Résidence Estoril — Anvers

Art Deco apartment building on the corner of the Doornelei and the Karel Oomsstraat, which the architect Benoit J. Dupont built on his own account to a 1934 design; the permit was granted only in 1935, after a land exchange linked to the widening of the Karel Oomsstraat, and construction, begun on 15 July 1935, was completed by 27 October. Dupont set up his office on the ground floor and his home on the first floor; the inventory counts the Résidence Estoril, the only corner building among the dozen or so he built in five years in Antwerp in an architecture between Art Deco and modernism, among his earliest examples. With a Hennebique-type reinforced-concrete frame, the seven-bay building has seven storeys under a flat roof; the symmetrical façade is articulated by three taller projecting sections, rounded at the central corner and marked by three-sided bay windows at the ends, and the alternation of white stone slabs and red Belvédère brick emphasises the verticality of the corner section and the horizontality of the wings. The decoration is limited to the fluted crowning and the small Art Deco ornaments flanking the corner section; the wide windows reinforce the streamlined character of the building, but their original steel frames have been replaced and the two flagpoles have disappeared. The building is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.