Résidence La France — Anvers

Apartment building in the Art Deco style on the corner of Jan Van Rijswijcklaan and Desguinlei, built after a 1926 design by the architects Jan Jacobs and Paul Smekens and completed in 1927 for the engineer William Dominique Murdoch, a cousin of Jacobs; it was the first large building of its kind on Jan Van Rijswijcklaan. The inventory calls it representative of the matter-of-fact Art Deco ("zakelijke art deco") that Jacobs developed in the late 1920s, before turning to modernism. With a canted corner and seven storeys including a set-back top floor, it has a sober, scarcely decorated stone façade of fourteen bays with marked vertical articulation; the corner is accentuated by a three-sided bay window continued above the cornice by a set-back five-sided top, and two-sided bay windows with stepped tops mark the axes of the elevations. Mitre arches and a wrought-iron balustrade emphasise the crowning of the corner; the ironwork of the entrance, the garage door and the front-garden railing survives, while the windows have largely been renewed. The original lift, installed in 1927 by the manufacturer Daelemans in an open shaft surrounded by the stair, with its oak cage, wrought-iron folding gates and technical installation, has been protected as a monument since 1996; the building is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.