The Eggevoorde Estate had dominated the
Maelbeek valley in Brussels since the
Middle Ages, but portions had been sold off in the following centuries. In 1851, a portion was sold off in exchange for shares in the Zoological and Horticultural Society, and the area became what is today Leopold Park. The park was intended to be a home for scientific and leisure activities.
Horticultural gardens and a zoo were created along with a community hall, a reading room, and a café-restaurant. However, the zoo was poorly managed and the management company went bankrupt in 1876. The horticultural gardens, on the other hand, were quite successfully managed by
Jean Jules Linden, and they became a commercial and scientific success story until they were sold in 1898. The
City of Brussels bought the old zoological gardens and converted them into a public recreational park containing a variety of diversions, including the current
Museum of Natural Sciences. in Brussels was the fifth world physics conference. In 1884,
Ernest Solvay and
Paul Heger, professors at the
Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), began a project to create an expanded university campus in the park. Several of the university's new institutes were created there, and stand to this day, including the original site of the
Solvay Institute of Sociology, as well as its sister institution, the Solvay Institute of Physiology, which was completed in 1894. It was in that building that the famous fifth
Solvay Conference on Physics and on Chemistry took place in October 1927. During the following years, a campus for the
Solvay School of Commerce was established but construction of additional buildings was soon curtailed for fear of encroachment on the park and its fragile wildlife. In 1930, the Lycée Émile Jacqmain secondary school moved into the former Institute of Physiology. These buildings have remained to this day but only one still belongs to Solvay (and houses the Solvay Conference). ==Buildings==