| Full text |
Guild Houses. BRUSSELS. 10. Route. 131
(‘La Balance’). —On the S.W. side, to the left of the Hétel de Ville,
are the *Hétel des Brasseurs, or Hall of the Brewers (1752), bearing
on its gable an equestrian statue of Duke Charles of Lorraine (p. 98),
by Jaquet (1854), and the old hall of the Guild of Butchers (No. 9;
1720; ‘le Cygne’), indicated by a swan. — The adjacent House of the
Bailiff, or Maison de I’ Etoile (No. 8), reconstructed in 1897, is con-
nected with the Hétel de Ville by an archway, in which are memorial
tablets to Burgomaster Charles Buls (1882-99), who was the chief
agent in securing the restoration of the Guild Houses, and to the
sheriff Eberhard t’Serclaes (d. 1388), who defended Brussels in 1366
against the Flemish Count Louis de Male.
At the back of the Hétel de Ville, about 200 yds. to the S.W., at the
corner of the Rue du Chéne (Eikstraat) and the Rue de l’Etuve (Stoof-
straat), stands a diminutive and, it must be confessed, somewhat naive
figure, one of the curiosities of Bruss els, known as the Mannikin Fountain
(Pl. M. P.; C, 4), cast in bronze after Duquesnoy’s model in 1619. He is a
great favourite with the lower classes, who regard him as ‘le plus ancien
bourgeois de Bruxelles’. A similar statue in stone formerly stood here,
to which Charles V., among others, presented a gala suit of clothes.
When Louis XV. took the city in 1747 the mannikin wore the white
cockade, in 1789 he was decked in the colours of the Brabant Revolution,
under the French régime he adopted the tricolour, next the Orange colours,
and in 1830 the blouse of the Revolutionists. Louis XV., indeed, is said
to have invested him with the cross of St. Louis. The figure is not with-
out considerable artistic excellence.
e. The Inner Boulevards and Western and Southern Parts of the
Lower Town.
n the Gare du Nord and Gare du Midi, see p. 125.
Economiques (p. 94) start near the Exchange.
The Inner Boulevards (Pl. B, ©, D, 2-5), which lie to the W.
of the Rue Neuve and the Rue du Midi and extend from the Gare
du Nord to the Gare du Midi, intersecting the entire old town,
were constructed by an English company in 1867-74, at a cost of
27,000,000 francs. Prizes up to 20,000 fr. were offered by the city
council for the most attractive fagades in the new streets, with ex-
cellent effects. The prize-winners were Beyaert and Janlet. The
line of thoroughfare begins with two converging arms, the Boule-
vard du Nord and the Boulevard de la Senne. The latter, like the
following Boulevard Anspach and Boulevard du Hainaut, is built
over the Senne. In the central parts of this thoroughfare, where
the throng of traffic is greatest, tempting shops, cafés of all sizes,
and ‘tayernes’ succeed each other in almost unbroken succession,
and these are generally most crowded in the evening. Flemish is
frequently heard in the cafés.
The busy Bourzvarp pu Norp (Pl. D, 2) and the Boulevard
de la Senne (Pl. D, 2) meet at the laxpe’ PLacz pg BrouckkEE
(Pl. D, 2), where the Monument Anspach, a large fountain designed
by E. Janlet and Paul de Vigne, was erected in 1897 in memory of
Burgomaster Anspach (d. 1879), one of the chief promoters of the
Tramways be
The Chemins de Fe |
