Survey of public roads

In accordance with the Law of 30 March 1921, the administrative services of the City of Brussels are required to know all the arteries that belong to the territory of the Capital.

The surveys carried out in this regard by the staff of the future “old” municipalities were therefore numerous, and today are deemed invaluable tools to gain an insight into the network of public roads of Laeken, Haren and Neder-Over-Heembeek at the time of annexation; it proved all the more useful as almost half of these streets were renamed in 1922.

Additional research into the acts of Public works (Public works and portfolio plans), Civil Status and Population (Censuses and files of the names of public roads) and lastly the Annexed municipalities (Sessions of the aldermen colleges and correspondence files) also made it possible to trace some of the changes in names, creations and deletions of streets and house numbers that occurred during the urban transformations of the 19th-20th centuries.

The tables below summarise the key points of this research, although these remain non-exhaustive (the streets that existed and disappeared before the annexation do not appear, for example, as well as the public roads created after 1921). The results obtained were also incorporated into the cumulative alphabetical index of the streets of Brussels, established from the census registers from 1910-1947 ( Table no. 62, last update 25/05/2021). Finally, the reader will find additional information on toponymy in Pierre VAN NIEUWENHUYSEN’s work, Historische toponymie van Laken, Brussels, Éditions Safran, 2009, 2 t.

note : in the column « Dutch name », the street names between [] correspond to a free translation by the historian, no mention having been found in this language among the sources produced by the various municipal administrations (Annexed Acts of the Communes)

Table no. 1 - List of public roads in Laeken, around 1921 (PDF, 196.06 KB)

Table no. 2 - List of public roads in Neder-Over-Heembeek, around 1921 (PDF, 106.19 KB)

Table no. 3 - List of public roads in Ha(e)ren, around 1921 (PDF, 75.88 KB)