The scale of the achievement of the housing built in Amsterdam between 1915 and 1940 is impressive. It is estimated that over 90,000 homes were built in total and managed by the municipality, housing associations, cooperatives and charities.
Much of this filled the area which is known today as Amsterdam Zuid, built to a plan outlined by the influential architect H P Berlage which was approved in 1917.
Roelof Hartplein makes up the eastern gateway to this larger development.
From the beginning of the 20th century, planning was a key policy of central and local government in the Netherlands in order to clear slums and build large amounts of good quality, inexpensive housing; intended primarily for the working and lower middle classes.
The Woningwet, the Housing Act, of 1902, set out a framework of governance. It included provision for finance through low interest loans and support for an agreed set of design principles and building standards which housing had to comply with. 1
Housing associations, cooperatives and charities could become ‘approved organisations’, and once this process was complete, they could apply to build and manage housing.
The council would then grant a lease on development land while retaining the freehold.
This system of leasehold, known as erfpacht had been in place since 1896 but only became more widely used from 1915 onwards.
Erfpacht generated a revenue stream for future development, ensured that rises in land values accrued to the municipality and empowered the council to control building and hygiene regulations, design and aesthetics.
This enabled Amsterdam Zuid to be built on a coherent large scale, involve a range of housing organisations and provide a variety of housing types for different groups of people.
It is Roelof Hartplein which we are about to explore, and this relatively small area will provide an introduction to that much larger achievement.
The Amsterdam School
An important part of the Woningwet was the Schoonheidscommissie, (the Commission on Aesthetics) which was part of the approval process before construction could commence.
Any organisation which wished to build was encouraged to work with an architect who would produce plans and drawings to help ensure compliance with the regulations, including those of aesthetics.
In Amsterdam there existed a group of talented architects and a flourishing body of ideas that came together to form what has become known as the Amsterdam School.
The Amsterdam School is characterised by valuing the social importance and cultural significance of architecture, a commitment to social reform and architecture working in the service of the people. The ambition was to provide all workers with a good quality home which was well designed.
In practice, the architecture was expressive and distinctive, mass softened by curves, towers and rounded corners, ornamental brickwork, decoration with unexpected and curious sculptures, an attention to detail that included everything from the fonts of door numbers to the hoisting beams.
Materials included terracotta tiles, solid wooden doors in monumental green paint, wrought iron work and stained glass.
The key material is brick; an object that can be held in the hand, is available in many colours and can be assembled in a great variety of shapes and patterns. It has been an architectural feature in Amsterdam for centuries and its use created a strong link with the history of the city, as well as creating a distinctive patina of its own.
This is the general overview. Now let us consider some particular examples.
Huize Lydia
Huize Lydia was built directly on Roelof Hartplein and completed in 1926. The contracting organisation was the Roman Catholic International Association for the Protection of Girls, a religious charity. It had been established in Switzerland in 1897, “to meet the needs of young girls who, because of social changes, had to live away from their own families”.
Huize Lydia was initially built to provide temporary housing for young women migrating to the city and as a ‘boarding house for single women’. 2
The architect was Jan Boterenbrood who had worked in the studios of Edward Cuypers and HAJ Baanders. Both offices were significant incubators of the Amsterdam School.
The late 19th century onwards was a period of an immense transformation in the forces of production and in the character of everyday life in which the roles and positions of women began to rapidly change.
It was in this context that young women from the Dutch countryside and small towns migrated to the large cities for greater opportunities.
People also migrated from abroad including young women from Germany. They had their own separate block within the building. There is at least one recorded example of a young Surinamese woman living in Huize Lydia in 1930.
The building itself has a hint at something monumental without being over bearing. The asymmetrical location of doors and windows and irregular placement of design features, breaks what might have been an overwhelming mass into a much lighter, but still impressive form. The rhythm is irregular but pleasing, in the way that waves on the sea are.
It is built around a central courtyard and was deliberately designed to maximise nature’s supply of light, air and space. Boterenbrood designed his own special instruments to measure sunlight in relation to how it fell on the building at different times of the day and used these calculations in planning the orientation of the building.
Huize Lydia was built as an institutional building. It is of a greater height than many of its contemporaries and the interior is modelled to accommodate large communal areas; meeting rooms, dining area and so on.
Beneath the brick work there appears to be a reinforced-concrete structure designed by the engineer K Bakker. This is alluded to in the available public records and more research in deeper archives is required. But it makes sense as a concrete structure would provide greater load bearing support and more opportunities for expansive internal spaces.
