Oud Arsenaal

Photos and words by Cliff Lucas.
Edited by Breandán Kearney.

Café Society is a photographic series which celebrates the spaces at the heart of Belgian beer culture. See more here.

When Maurice Erauw arrived in Antwerp in 1919 after WWI, the first customers he served sat behind him. He wasn’t passing beers across a bar, but rather driving people around. At a nearby auction, he had purchased and restored some of the uncollected cars that German soldiers had confiscated during the war and started his own taxi company. A few of those trips may have been for thirsty locals heading to Het Sterreken, a traditional volkscafé that dated back to 1822. When Het Sterreken was put up for sale in 1924, Erauw saw an opportunity, swapping car seats for bar stools, and he sold his taxi business to buy the café. It was renamed Oud Arsenaal as a reference to its use as a weapons depot and it’s been a family business ever since. Maurice’s grandson, Steph, and his wife, Lucia, have been in the driver’s seat since 1992. The art-deco styled interior, featuring brown and yellow floor tiles, wooden benches with red leather backing, and intricate glass paneling along the bar, has remained unchanged since a major renovation in 1929. In the back corner, there’s a 48-slot spaarkas, a “piggy bank” often found in traditional cafés where regular customers set money aside for future drinks. The spaarkas is mounted beneath an antique bicycle that Maurice would commonly use for pub crawls in his time. Monochrome wedding photographs and family portraits hang amongst vintage beer memorabilia and enamel signs on the golden floral wallpapered walls. The enamel signs, as Steph says, are a “cemetery” of the Antwerp brown cafés that have disappeared. There may not be a taxi service anymore, but regulars can purchase their own “tramkaart”, a ticket that allows them to pay in advance for 14 beers and enjoy a 15th for free.