THE WEEK OF Rebecca Van Remoortere (Antwerp)
Every Saturday a reporter returns on the events of the past week.
Rebecca Van Remoortere
Huize Herbosch, the former governor’s residence of Hotel Max von der Becke. Next to the new Provincial House over the Koning Albert Park is a stately domain with a mansion from 1912. A hidden protected monument in the city. Hidden behind a large gate and a wild driveway with a large park garden behind it that an actual Antwerper can only dream of.
The domain is less hidden for the neighbours, the employees in the Provincial House. They overlook the garden of Huize Herbosch and can only gaze out during their coffee break and daydream about life as lord of such a mansion.
The current owner paid less than 2.5 million euros for the domain in 2018. He would upgrade it and restore it to its full glory. But that hasn’t happened (yet). On the contrary. For weeks now, the employees in the Provincial House have seen the waste in the garden pile up into one large illegal landfill. So bad, that provincial governor Cathy Berx has reported it.
What could have been a beautiful piece of protected heritage in the city has now become a hallucinatory dump. Until last year, the Georgian Igor still lived in the building. Officially a squatter, unofficially the janitor who protected everything spic and span. In 2008, all other squatters outside had not had good intentions with the building and he opened the proceeds inside and started working in the garden as if it were his own park garden.
Igor has developed in Ekeren and was heartbroken at the sight of the images of the landfill this week. He wondered how the new owner has a lack of respect for the authentic elements of the mansion. The original wood inside was damaged and the naked golden cherubs turned, he said. He saw that when he still lived there.
A squatter who is heartbroken about how ‘his’ squat, a visible mansion from 1912, is rendered dire, the world upside down. But not in Antwerp, as it turned out.
Fortunately, there are also people who do consider the value of protected heritage in the city. In March, for example, the luxury hotel Sapphire House Antwerp will open in the wake of the Handelsbeurs. An important piece of Antwerp history has been restored and reopened. Be it for those who can afford it.
Maybe even more charming. At the beginning of this year, the skippers’ sisters Linda and Cynthia from Beveren opened another tavern on the Kerkschip in the Houtdok. A historic ship from the period of the Second World War that was only lying fairly empty in the dock. Out of sheer nostalgia, the sisters and their partners quit their jobs to make the boat a place again. If only to come and eat mashed potatoes with blind finch for an apple and an egg. “The last ten years of my career before I retire I put my heart and soul into this boat,” Linda said this week.
And so one piece of historical heritage deteriorates again and acquires a soul and a kitchen.