Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert
Encyclopedia
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
) or Koninklijke Sint-Hubertusgalerijen (Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
) is a glazed shopping arcade
Arcade (architecture)
An arcade is a succession of arches, each counterthrusting the next, supported by columns or piers or a covered walk enclosed by a line of such arches on one or both sides. In warmer or wet climates, exterior arcades provide shelter for pedestrians....
in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
that preceded other famous 19th-century shopping arcades such as the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a double arcade in the center of Milan, Italy. The structure is formed by two glass-vaulted arcades intersecting in an octagon covering the street connecting Piazza del Duomo to Piazza della Scala....
in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
and The Passage
The Passage
For the novel by Justin Cronin see The Passage The Passage , from the French word Passage, is an elite department store on Nevsky Avenue in Saint Petersburg, Russia, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 1998...
in St Petersburg. Like them it has twin regular façades with distant origins in Vasari
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...
's long narrow street-like courtyard of the Uffizi
Uffizi
The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...
, Florence, with glazed arcaded shopfronts separated by pilasters and two upper floors, all in an Italianate Cinquecento style, under an arched glass-paned roof with a delicate cast-iron framework. The gallery consists of two major sections, each more than 100 meters in length (respectively called Galerie du Roi / Koningsgalerij, meaning King's Gallery, and Galerie de la Reine / Koninginnegalerij, meaning Queen's Gallery), and a smaller side gallery (Galerie des Princes / Prinsengalerij, meaning Gallery of the Princes). The main sections (King and Queen's Gallery) are separated by a colonnade
Colonnade
In classical architecture, a colonnade denotes a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building....
at the point where the Rue des Bouchers / Beenhouwersstraat crosses the gallery complex.
At this point there is a discontinuity in the straight perspective of the gallery. This "bend" was introduced purposefully in order to make the long perspective of the gallery, with its repetition of arches, pilaster
Pilaster
A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....
s and windows, less tedious. It was designed by the young architect, Jean-Pierre Cluysenaer
Jean-Pierre Cluysenaer
Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar was a Belgian architect. He was born in Kampen in Holland as a descendant of a Dutch family of architects and engineers. During the United Kingdom of the Netherlands his family settled in the southern Belgian provinces. Cluysenaar studied architecture at the Académie Royale...
, who determined to sweep away a warren of ill-lit alleyways between the Grasmarkt / Marché aux Herbes and the Kruidtuinberg / Montagne aux Herbes Potagères and replace a sordid space where the bourgeoisie scarce ventured to enter with a covered shopping arcade more than 200 m in length. His idea, conceived in 1836, was finally authorized in February 1845. The partnership "Société des Galeries Saint-Hubert", in which the banker Jean-André Demot took an interest, was established by the summer, but nine years were required to disentangle all the property rights, assembled by rights of eminent domain, during a process that caused one property owner to die of a stroke and a barber, it was said, slit his throat as the adjacent house came down.
Construction started on May 6, 1846. It lasted for 18 months, and the 213 m passage was inaugurated on June 20, 1847 by King Leopold
Leopold I of Belgium
Leopold I was from 21 July 1831 the first King of the Belgians, following Belgium's independence from the Netherlands. He was the founder of the Belgian line of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha...
and his two sons. In 1845 the Société named the three sections of the new passage the Galerie du Roi, Galerie de la Reine and Galerie du Prince. The ensemble, called the Passage Saint-Hubert has borne its present name since 1965.
Under its motto "Omnibus omnia" (Everything for everybody), displayed in the fronton of its palace-like façade, the Passage Saint-Hubert attracted people of fashion. Brilliantly lit, it offered the luxury of outdoor cafés in Brussels' inclement climate, in an ambiance of luxury retailers that brought to Brussels the true feel of a European capital. In the premises of the journal, March 1, 1896, the first public showing of moving picture
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s took place of the cinematographers Lumière
Auguste and Louis Lumière
The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...
, fresh from their initial triumph in Paris.
A theatre inside the galleries, the Théâtre des Galeries Saint-Hubert, was designed by Cluysenaer and opened June 7, 1847. It became one of three royal theaters of Brussels, playing operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
and revues. The interior was rebuilt in 1951.