A pharmacist bought a twenty-two-year-old mansion in 1927 and asked his architect to add one room to it. That room, a winter garden under a Byzantine dome, is now the reason people come.
At a glance
The Maison Pelgrims stands at rue de Parme 69 in Saint-Gilles, a commune that holds more Art Nouveau and eclectic town houses per street than anywhere else in Brussels. Adolphe Pirenne designed it in 1905 for the Colson family, in the eclectic manner of the Belgian bourgeoisie, with Flemish Renaissance accents in the brick and stone of the street front. In 1927 the pharmacist Eugène Pelgrims bought the house and commissioned Fernand Petit to enlarge and remodel it. Petit kept faith with Pirenne outside and worked in Art Deco inside. The commune of Saint-Gilles owns it today, and its former private garden is now the public Parc Pierre Paulus.
Key facts
- Built: 1905, for the Colson family
- Architects: Adolphe Pirenne (1905); Fernand Petit (1927)
- Remodelled for: Eugène Pelgrims, pharmacist, from 1927
- Styles: Eclecticism and Art Deco
- Type: Hôtel particulier — a private urban mansion
- Address: Rue de Parme 69, 1060 Saint-Gilles, Brussels
- GPS: 50.828669, 4.348717 — View on Google Maps
- Protected: Classified as a monument on 21 June 2001
History
Pirenne built the house in the year Saint-Gilles was filling up fastest, when a generation of Brussels architects was mixing historical grammars into facades meant to announce a family rather than a style. The Colson house was published in the Brussels review Vers l’Art in 1906, across five plates: the street front, the plans, a staircase detail, a chimneypiece. It was, in other words, a building its profession noticed.
Twenty-two years later it changed hands and changed language. Eugène Pelgrims brought in Fernand Petit, who left the facades close to what Pirenne had drawn and rebuilt the inside to the taste of the late 1920s. The gilded salon and the winter garden date from this campaign. The original furniture has since been dispersed, so what survives is the architecture itself rather than the rooms as the family used them.
The commune restored the building between October 2023 and September 2025, at a cost close to one million euros, with a regional grant of €372,568 toward it. The work covered the 1905 oak staircase, the blue stained glass, the dome of the winter garden and the sculpted ceiling of the gilded salon, alongside the unglamorous essentials of wiring and fire safety. It reopened on 16 September 2025 and now houses the culture department of Saint-Gilles, which programmes exhibitions and artist residencies there.
What you see
From the street the house reads as 1905: brick and stone in the eclectic register, with the stepped, gabled vocabulary Brussels borrowed from the Flemish Renaissance. Nothing prepares you for the back. The garden front opens toward Parc Pierre Paulus, and it is from the park — not the pavement — that the building makes sense, because that is the side Petit was working for.
The winter garden is the set piece. Its dome draws on Byzantine models and is filled with blue stained glass, so the light inside arrives cold and even, the opposite of the warm gilding next door in the salon doré, where a sculpted ceiling looks out over the park. Between the two campaigns runs Pirenne’s oak staircase of 1905, which Petit did not touch. Walking from the stair to the dome is a walk across twenty-two years of Belgian taste, taken in about fifteen paces.
Practical information
- Municipal cultural venue since September 2025 — interiors open for exhibitions, concerts and events, not as a permanent museum
- Check the programme of the Saint-Gilles culture department before travelling; some events require booking
- The garden facade is visible at any time from Parc Pierre Paulus, which is public and free
- In October 2026 the house is one of the venues of the Festival ARTONOV, which stages performances inside Brussels heritage interiors
Getting there
Rue de Parme runs off place Louis Morichar, in the upper part of Saint-Gilles, about ten minutes on foot from the Horta Museum and fifteen from Brussels-South station. Trams along the chaussée de Waterloo and the Parvis de Saint-Gilles put you within a short walk. Enter Parc Pierre Paulus first if you want the view of the garden front before you see the door.
Nearby
- Horta Museum — the architect’s own house and studio, ten minutes away
- Hôtel Winssinger — Horta’s town house of 1894–1897, in the same commune
- Rue Vanderschrick — Ernest Blerot’s complete Art Nouveau street front
- Maison Hannon — Jules Brunfaut’s corner house of 1902
- Brussels — Victor Horta and Art Nouveau — the CHO city guide
Sources
- Brussels-Capital Region, architectural heritage inventory (monument.heritage.brussels), building file 6769 — architects, dates, client, styles, typology, classification of 21 June 2001, dispersal of the furniture
- « Maison située rue de Parme, architecte Ad. Pirenne », Vers l’Art, 12, 1906, plates 67–71 — contemporary publication of the 1905 house
- Monuments et sites protégés, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale, La Renaissance du Livre, 2003, pp. 120–122
- RTBF, report on the reopening of the Maison Pelgrims — restoration dates and cost, regional grant, current use
- Commune of Saint-Gilles, culture department (stgilles.brussels) — current programme and access
- OpenStreetMap Nominatim — coordinates verified against rue de Parme 69
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