Kasteel Zwarte Arend

Antwerp, Belgium, Belgium

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Kasteel Zwarte Arend is a historic country house and former manor estate in Deurne, a locality in the municipality of Antwerp, Belgium, situated at the junction of Ertbruggelaan and Professor Van den Wildenberglaan next to the larger Ertbrugge domain in neighbouring Wijnegem.

The property first appears in records in 1625 and 1639 under the name Arentshoff, described as a moated “huyzing van playsantie” (pleasure house) with farm buildings and a gatehouse, and it remained a private residence for several centuries, passing through notable Antwerp families such as the De Neuf, d’Outremont, Cogels and Meeûs before being bought by the builder Albert Maquinay in 1903, who added a south‑side pavilion and a neo‑Louis XVI garden house.

In 1784, Simon Jozef de Neuf transformed the original building into a symmetrical, three‑storey, neo‑classical mansion with a rectangular plan, thirteen bays along the long sides and a raised ground floor, giving the castle the tidy, formal appearance that it largely retains, apart from roof changes after a 1969 fire.

Since 1957 the castle and a small remaining part of its 3.3‑hectare park were sold to the local public welfare organisation (OCMW/AMV) and adapted into a nursing home that opened in 1960, with later extensions such as a 1987 portico, while most of the original estate was subdivided into housing, leaving only a pond, 18th‑century garden features, an icehouse, a garden vase and a small pavilion as traces of the former landscape.