Historische schets
 
De Zebrastraat te Gent.
Een Sociaal Huisvestingsproject van voor W.O.I

The Zebra-Street in Ghent.
A Prewar (Worldwar I) Social Housing Project

Van de Steene Luc. Juni 1983
 
 
The Ghent Association for Workers’ Dwellings
“The first association in which the town participated to a considerable extent” (neutral).
 
As early as the end of 1895 the town council came to terms that the workers’ lamentable housing condition most urgently needed improvements. This was no easy problem. It was not only necessary to pull down the existing uninhabitable cottages and slum-hovels, but at the same time new houses must be provided, better than the previous ones, but let for hire at the same rent.
 
"The wish, unanimously expressed by the town council of our city, to see the worker’s housing accommodation improved, which was particularly emphasized and advocated by the mourned member of the council Mr Pieter De Bruyne; further the extreme urgency of a solution to this problem, since in several quarters of the town, numerous slum-hovels have been pulled down but not rebuilt at all, this because of the big public works performed under the initiative of the mourned Burgomaster Braun; and finally what every citizen has been able to perceive: that in Ghent the private initiative fails to build the houses wanted and consequently it proved indispensable for an official organism to take its place".
 
These are the most important facts that stir up the town council to establish an association and interfere promptly as it was done in Glasgow.
 
The socialist fraction of the town council had already put forward a proposition, by which the town authorities themselves coudl build workman’s dwellings, eventually by means of a kind of mix ed association.
 
It was no sooner that three years later -  on th 5th of August 1901 - that the town council approved the articles of association of the “Ghent Association of Workmen’s Dwellings”: the task of the association would be “… to build, buy, sell and let cheap dwellings intended for the working classes inthe city of Ghent or in the adjacent municipalities”.
 
As we were saying, it was the association’s aim to build houses in order to let them as cheap as possible to the working classes. But it would take a long time before the association was in fact erected. All kinds of administrative and financial difficulties burdened its birth. But finally - on the 20th October 1904 - the “Ghent Association” could start with a capital of 500.000 BF collected by the town, the charitable association, the administration of the civil charity houses and several private persons (among whom a few socialist syndicats and big textile undertakers).
It is remarkable that this association was founded before the National Association for Housing (law of 1919).
 
The following year (1905) that new association built as an experiment a first series of twenty dwellings nearby the Wilgen Street, those dwellings were still classical one-family-houses.
 
But the managers soon had to face a difficult problem by which the initiatives would be limited to a minimum: at the selling of building lands, private undertakers succeeded several times in keeping the association off the market.
 
In this way the Ghent Association would never succeed in building dwellings in the center of the town (certainly not in the neighbourhood of undertakings if it fundamentally kept to one-family-dwellings).
 
In fact the association soon started to built dwellings for several families. It was the first time that such dwellings were built in Ghent and - in opposition to the expectations - they were a greater success than the one-family-houses. (1908, 60 dwellings for several families nearby the Zebra-Street).
 
Finally the association disposed over 241 dwellings at the beginning of the First World War, which is not very much in comparison with the 6541 cottage-houses.
 
The prewar houses were all designed by Karel Van Rysselberghe. But the managers of the housing association and especially the socialists, had obtained those houses only laboriously of a body that sometimes hid behind the private initiative or sometimes negated the need of new workmen’s dwellings to keep the association from working seriously.
 
The town’s architect Karel (Charles) Van Rysselberghe (1850-1920)
Karel Van Rysselberghe was a typical representative of his time. He studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. After his studies he was employed by his former teacher Ad. Pauli and by other builders.
 
In 1879 he was appointed town’s architect. He occupied this office until 1916. In 1892 he was appointed teacher in the top form of architecture at the Academy. The teaching in this institute is mainly based on the study of the classical styles.
 
As a town’s architect, he designed especially school buildings and he restored several monuments. He used different styles for his designs: a neo-classical, a neo-renaissance and a composed style. We can consider him to be an eclectic. He has also worked disinterested at the designing of workmen’s dwellings. These dwellings have a very progressive character as far as the utility, the harmony, the outlook and the economical attitude of the architect are concerned.
 
Two types can be distinguished in his social building project: on the one hand the small, compact one-family-houses with one or two floors; on the other hand the houses for several families with three building layers. The plans of the one-family-houses are nearly identical to those elsewhere in Belgium in the same period.
They consist of:
  • An entrance hall, two rooms (a living room and a kitchen) and an annex (a back-kitchen and a toilet) on the ground floor.
  • Two bedrooms, whether or not with a loft on the first floor