It is sometimes described as ‘late Amsterdam School’ but it might be more appropriate to consider this as a transitional building in which new construction techniques were laying the foundations for new styles of architecture.
When first built, the individual rooms were not intended for long term stays; rather as a temporary safe, comfortable, homely environment for young women who might be experiencing strong feelings of homesickness, family separation and the possible impact of family trauma. People don’t always leave home in favourable circumstances.
There was also a moral sensibility at play here; the Catholic organisation which ran it had a strong ethos of protecting women from the confusing and spiky life of the city streets.
The building has a powerful front entrance, perhaps to provide assurance to those arriving for the first time. Once inside, there was a lounge area to the left and porter’s lodge and offices to the right.
The right wing of the building at the ground floor contained a large dining hall. The left wing was the reading rooms; these were divided by partitions which could be removed in order to use the space for events.
There were 158 bedrooms on the upper floors with corridor access. Each floor had a kitchen and laundry. There was a sick room on the second floor. On the fourth floor, a small chapel.
Maristella Casciato in her book The Amsterdam School writes:
“Each of the five floors is painted a different colour on the inside: cream, green, dark red, turquoise and grey. The architect sought to create a friendly, pleasant ambience inside the building with his use of colour, the functional articulation and the interconnecting rooms3.
From available photographs in the city archives the rooms look adequate and for some would have seemed luxurious after crowded home life where beds were often shared and domestic space limited and busy.
Cities have always attracted the young; and surely many of the residents here would have been no exception in that their hopes and dreams might flourish in this most modern world, helped into existence by this most modern architecture.
Het Nieuwe Huis
Built between 1926 – 28, the architect of Het Nieuwe Huis was Barend van den Nieuwen Amstel. The original choice, J.C. (Jop) Van Epen, pulled out following disagreements with the Building Committee and the Aesthetics Committee of the city council; his first drafts were considered too formal, the revised drafts as ‘too busy’.
Were there political disagreements? In 1922 Van Epen had been one of the founders of Kunstenaarspartij (‘the Artists Party’) a split from the Dutch Communist Party with the manifesto of bringing together art and Marxism. Was he considered too left wing? Or where there other reasons?
The decision making process in large public authorities are shaped by all sorts of discussions, interactions and personality clashes which are never going to be fully recorded. The formal agendas may be in public view, but the hidden agendas, by definition are opaque.
The building itself is an illustration of some of those transformational changes that the development of capitalism was creating. From the late 19th century onwards an international movement for women’s emancipation developed.
Women demanded the right to vote and stand in elections, access to higher education, entry to the professions, more comfortable clothing so they could hike, ride bicycles and play tennis, live independently and have control over their own lives. Working class women added the demands of the right to join trade unions and entry to skilled jobs.
This social change even generated an original category of person; ‘The New Woman’.
An example of this new feminine identity is Anna Kruys. She worked as a translator of French, English and German at the city council. In 1913 she came into contact with Jan Tellegen, the Director of Housing at Amsterdam City Council.
He connected her with Harke Keegstra, an accountant at the city council and one of the founders of the Samenwerking Housing Cooperative. They worked together to realise the ambition of good quality housing for single women and single men. The idea was almost revolutionary for its time.
The Samenwerking cooperative was exactly the sort of organisation that the Woningwet encouraged. The provision for groups of people to organise the development of their own housing.
Through this meeting with Harke Keegstra from Samenwerking, Kruys established the Het Nieuwe Huis housing cooperative and the two housing cooperatives worked closely together.
Both cooperatives wanted to realise a building that was innovative in terms of how it would support young women and men in living singly and independently.
That it continues to provide good quality housing for single people in Amsterdam today, and is part of the visual language of the city-scape, expresses how successful that ambition has been.
The building is situated at a busy crossroads, the sort of site where buildings can often feel jumbled together, with motorism dominating rather than architecture, creating ‘junk space’.
Due to the strength of the designs of both Het Nieuwe Huis and Huize Lydia this doesn’t happen. The public space, with its constant movement of trams, vehicles, bicycles and people, is contained by impressive apartment housing.
Het Nieuwe Huis is a large building in terms of mass; but it is softened by the way in which the towers on the front elevation change the visual shape of the building and how the use of balconies breaks up the facades to create more spatial depth and several lines of perspective, rather than a flat one dimensional visage.
