Chaussée d’Anvers

Older inhabitants of Brussels remember Chaussée d’Anvers as an extremely lively shopping street in the middle of a working-class residential area. The indiscriminate expropriations for the Manhattan Plan destroyed the life of the community. Newer apartment blocks replaced the demolished dwellings, but this was done too late to rehouse the original inhabitants. At ground level there were restaurants, snack bars and food shops for the new residents and workers from the surrounding offices.

The modern brick-built church across the street replaced the neo-Gothic St Roch’s Church, which was also destroyed under the Manhattan Plan. It is worth walking in and admiring the stained-glass windows by artist Pierre Majérus (1995).

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