Mining colonies: Cité Nord des Liégeois, Zwartberg

The Noorder Tuinwijk or Cité Nord is located directly to the north of the Cité Sud, hence the name. The two mining colonies of Zwartberg are separated by the now disused railway track linking the collieries at Winterslag and Waterschei. Most of the Cité Nord lies north of the colliery grid parallel to the Torenlaan (before WW2 named Patience et Beaujoncstraat, after the mine of the same name near Liège). All streets in the northern mining colony were named after Walloon figures (mostly directors at the Cockerill company). Exceptions are the IJzerstraat (commemorating the Battle of the Yser in 1914) and the Martelarenstraat (literally: Martyrs Street, a name also linked to WW1)The street now called Socialestraat (Social Street) was once named after another mine in Liège Espérance et Bonne Fortunestraat). Street names commemorating the Great War (or the peache that followed) were very common in 1919 and 1920. This gives us a clue to the time of completion or at least the time this part of the Cité Nord was conceived.

The Cité Nord consists of two distinct parts that explore very different ideas on the layout of streets and the placement of houses on the streets. The southern part of the colony consist of a semi-circular loop that links two distinct parts on each side of the Torenlaan (T). Each part has a large circular space at the heart of the urban composition. On the east side this is circular square -Delcourplaats (Dp), named after a famous sculptor of fountains-  and on the west side we see a large green oval with a public garden and playground called Cockerillplaats (Cp, named after the industrialist John Cockerill). In this southern part no streets are perfectly straight. It is also at this point that the bend in the Torenlaan is absorbed into the urban morphology. All in all a layout that is recognizable as inspired by the garden city movement. The streets in the northern part of the colony Cité Nord run more or less parallel to the Torenlaan giving it a much more formal appearance. There is a thrid oval (O) this time on the Torenlaan. To the south we find the school (S) dating from 1926-'28 and an imposing church (C). This St Albertus Kerk (1937) is a so-called Mine Cathedral and was designed by Henry Lacoste, who also drew the plans for the church at Beringen-Mijn.

Both the northern and southern colony at Zwartberg are designated as heritage sites. A description of both can be found online. Sadly not all that is written down rings true. The portion of the Cité Nord around the Delcourplaats is said to date from 1915, the portion around the Torenlaan and Romeplaats from the 1920s, the portion along the IJzerstraat from after 1930 and the portion around the Martelarenstraat would be of an even more recent date. The western portion around the Cockerillplaats is said to be a copy of the Cité Jarding Seraing, commissioned by the Cockerill company.

In the northern portion of the CIté Nord at Zwartberg we can see a grid parallel to the Torenlaan. This Torenlaan was a new thoroughfare that replaced the old road on Meeuwen which had become interrupted by the colliery and the storage and settling basins that stored the  waste water from the mine. The spoil heap (mijnterril) lies directly north of the Cité Nord in a bend in the Torenlaan/Weg naar Zwartbroek.

Any comparison to the Cité Jarding at Seraing is probably based on the large oval public garden. The Garden City in Seraing (an industrial suburb of Liège), as morphologically they are worlds apart. The whole of the southern part is clearly garden city inspired (like the Cité Jardin at Seraing) which places its conception somewhere after 1919. If perhaps it has been based on the Cité Jardin Seraing a date after 1922-23 should be maintained. 1915 is too early. Although the houses along the Torenlaan could be that early, and thus point towards a planned urbanization along the lines of the colliery grid like the Cité Sud. The church and school directly south of the Cité Nord do conform to the colliery grid after all. The area around the large oval square in the Torenlaan still follows the same morphological premise. Indeed the buildings are similar to the ones on the north side of the western portion.

Most of the Cité Nord is built over with short terraces of workers housing. In the western portion larger semidetached houses and semidetached villas were built around the Cockerillplaats. This is also the portion of the Cité Nord where we find English inspired architecture with mock beams adorning gable ends. The rest of the mining colony was filled with progressively less expressive brick architecture. 

The mining colony north of the railway grew over a period of a few decades It marks the shift from an orthogonal to a sweeping arrangement of dwellings and the return to maximized parceling around 1930.