Louise, Avenue/Louizalaan

   Named after the eldest daughter of King Leopold II, the avenue Louise was built to connect the city with the Bois de la Cambre. In the mid-19th century the woodlands could be reached only by a circuitous route. To facilitate Sunday promenades, two landowners (Jourdan and De Joncker) built a square (place de Charleroi, today's place Stéphanie) and a short stretch of road in 1841 that, by 1850, featured 18 elegant homes. Brussels and Ixelles battled over jurisdictional rights to a prolongation of the street for 10 years, a struggle that was compounded by administrative delays and costly construction plans to level the undulating terrain. A law of 21 April 1864 ceded to Brussels a narrow band of territory in Saint-Gilles and Ixelles on both sides of the avenue. The thoroughfare was rapidly laid and quickly bordered by elegant town houses that made it the most aristocratic promenade in Brussels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A double row of chestnut trees lined the street in 1900. In the early 20th century, a rail line for trams ran on the left side of the avenue with the right side reserved for horse traffic. The center of the road later served automobiles. The first apartment buildings appeared in the 1930s.

   The avenue lost much of its charm with the growth of automobile traffic. At the end of the 1950s, a number of underpasses were built that definitively altered its appearance. It remains a center of upscale retail trade.