Back to its roots: Minerva in Antwerp

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Last Sunday about fifteen Minerva cars gathered in Antwerp. Every ten (!) years the Belgian Vehicle Heritage club organizes a rally for Minervas only. They started in 1997, one hundred years after the De Jong brothers started their bicycle factory, so this was only the third edition. The oldest car present was a tiny 1904 Minervette, the youngest was from about 1930.

I attended the meeting of the participating cars in Wilrijk, a suburb of Antwerp, and as I went there from the beautiful Central Station of the city on my bike, I decided to have a look on the Karel Ooms Lane, where the Minerva car factory had once been. Alas, you will not find any trace of this factory today. I understand that the last remaining parts were destroyed around the year 2000. However, there are some interesting places along the Karel Oomslaan related to Minerva. At number 36 you will find Restaurant Minerva and it seems that the walls there are decorated with old Minerva posters and other Minerva-related prints.

More closely related to Minerva, and cars, in general, is the garage at number 14. It is inside an apartment building, built in 1927 with some art deco elements. The garage has always been used to store taxis and they are still there today. If you enter the garage entrance, you will find some old photos on the wall showing the history of the Antwerp-Tax company (AT) and some of these definitely show Minervas. They only had to cross the street to fetch them at the factory!

Didn’t the city of Antwerp put any information sign telling about the history of this spot somewhere on the Karel Oomslaan? I didn’t find any. I only found an obscure small construction (maybe related to traffic lights or lamp posts) with a rather nice decoration and I am inclined to think that the cars must represent Minervas.

For some years one could admire at least one Minerva in a more or less public place in Antwerp: a beautiful and impressive M8 of 1930 in the MAS museum. Unfortunately, the owner of the car died some years ago, the car got a new owner and it was taken out of the museum last year (in a rather spectacular way).

Is there a Minerva street in Antwerp? Well, there is even more than one. That in Edegem, another suburb, may be worth a visit for those interested in the history of architecture. In this Minervastraat you can find small houses which were specially built for the workers of the Minerva factory which was opened in Edegem in 1922 (In 1929, not long before the downfall, Minerva had six factories).

If you visit the center of Antwerp, don’t forget to visit the Rodestraat. Here you will find a memorial that was once located in or on the factory at the Karel Oomslaan. It shows the goddess Minerva and is dedicated to the workers who lost their lives due to events during the Great War.

What you will not find in Antwerp is the grave of the Dutch founder of Minerva, Sylvain (or Salomon) de Jong. It is at the graveyard in Elsene near Brussels. And as far as I know, you will also not find any mural advertising for Minerva in Antwerp itself. But you can still find several in other parts of Belgium. Maybe the ones closest to the Karel Oomslaan are in Mechelen, about 20 kilometers away (use ‘n1 255 Mechelen’ in Google Maps; there are even two Minerva murals on this house!).

Photos and text: Fons Alkemade

Originally published: Wednesday August 30th, 2017

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