Victor Horta’s Maison du Peuple in Brussels was demolished in 1965.
The building was commissioned by the Belgian Workers’ Party and constructed between 1896 and 1899. It stood on the Place Émile Vandervelde in the Sablon district and served as a political headquarters, meeting place, restaurant, and social center. Horta designed it to make an irregular, sloping site work efficiently while allowing abundant daylight into its large interior spaces.
Its structure was especially innovative for the period, combining brick, glass, steel, and white cast iron. The Maison du Peuple became one of Belgium’s most celebrated early Art Nouveau buildings and an important demonstration of Horta’s expressive use of modern materials.
By the 1960s, redevelopment pressures prevailed. Despite an international protest campaign involving more than 700 architects, the building was dismantled in 1965. Officials intended to reconstruct it elsewhere, but its parts were scattered and the building was never reassembled. A high-rise office building, the Blaton Tower, later occupied the site. The loss is widely cited as an example of “Brusselisation,” the destructive replacement of historic architecture with speculative modern construction.