From, Beautiful Buildings in France & Belgium, Including many which have been destroyed during the war. Reproductions in Colour and Monochrome from rare old Prints and Drawings, by and after Prout, Boys, Coney, W. Callow, David Roberts, C. Wild and others, with descriptive notes, by C. Harrison Townsend, F.R.I.B.A.; New York: The Hubbell Publishing Co., 1916; pp. 110-113.
GHENT : HÔTEL DE VILLE
(Ghémar)
OWARDS the end of the XVth century, the inhabitants of Ghent, greatly prospering, determined on the erection of a Town Hall on such a scale of magnificence as would have dwarfed into insignificance the civic buildings of their neighbouring rivals. At the close, however, of the following century, during which time its building had been intermittently carried on, and when the work was barely two-thirds completed, the design was abandoned. The façade towards the rue Haut-Port — a portion of which is shown in the Plate — in the florid Gothic style, was
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restored in 1829, and again some fifty years later. Despite the over-ornamentation of detail to which
Fergusson takes exception, one can agree with him that, on the whole, it is “a pleasing and perhaps beautiful building.”
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