Les Pavillons français, Art Deco apartment building in Schaerbeek, Belgium
Les Pavillons français is a fifteen-storey Art Deco apartment tower at Rue du Noyer 282 in Schaerbeek, its pale cream facade rising in stepped, set-back tiers with a corner tower topped by a small antenna. Rows of identical rectangular windows run in regular vertical columns across the flat, unornamented walls, and a lower dark slate roof with dormers adjoins the taller mass.
Les Pavillons français grew out of preliminary projects begun in 1929; a principle authorisation followed in 1930 for a construction planned in two phases, with only ten floors above the ground floor and mezzanine at first. An eleventh floor was drawn the following year, and the building was completed in December 1934. It was financed by the Walloon businessman Lucien Kaisin, founder of the Crédit général hypothécaire, and his son Gérard, on plans by architect Marcel Peeters, in the same spirit as Kaisin's Résidence Palace. The whole building was listed as a monument on 19 April 2007.
The building's name refers to the Pavillons français, a Paris department store, though the Brussels block has no link to it. Residents from 1934 could use a communal restaurant, a postal service and a waste-collection service, and receive visitors in a ground-floor reception room outside the private flat.
The building stands at Rue du Noyer 282 in Schaerbeek, its stepped cream facade and corner tower visible from the street. It is a private residence, so visits are limited to the exterior; the entrance hall that once received guests is not open to the public. The whole complex was listed as a monument on 19 April 2007.
The building's name refers to France, yet it stands in Schaerbeek and was financed by the Walloon businessman Lucien Kaisin, founder of the Crédit général hypothécaire, with his son Gérard. Kaisin had already backed the Résidence Palace, a complex planned for a thousand residents, and repeated its formula of luxury flats with shared services here.
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