Hôtel Deprez-Van de Velde

In 1896 Georges Deprez, newly appointed director of the Val Saint-Lambert crystal works, wanted a pied-à-terre in Brussels for himself and Madame Van de Velde. He approached the architect Georges Hobé, who recommended Victor Horta. The plot was small and sat on a corner; Horta had to leave a front garden five metres deep, closed off by a railing, and fit reused furniture into the interior decoration. The house he designed has four levels: three bays on Rue Boduognat, three on Avenue Palmerston set behind the front garden, and a canted bay joining the two sides.

In 1910 the new owner, Henri Renkin, had the house enlarged and altered by the architects M. and R. Genard. They reworked the end bay on the avenue side and pulled down the neighbouring house, of two unequal bays, to put up in the same style a symmetrical stretch of façade with three bays and three levels and a central entrance. On Rue Boduognat the second bay was entirely altered, and a block of two bays rose where the back courtyard had been, already a garage by 1905; the windows on the corner were walled up and the mouldings that framed the windows were removed. The enlargement keeps the style and materials but does away with the asymmetry of Horta's design.

In 1959 the architect Jean Delhaye, then the owner, planned to alter the façade and the interior, but nothing came of it. In 1963 he applied again, this time to turn the house into offices. The City's board of mayor and aldermen refused; Delhaye appealed to the provincial Permanent Deputation, and the Province granted the permit. The interior was entirely refitted, the 1910 façade on the avenue received a fourth level modelled on that of the 1896 house, and dormers were opened in the roof. The house has been listed since 21 June 1971.

The façades are of white stone with blue stone trim, which forms bands at the foot of the elevation and marks the corners, and the stone decoration is finely worked. On the ground floor most openings are rectangular; on the upper floors they sit under a segmental arch with a slightly broken extrados, in a slim frame. Thin colonnettes mark the corners and flank some bays, and air vents shaped like fish gills punctuate the upper floors. In Horta's design, more than fifty doors and windows pierce the two façades and the canted corner that joins them, and show what each level was for: service in the semi-basement, business on the ground floor, reception on the main floor, private life on the floors above.

On Avenue Palmerston, one of Horta's bays opens on the ground floor with a grilled window whose arch rests on two colonnettes. Two brackets in plant-like curves carry an oriel of trapezoidal plan, whose top forms a parapeted terrace on the third floor, in front of a triple window with pilastered jambs. The 1910 section projects slightly and has three bays, the central one wider. Its doorway became an open bay onto a porch in 1963; above it, a balcony with curved corners, on geometric brackets, has a cast-iron railing in Art Nouveau lines.

On Rue Boduognat, the original main entrance gathers a door under a depressed, slightly scalloped arch and two windows with rampant arches inside a worked surround, increasingly projecting, that draws a broken arch. This surround carries an oriel with concave side faces, which runs the full height of the elevation. Towards the corner the plinth curves and is decked with supple motifs. Stone stems rise from the plinth and climb the façade like plants; on the corner, the carved stone chimney stacks are joined by an arch. The wrought-iron grilles of the ground-floor windows are preserved, as are those of the front garden, whose colonnettes end in a whiplash curve.

The house is seen from the street, on the corner of Avenue Palmerston and Rue Boduognat, in the Squares district.