The Story of Brussels

by Ernest Gilliat-Smith

The Town Hall of Brussels

There is only one municipal building in Brussels which dates from the period we are now considering, but that building is perhaps unique. Search where you will you will hardly find a more perfect specimen of civic architecture, and this at least may be said without fear of contradiction: no city can boast a nobler town hall than that which Brussels possesses. Ypres, perhaps, someone will say, or Longfellow's 'quaint old Flemish city,' but the great hall of Ypres was not the place where the Senate met, but a cloth market, and though the Town Hall of Bruges is a gem, for this very reason it cannot compete with the Town Hall of Brussels—as well compare, say, the Sainte Chapelle with Westminster Abbey. Of course it is not perfect. Where on earth will you find perfection either in architecture or anything else? But this much may be justly said, the Town Hall of Brussels approaches nearer to perfection than any other building of its kind in Europe which dates from the same period, even in its present state, for we do not see it now, be it borne in mind, as it was in the heyday of its glory. The army of burgomasters who stand under niches between the first and second storey of the east wing were not there in those days: they are a modern addition of 1863, and take the place of a blind arcade of a very simple character, which was certainly never intended to be peopled with statues. Nor is this all, if we would picture to ourselves the old building as it used to be we must not only subtract, we must add. The original statues, about half as many as there are now, probably somewhat smaller, and certainly more vigorously, and, at the same time, more delicately, carved, were all of them arrayed in vestures of gold, wrought about with divers colours, and in those days, we must not forget, the men of the Low Countries had an eye for colour, and the greatest painters of the age did not think it beneath their dignity to busy themselves with work of this kind.

In the early days the Senate of Brussels had no fixed place of assembly. The city fathers held their meetings sometimes in convents, sometimes in churches, sometimes in private dwellings, sometimes in the open air, and it was not until the year 1300 that they obtained a Town Hall, or rather what did duty for a Town Hall—'a house of stone,' in the Ster Straat, now the Rue de l'Hôtel de Ville, which they had recently purchased from a mercer named Odo, and in this old house of stone—most houses were in those days of timber—justice was administered and all public business transacted for more than a hundred years, until at last, in the fulness of time, the present Town Hall was built.

Very little has come down to us concerning its early history. The foundation stone seems to have been laid towards the close of Duchess Jeanne's long reign, probably about the year 1402, and the building operations must have progressed rapidly, for in the town accounts for the month of October 1405 divers sums are entered for the cost of gilding the summits—weather-cocks, doubtless, or something of the kind—of various roofs and towers, amongst them 'the tower opposite the Maison de l'étoile' of which we give a sketch on page [1]; and in 1421 Philippe de Saint-Pol, speaking of the Town Hall in his letter to the Emperor Sigismund anent the trouble with the Germans, calls it 'un édifice très grand et formidable.' At this time the east wing must certainly have been completed, and it was from the gallery over the arcade which skirts this portion of the building that Vander Zype and Saint-Pol himself were wont to address the mob.

The building operations had been interrupted by the revolution, and they were not again resumed until the 4th of March 1444, when the little Count of Charolais (Charles le Téméraire), then only six years old, laid the foundation stone of the tower. Five years later, in 1449, Jan Vandenberg was named Meester van den Steenwerke van den torre van den Stad Raethuyse op de merct, at a salary of two saluts a day, for which sum he undertook to prepare the plans, to supervise the work, and to hold himself responsible for its good quality. This is the first time that we find Vandenberg's name mentioned in the city records in connection with the Town Hall. He pushed the work on so vigorously that in less than five years it was done; nor had he any reason to be ashamed of the result of his labour: the steeple which he had raised in so short a time was one of the finest in Christendom, and, despite its fragile and lace-like appearance, one of the most solidly constructed.

The story that Vandenberg on the day of its completion hurled himself headlong from the highest pinnacle, disgusted because he had not set his tower in the centre of the façade, is not only absurd on the face of it, but demonstrably false. In 1431, the date of the alleged suicide, the tower was non-existent, and fifty years after the true date of its completion Vandenberg was still alive; but, for all that, a tragedy did occur on that very spot and on that very day—at least so say the monks of Rouge Cloître, and they are generally to be trusted: no one went out of the world, but someone came into it.

On the day on which Vandenberg gave the finishing touch to his work by setting up in its place that colossal statue of Saint Michael which we still admire—a weather-cock, so delicately adjusted that, notwithstanding its vast bulk, it turns with the slightest breeze—it was arranged seemingly that some sort of ceremony should take place on the top of the tower (where no doubt a platform had been erected), by way of inauguration. Among the little band of intrepid climbers who had determined to be present there was a lady, gentle reader, in delicate health, and when she reached her destination the crisis came, and there, at that dizzy height, three hundred and thirty feet above the Grand' Place, suspended as it were betwixt earth and heaven, with Saint Michael hovering above her head, she in due course became a mother, and doubtless the baby was presently named after the archangel who had presided at its birth.

The west wing of the Town Hall was not completed until 1486. Though it bears a general resemblance to the east wing, and at first sight they seem to be similar, on closer inspection it will be found that the two wings differ considerably, not only in detail, but also in their main outlines. It would be hard to say which is the more beautiful, but, all things considered, the earlier portion seems to be structurally the more perfect. The sculptured capitals of the stately arcade—which extends from one end of the building to the other, broken only by the tower, and which contains no less than sixteen arches—deserve to be examined closely: they are all most delicately carved, and several of them display satirical groups, which are sufficiently quaint. Note also the great oak door studded with nails and supported by foliated hinges, and the sculpture with which it is surrounded: all these things are ancient and exceedingly beautiful. Pass through into the courtyard—a very pleasant place in summer time, with its fountains and foliage—and there, if you are a wise man and believe that sightseeing should be done leisurely, you will rest awhile and perhaps compare the old Gothic work of the fourteen hundreds with the work which was put up after the bombardment of 1695: the architecture, of course, is wholly different, but, for all that, not to be despised.

The interior of the Town Hall of Brussels has been so modernised that very little of the original work remains, or is at all events visible; but the general arrangement, at least so far as concerns the upper storeys, seems to be much the same as it was in days of yore, and from their associations several of the rooms are interesting—notably, on the first floor of the west wing, the Council Chamber, where the great council sat to settle the affairs of the city; on the same floor of the east wing the Throne Room, the Salle Gothique as it is now called, where the Dukes of Brabant used to receive the homage of the burghers and swear to maintain their privileges, and where on more than one occasion the Estates-General assembled; and further on, the Hall of Nations, where the nine nations of Brussels met to discuss their affairs, and where, too, the city magistrates sat in judgment. A great crucifix was affixed to the wall to remind them that justice must be tempered with mercy, and hence it was also called the Hall of Christ.

For the rest, in sculpture, tapestry, pictures, furniture of all kinds and of every description, the Town Hall is very rich. It varies in age and also in quality: a little of it, a very little of it, dates from mediæval times; there is much good work of the sixteen hundreds, more of the succeeding century, but modern things are the most in evidence, and some of them show that there are still craftsmen in Brussels who are not unworthy of the title.