It feels as if the building is folding into itself, like someone curling up on a sofa with a good book, rather than leaning over, and dominating the people in the street.
When first built there were over 170 apartments of varying design, a reading room, restaurant, shops, a post office, bicycle storage, a central communal garden and roof terrace.
For any single woman who had grown up in a stuffy, moralist family atmosphere, dominated by patriarchy, this must have been truly liberating. A room of one’s own, indeed a home of one’s own, and nobody twitching curtains to check on who was visiting.
The interior of the building is what all public housing should strive for. Grand staircases with stained glass windows, wrought iron work for the stair railings, solid wooden banisters, bespoke designed lamps and fittings, the use of a range of good quality materials, including marble.
There was a conscious belief from the Amsterdam School architects that good housing would support the development of good people.
One of the residents was Corry Tendeloo who served as the president of the Het Nieuwe Huis cooperative from 1933 to 1946. She trained and practiced as a lawyer and become a member of the Dutch parliament in 1945. Her political and professional life was made possible by the first wave of feminists exemplified in the work of Anna Kruys.
Tendeloo had a sharp sense of humour. She once tried to enrol at the tax academy, a male only institution, by claiming to be “Mejuffrouw X”. This was unsuccessful but raised an important public debate about women’s rights and equality.
During the Second World War, Jewish residents were deported and murdered. It seems almost impossible that people could be taken from their homes, in the lovely city of Amsterdam, early in the morning, trembling with fear and terrified of even expressing any emotion should this make their situation even worse.
There is a poignant memorial outside the building which records the names and dates of their birth and death. Many of these people would have been the original residents, once so full of hope and optimism at their new housing.
The library is still functioning and the cafe is a good place for some light refreshments. The person who serves coffee also seems to be a librarian and they are worth talking to. He found me a copy of Dorothee Oorthuys excellent book Het Nieuwe Huis about the history and life of the people and the building.
It’s in Dutch, which isn’t so difficult to read if you can speak and read English or German. And the pictures in the book, as the saying goes, are worth a thousand words.
Het Rode Blok
Barend van den Nieuwen Amstel was the architect of Het Rode Blok. He was born into a working class family in Amsterdam in 1883. He attended the Industrial School of the Society for the Working Class. 4
Het Rode Blok was built for the Samenwerking housing cooperative between 1925 and 1926.
Huize Lydia, Het Nieuwe Huis and Het Rode Blok compliment each other well. Here the plan, and regulations and standards for quality and design, did its work. There is a mix of architectural styles, building shapes and different coloured bricks for each block, and yet it all comes together in an impressive and coherent urban ensemble.
The overall impression is almost of an English Jacobean country house, the sort of building that feels timeless because quality always travels through time so well. On one of my visits to the area it struck me that this housing could be here for another 100 years or more. How often can that be said about contemporary housing?
The use of dark bricks at the base provides a solidity and the vertical towers a sense that the building is rising up to the sky; that particularly nice sky above where angels live in heaven.
There is a light-hearted use of a curve along one facade which creates the shape of a well-fed worker’s belly. One can imagine hands resting on that curve after a particularly good meal of potatoes, beer and herring.
There are a lot of well-designed individual components; the pillar of the chimneys as an external feature, the protrusion of a tower of balconies, the zig zag lines of balconies and living room windows. And yet there is a strong unity of these components, creating a satisfying overall shape and density.
Here and there are sculptures on the walls; waiting to be discovered, only revealed to those who have the time and curiosity to gently study the building in order to learn its secrets. 5
The decorative concrete work around some of the windows and the doors gives the building a luxuriant feel, a late-Renaissance aspect of Bacchalian grapes and vines. Even the head of the drainpipes have a sculpted design.
The concrete relief around the doorways is highlighted with thick cream paint. Perhaps to represent a dollop or two of cream on a thick slice of apple cake to follow that earlier meal of herring and potatoes.
The hoisting beams at the roof level (used for lifting furniture into the apartments) are painted white and even here the detail is considered; the black iron bands are well designed. 6
The flats were generally of a good size, some with four or five spacious rooms. The sense of internal space was enhanced with large entrance halls and staircases
Harmoniehof
Harmoniehof was constructed between 1919 – 1922. The architects were JC (‘Jop’) van Epen and M J E Lippits. The client was the Samenwerking housing cooperative.
The development consists of three storey terraced housing, eight semi-detached houses and two separate blocks of flats. As built, there were more than 500 homes.
