SUBJECTS of INTEREST
BILL EASTER
Antwerp
The raw functionality of ports, where the business of moving cargoes large and small, back and forth across the no man's land of the quayside, has always attracted me. Add to this the myriad support industries and services that always attend a major centre and there is inevitably plenty of the kind of organised chaos that I enjoy/love to explore. So Antwerp, second only to Rotterdam in Europe, was one of the places I had long wanted to visit, in particular because there are still a lot of older areas there that have not (yet) been redeveloped. In common with most major ports Antwerp has expanded and changed over time, moving ever outwards from its origins close to the old city centre to new, open spaces further out.
But I was interested in the older, messier areas where things are not quite so neat and tidy, where brickwork has not been replaced by steel cladding and the roadways are not all at right-angles to each other. So it was on a bitterly cold day in December 2017 that I found myself in the old harbour admiring the massive heavy metal of the rolling bascule bridge between the old Kattendijk Dock and the Hout Dock known locally as the Mexico Bridge. I couldn't help marvelling at the sheer number of rivets that had been used to hold all this metalwork together. A little further along, on the Zuidkaai of the Amerikadok I was able to walk around the splendid brick-built SAMGA silo, one of the few remaining of this type in the port. Built in 1895 for the Société Anonyme des Magasins à Grains d’Anvers it was an important landmark in the development of the port as a centre the trans-shipment of grain; threatened with demolition as an unwanted leftover in a new development plan, activists campaigned to have it saved and their efforts paid off as it has recently been granted heritage status. Unfortunately, the concrete silo built by the same company and dating from 1939 just behind it wasn’t so lucky: it was demolished in April 2020. A little further along the quayside the more modern concrete SAMGA silo dating from 1971 is still operational.
As Antwerp grew, so did the smaller towns around it, gaining in importance with the construction of major canals and rail connections that the ever expanding port demanded. So Merksem, that used to be a small village on the outskirts of the city, suddenly became a major centre for trans-shipment with the arrival of the Albert Canal in 1939, although it was only after WW2 that serious growth occurred. It was here in 1922 that the Belgian Farmers Bond (now AVEVE) first constructed a steam-driven flour mill that was soon expanded, forming the early components of the vast silo complex we see there today. Not far away Bosto, a well-known Belgian manufacturer of rice-based products, developed their site which now features a text by poet Joke van Leeuwen that delightfully lightens the otherwise utilitarian atmosphere of the quaysides here. Further along the Albert Canal near Wijnegem is a small yeast factory built in 1896 that has since become home to a number of startups; this somewhat isolated spot made me wonder why it had been chosen as the site for the factory back then...
The vast AVEVE silo on the Albert Canal at Merksem dwarfs the older units alongside
The continuation of the enormous AVEVE complex on the quayside of the Groot Dok
A mix of old and new(er) materials in this section on the Westkaai at Merksem
The un/loading terminal on the Westkaai with conveyor bridge to the unit next door
I wonder how long it must have taken...
to build this enormous complex…?
And how many bricklayers...
must have been at work here…?
A truck waits at the entrance to the AVEVE complex
View across the Groot Dok of the main un/loading terminal
The industrial canyons of the BraboMills Westkaai site
Unusually, a newish silo is demolished at the Klein Dok
The Bosto silo with poem by Joke Van Leeuwen
Trailer parking at the rear of the Bosto site
Another Bosto factory further along the Albert Canal, featuring a combination of old and new materials and styles
No poems here sadly, just a rather bleak outlook over the canal on a cold and misty day in December
Entrance of the 1930 art deco Tabalux cigarette factory, since given heritage status and now a charity shop...
An abandoned factory, since demolished, on the Vaartdijk with the faded remains of a wall ad just visible.
The former yeast factory at Wijnegem with some very scruffy buildings alongside - abandoned homes perhaps…?
Before the advent of gas lighting, large windows were part of the main building to let in precious daylight
Nearly all of the locations I visited in Antwerp were worth the effort in one way or another. This is an old industrial area with a long, proud history that keeps moving relentlessly onwards, ruthlessly leaving behind what it no longer needs. At the moment a lot of the industrial buildings of the past can still be admired but they are disappearing fast...