Cité Hellemans

The Cité Hellemans is recognizable by its seven parallel blocks of red and yellow brick buildings, connected by arched stone passages and pedestrian alleys. Inaugurated in nineteen fifteen in the heart of the Marolles district, it represents a departure from earlier urban projects that cleared slums by displacing the poor to the city's outskirts. Architect Émile Hellemans instead designed these two hundred seventy-two housing units to keep residents within their community, replacing a series of unhealthy, overcrowded impasses with dwellings that featured running water and private toilets—luxuries that were previously unheard of for the neighborhood's working-class families.