The incorporation of the Southern Netherlands into France brought about a change in the organisation of care for the poor. It was no longer organised by the Church but by the State. The laws of 16 Vendémiaire and 7 Frimaire of Year V provided for the establishment of les Commissions des Hospices Civils (the Commissions of the Civil Almshouses) and les Bureaux de Bienfaisance (the Bureaus of Charity). The bureaus were organised per municipality. They provided in-kind assistance at home: clothing, food, heating, medicines, bedding, and sometimes money. The bureaus were financed by collections. The commissions were optional, also per municipality. They managed, among other things, foundling and orphanages, homes for the elderly and hospitals. In 1925 both institutions were replaced by the Commission of Public Assistance.
In Antwerp, the Bureau of Charity was from 1865 to 1922 an important player in social housing. From 1865 to 1885 it built 442 workers’ dwellings in three districts in the northern quarter and 295 in the southern quarter. The dwellings were intended for the ‘better’ working man. The bureau could expropriate the worst courtyards in order to build new neighbourhoods there, or in their vicinity. The workers with steady employment were able to pay the rent, but the unemployed, the disabled and the sick, who at best could count on a small contribution from the Bureau of Charity, were driven from their courtyard and had to look for another, and sometimes even more miserable, dwelling in the remaining courtyards. The urban planning of these districts fitted within the then prevailing trend of beautification of the city, as expressed in the area around the Museum of Fine Arts. From the Baroque period onwards, work was done with axes and symmetrical centres. In straight streets, the police —and if necessary, the mounted gendarmes— could maintain order better than in the chaos of the courtyards. In the three districts in the northern quarter, architect Victor Durlet sought solutions to integrate the workers’ houses into the urban fabric.
The Stuivenberg district, built from 1865 to 1868, originally comprised 167 dwellings. The workers’ houses had one storey, while the shop dwellings (on the corners), the bourgeois and small middle-class houses had two.
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Behind most of the dwellings lay a plot of about 10 metres deep with a small yard and a little garden for growing vegetables. Here were also situated the pump, with a small roof above it, and the toilet. Both installations, together with the sewerage, represented a great hygienic improvement. Around the turn of the century, the dwellings were connected to the water supply.
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The Bureau of Charity proudly reported in their book: “The tenants are workmen of all kinds and craftsmen who work on their own account: shoemakers, smiths, carpenters, dock foremen, etc., and then shopkeepers and clerks, a very mixed population, therefore.” The mixture of social classes improved the appearance of the district. The attitude of the Bureau towards the workers had a paternalistic character: to improve cleanliness, competitions were organised that could yield diplomas.
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The workers’ houses had a width of 5 metres and a depth of 5.5 metres. Upstairs there were two bedrooms: one for the boys and one for the girls. In four types, architect Durlet developed in different ways the position of the parents’ bed on the ground floor. It could be placed, with three surrounding walls, between the vestibule at the front and the displaced staircase at the back; it could be constructed as a box bed, either in the same place under the dog-leg staircase or against the rear façade; or it could be placed in a small bedroom.
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The centre of the district was a widened section of Wilgenstraat. The houses that Durlet placed here appeared more imposing than those of the ordinary workers beside them, through their volumes and through the insertion of gabled façades. On the plans, the middle of the square contained a lawn with sixteen chestnut trees, but in a photograph from 1909 nothing of this is to be seen, and everything is paved. The district was internationally well received: at the Paris World Exhibition of 1889 it received a gold medal in the section of social economy.
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The complex of 78 dwellings built in 1872 around Geelhandplaats gave the impression of an enlarged alley. It was reached through a 10-metre-wide opening between two times three houses above shops, with a total height of three storeys. The square lay about 1.5 metres higher than the gardens, which had a depth of 7 metres. The architect had ingeniously arranged the dwellings for four families so that each family had access to a narrow little garden. The front door opened onto a vestibule with four doors. The two front doors gave access to the three-room dwellings. Through a staircase behind the house one could reach the garden. The two doors at the back of the vestibule led to the staircases of the other dwellings, which had one low room at garden level and three on the upper floor. All dwellings had a cellar and a toilet at the back of the garden. At the rear of the square there were four houses for two families each.
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The urbanisation of the Pesthof district of 1877 was solved in a similar way to that of Stuivenberg. However, the workers’ houses stood back to back with their rear extensions, and the remaining little yard measured barely 4 m². There were 20 shop houses with seven or nine rooms, 29 middle-class houses with seven rooms, 13 small middle-class houses with six rooms, and 68 workers’ houses with four rooms. The middle-class houses had their own pump, but the workers had to fetch their water from one of the ten pumps situated against the façades. The more important houses were located along the edges of the district.
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In 1875, the Bureau of Charity received 1.5 million from the municipal administration of Antwerp, with the commission to build housing for workers near the large urban development of the S.A. du Sud d’Anvers. In 1877, the Bureau organised a competition with, among others, the following provisions: “On the corner of each street a shop house shall be built. The workers’ houses shall have a width of five metres. Besides the ground floor, they shall have one storey, so as to be inhabited by two separate households.” Architect Jean Baptiste Vereecken won the competition. From 1882 onwards, the Bureau built there 267 workers’ houses and 28 shop premises. Some of the buildings realised corresponded to the requested type, with one entrance door, one staircase, and one pump for two families. Most of the multi-family dwellings had eight rooms and four attics for four families. From the number of toilets, one can deduce how many families were housed in such a dwelling.
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Such buildings had two advantages: they were more profitable, and their façades could be understood as those of bourgeois houses. The passageways to the toilet, the pump and the small garden were not separated for the families. In the houses located in the sharp corner between Balansstraat and Batterijstraat, the toilets were situated inside the building —an inferior solution. The living rooms had a fireplace; the bedrooms did not.
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