1927 for the limited company Berchemsche Bouwhandel by the architect Charles Wuyts, the company's in-house architect. Founded in 1909, this mortgage, credit and savings fund had hundreds of houses built between 1910 and 1930, many of them in Zurenborg, in all the styles then current. The two houses have three storeys and three bays under flat roofs; their cornice façades have a stone plinth, a wooden cornice on brackets and a red-brick facing with cement bands. Each façade is enlivened on the first floor by a three-sided brick bay window, which takes up the two left-hand bays at no. 80 and the full width at no. 78; on the ground floor, the two houses are identical but designed as mirror images. The layout, repeated on each storey, reflects the original division into three flats; the group is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory and stands within the protected townscape of Zurenborg.

Translated from the French original.