The Hotel Cluysenaar, on Rue Royale, which later became the Astoria Hotel, is more than likely the original model for the Hotel Crécy in
Villette. This is how Charlotte describes it (
Vashti chapter): “It was an hotel in the foreign sense: a collection of dwelling-houses, not an inn - a vast, lofty pile, with a huge arch to its street-door, leading through a vaulted covered way, into a square all built round”.
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| Hotel Cluysenaar, ca. 1840 |
The hotel was built in 1838 by the architect J.P.Cluysenaar (1811-1880) born in Kampen in the Netherlands. Other well known works in Brussels by Cluysenaar include the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, the Conservatoire Royal (the new one built in the 1870s) and the kiosk in the Parc Royal, the latter also being mentioned by Charlotte in
Villette (chap.38). Cluysenaar not only built the hotel but also owned it; financial troubles, however, forced him to put it up for sale in 1843.
In its early days, the Hotel Cluysenaar was a much-publicised residence, attracting a wealthy and mainly foreign clientele. As Charlotte suggests, it was indeed more a set of well-furnished apartments than a hotel. A precise description of the hotel as Charlotte would have known it is found in the
l'Observateur belge (15 September 1843). Here we learn that the ground floor consisted of five shops, three apartments, a courtyard and five stables. Six imposing staircases led to an entresol containing five large apartments, and to the three main upper floors, each holding ten apartments.
