Cité Hellemans

The Cité Hellemans consists of a dense block of red brick apartment buildings arranged around a central, leafy courtyard. Built between nineteen oh five and nineteen fifteen, it replaced some of the most cramped and dilapidated slums in the Marolles district. Architect Émile Hellemans designed these units to provide light, air, and running water to working-class families for the first time. During the construction, workers uncovered the foundations of a seventeenth-century city gate buried right beneath the site.