Letter from Brussels: Keeping up with the (Medieval) Joneses

This week, Red Wool Cap writes from Brussels. I am here briefly in transit to Amsterdam, where I am scheduled to give a talk later this week. A childhood friend, A., lives in the neighborhood of Ixelles in an old Dutch townhouse, complete with a pitched roof and pointed gable. The parapet on the steep roof is topped by a muisetanden, or mouse-tooth – a medieval-style detail, though the house itself was built in the early 1900s. A’s place is flanked by townhouses that would not out look out of place in Paris. When I look down the street I see that the houses alternate in style, and wish this were a more accurate analogy for multi-cultural Belgium. Yet, judging from the news -- not long ago a Flemish politician called for a Czechoslovak-style “velvet divorce” from French-speaking parts of the country -- the social cleavages here still run deep, and Belgians seem far less integrated than the houses in which they live. Brussels, a predominantly French language enclave within Flemish region, can be pleasantly misguiding.


townhouses in Ixelles, with muisetanden













In the afternoon, A. and I head to the Grand Place to gawk at the guilds and eat the waffles (les gauffres). The waffles are piled high on the windows of sweet shops and slightly caramelized on the outside. The guilds are huddled together shoulder-to-shoulder around the square as if gawking at the street magician below. I have been to the square before, but am once again bewitched by the ring of guild houses, each façade more ornate and lavish than its neighbor. Some of the buildings have been cleaned up since I was last here, and the gold leaf glints in the sun (it’s an abnormally clear day in Brussels). The buildings are a curious combination of Gothic, Baroque, and Louis XIC architecture, but the result is far from garish. These are 17th-century buildings, meant to replace the medieval guild houses lost in a cataclysmic bombardment. In 1695, French troops, commanded by the Duke of Villeroy, launched a massive offensive of the city, all but flattening the main square. When the guilds proposed to rebuild, they had to submit proposals to the city council and the governor. I am no fan of red tape, but the council must have been somewhat competent, because the mix of buildings ended up harmonious rather than jarring.

















les gauffres

The town hall and the king’s house are especially ornate, but the guilds don’t fall far behind (there is also a handful of houses originally built by private families, the Rockefellers and Carnegies of their time). The luxury of the buildings resulted not only from the amassed wealth of the guilds, but also from an architectural “keeping up with the Joneses” that dates back to the Medieval period. I am reminded of other instances of competitive architecture – the fourteen stone towers of medieval San Giminiano, in Italy, erected by rival families that seemed to put great faith in the ability of phallic architecture to express their power; or the skyscrapers of Manhattan, with its vertical cathedrals of money-power (phallism taken to new heights). Here in Brussels the Grand Place is solid evidence that economic competition always dovetails with social status, and that both pre-date capitalism.

The Grand Place (Grote Markt)
At the end of the day, having engaged in conspicuous consumption myself (as in, a conspicuous amount of les gauffres) I am content to retreat into the colorful townhouses of Ixelles, where I sleep under the mouse-toothed gabled roof.