The following streets define the perimeter of Harmoniehof; Daniel de langestraat, Reijnier Vinkeleskade, Cornelis van der Lindenstraat and Gerard Terborgstraat.
Then within this boundary is the central public garden bordered by the streets named Harmoniehof.
This central garden has terraced housing on two sides and the semi-detached houses at either end.
The terraces are built to a solid, uniform pattern which has echoes of the 17th century alms houses that can be found in the city. There are small front gardens with larger ones at the rear of the houses.
These individual gardens are in effect stitched together as a whole. This is a pleasing arrangement for residents as it gives everyone both access to their own garden plot, and a vista of a much large open space; there is both privacy and a communal feel. The overall space works to the advantage of all the tenants.
The blocks of flats in Cornelis van der Lindenstraat and Gerard Terborgstraat are both four storeys high. This is enough to differentiate them from the terrace housing (they are after all blocks of flats) but they are neither domineering nor discordant in this tightly knit landscape. They are of a slightly darker brick.
The block of flats in Gerard Terborgstraat has a well stocked street library and a spacious, verdant inner courtyard.
Johan. M Coenenstraat, Bartholomeus Ruloffsstraat, Bronckhorststraat
The u-shaped building which runs along Johan. M Coenenstraat, Bartholomeus Ruloffsstraat and Bronckhorststraat appears to lack a formal name but is sometimes referred to informally as the Staal building, after the architect J F (‘Frits’) Staal who designed it. 7
It was commissioned by Samenwerking and built between 1921 – 1924. It contains over 100 apartments.
There are in effect three distinct elevations. That to Johan M. Coenenstraat, to Bronkhorststraat and to Bartholomeus Ruloffsstraat. This is very smartly done.
The elevation on Johan M Coenenstraat (above) has a rationalist modernism about it; the blue sculpted window and curved brick of the stairwell and arced lintel above the door really sing a cheerful song.
The corner piece illustrated below shows a solid cylindrical form, cubist mass and lines which are so modern (note the first floor window bay) that they are still contemporary over 100 years after they were built.
This building also appears to have a ‘concrete structure’, this time by the engineer, J H Struebe. It will require more work in the archives to determine how this was built. Or, an actual tour with a structural engineer.
It is the ‘how this was built’ which captures changes in the labour processes and use of new materials (in this case, concrete). This is part of the engine room of technical and social change and yet these histories are often the hardest to discover.
What discussions might have taken place within the circles of the architects, the political caucuses of the politicians and the branch meetings of the trade unions? How did the introduction of concrete frames impact on the terms and conditions of building workers and their rates of pay?
I will end this piece with an admission. I knew nothing about any of this before I went to explore. I just had a vague idea of the ‘Amsterdam School’. I walked around this area (and much of Amsterdam for that matter) for many days (actually weeks), taking photographs and making notes.
No matter how many photographs that are taken, it is never enough. And it is not possible to photograph every building in Amsterdam, even if one had several life-spans to do so. And therefore things get missed.
If I had known more at the time I would have taken pictures of Bartholomeus Ruloffsstraat. This leaves a sense of the exploration being unfinished. But surely that’s the case with all good adventures in the life and times of a city?
References:
- The Woningwet made provision for categories of standards. The actual standards were created by the Bouwverordening and regulated by the Schoonheidscommissie. ↩︎
- https://buurthuislydia.nl/about-us/ ↩︎
- The Amsterdam School – Maristella Casciato – the book is available to read for free at the Internet Archive ↩︎
- The Society for the Working Class (Maatschappij voor den Werkenden Stand) had been founded in 1854 by a carpenter, PH Stark, a metal worker, E.Apol and four painters to promote the ‘moral and material’ interests of journeymen ↩︎
- Dorothee Oorthuys (who lived in the block for over 20 years) makes a good case that these are the work of Cornelis de Bruin; an impressionist painter, sculptor and designer. ↩︎
- In their book Van onderen! Vierhonderd jaar hijsbalken in Amsterdam (From Below! Four Hundred Years of Hoisting Beams in Amsterdam), Han Schenk describes them as the most ‘beautiful in the Netherlands’. ↩︎
- Staal was married to Margaret Staal-Kropholler, an architect and designer. She was one of the few women to work on the housing projects of the 1920s. Frits Staal has been described as a life-long socialist and member of the Dutch Communist Party. There is no evidence that Margaret joined but she was close friends with, and mixed in the same circles as Henriette Roland Holst, a significant radical figure in Dutch left-wing politics. ↩︎
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