A red-brick town house of 1926 on the corner of the rue du Châtelain and the rue de Livourne, with trapezoidal bow windows, a slate mansard and a large hall lit from above. On the Brussels legal heritage inventory since 2024, it is now the hotel and restaurant Odette en Ville.
At a glance
The rue du Châtelain was laid out in the 1860s and built up from the 1870s with middle-class houses and private town houses. Number 25 belongs to a later generation: a corner house in the Beaux-Arts manner, dated 1926 in the planning archives of Ixelles, when the taste for the French styles of the eighteenth century still shaped the residential streets around the avenue Louise. The regional inventory records its front, its preserved sash windows and, inside, a vast hall lit from the roof. The architect and the first owner are not known to us.
Key facts
- Where: Rue du Châtelain 25, corner of Rue de Livourne 147, 1050 Ixelles (Brussels)
- Built: 1926, according to the regional inventory, which cites the Ixelles planning archives (ACI/Urb. 69-25)
- Architect: not known; the inventory records him as unknown
- Type and style: corner town house (hôtel particulier), Beaux-Arts
- Protection: entered on the legal inventory of the architectural heritage of the Brussels-Capital Region on 19 August 2024 (inventory notice 16661)
- Current use: Odette en Ville, hotel and restaurant, which describes the building as a town house of the 1920s
- Coordinates: 50.825970, 4.362823 · open in Google Maps
History
The rue du Châtelain was drawn on the plan of the road surveyor Victor Besme and fixed by the royal decree of 20 February 1864, which set out new streets and squares between the avenue du Bois de la Cambre and the chaussées of Waterloo and Charleroi: the district known as Ten Bosch. Like the neighbouring rues du Bailli, du Page, du Prévôt and du Tabellion, its name recalls that part of Ixelles was once a châtellenie, land under the jurisdiction of a castellan.
On the Ixelles side the oldest houses of the street date from the 1870s. The inventory describes it as a good sample of late nineteenth-century styles, neoclassical, eclectic and Art Nouveau, and of the interwar years, Art Deco and modernism, with long runs of uniform fronts and several houses by well-known architects: Ernest Blerot at number 29, Émile Janlet at number 35, Paul Hamesse at number 40, Antoine Pompe’s own house at number 47.
Number 25 was built in 1926 on the corner with the rue de Livourne. Its style belongs to what the Brussels inventory calls Beaux-Arts: an academic manner that looked back to the French styles of Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI, spread in Brussels from about 1905 after the Paris exhibition of 1900, and remained popular for town houses until about 1930. The house was entered on the legal inventory of the Brussels-Capital Region on 19 August 2024. It now houses Odette en Ville; we have not found when it stopped being a private house.
What you see
We have not found a free photograph of the house that we could publish, so this description follows the regional heritage inventory. The house has two storeys under a mansard roof. Towards the rue du Châtelain it has four wide bays of unequal width; towards the rue de Livourne a single bay, continued by a garage under a mansard that serves as the base of a terrace. The fronts are of red brick, opened by wide rectangular windows framed in white imitation stone with alternating long and short blocks at the sides.
On the rue du Châtelain every other bay is fronted by a broad bow window on a trapezoidal plan. The entrance door, under a round arch, keeps its ironwork, and the sash windows with their small glazing bars are preserved. The mansard is slate, lit by wooden dormers with curved pediments. Inside, the porch opens onto a large hall lit from above, from which most of the rooms of the house are reached.
Practical information
- The building is a hotel with a restaurant, Odette en Ville; the interiors are for guests and diners.
- Both fronts can be seen from the street at any time; the corner with the rue de Livourne shows the bow windows and the garage wing together.
- The inventory entry is a recognition of heritage interest, not a full protection as a listed monument.
Getting there
The house stands in Ixelles between the place du Châtelain and the avenue Louise, which is a short walk to the east and carries several tram lines. The place du Châtelain is a few minutes to the west.
Nearby
- Hôtel Solvay, Victor Horta’s house for Armand Solvay on the avenue Louise, about 200 metres to the east.
- Hotel Tassel, Horta’s first Art Nouveau house, on the rue Paul-Emile Janson, about 200 metres to the north.
- Van Rysselberghe House, the architect Octave van Rysselberghe’s own house of 1912, about 300 metres to the north-west.
- The houses by Blerot, Janlet, Hamesse and Pompe further along the rue du Châtelain, at numbers 29, 35, 40 and 47.
Do you know more?
On this page we have published what the regional inventory records about this house. We have no photograph of it we are free to publish, and we could not find the name of the architect who designed it in 1926, the family who had it built, or when it stopped being a private home. If you know something — a name, a date, the people who lived here, an old photograph, a document, a book that mentions it — or if you can send us a photograph of the house, write to Sofia, who looks after these pages.
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Please start your message with the title of this page, so it reaches the right file. Every contribution is checked against independent sources before it goes on the page, and we always say where a piece of information came from.
Sources
- Brussels-Capital Region, Inventaire du patrimoine architectural, notice «Rue du Châtelain 25 – Rue de Livourne 147» (Urban 16661): date 1926 (ACI/Urb. 69-25), architect unknown, Beaux-Arts corner town house, the description of the fronts and of the top-lit hall, and the entry on the legal inventory of 19 August 2024.
- Brussels-Capital Region, Inventaire du patrimoine architectural, street notice «Rue du Châtelain» (Ixelles): the Besme plan and royal decree of 20 February 1864, the Ten Bosch district, the origin of the name, the styles of the street and its notable houses.
- Brussels-Capital Region, Inventaire du patrimoine architectural, style notice «Beaux-Arts» (attached to notice 16661): the style in Brussels from about 1905 to 1930.
- Odette en Ville, official website: the hotel’s own description of the building as a town house of the 1920s between the place du Châtelain and the avenue Louise.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim: position, returned as 25, Rue du Châtelain, Ixelles.
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