“Just to reproduce one ornamental balcony, it could cost around 25,000 to 30,000 euros ($28,000 to $33,000),” estimates Francoise Aubry, an Art Nouveau specialist.
Art experts say the fate of the mansion reflects a deeper problem of preserving the works of one of the best-known representatives of highly ornamental Art Nouveau style.
Aubry, who also works at the Horta Museum in Brussels, said she sometimes had to disappoint tourists by telling them that well-known Horta buildings such as the “Maison du Peuple”, built in 1899 as headquarters of the then Belgian Labor Party, had also been demolished.
“To foreigners, it is unthinkable we destroy our heritage like this,” Aubry said.
Finding a new purpose for the massive 15 meter (49 foot) large and 11 meter high facade is not easy. Several proposals have been put forward over the years but abandoned amid bickering among several layers of government and a lack of funding.
“We often say that Brussels is the capital of surrealism, though in this case it is definitely in the negative sense of the word,” Coomans De Brachene said.
(Reporting by Manon Jacob- Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Tom Heneghan)
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