Woonhuis, Gedempte Singel 2

English translation

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Description

Introduction

Late nineteenth-century SHOP with RESIDENCE in eclectic neo-Renaissance style. In the course of the nineteenth century, shops increasingly distinguished themselves from residential houses and, through their often representative shop fronts, sometimes designed by well-known architects, increasingly became the shopkeeper's calling card. However, they were also strongly subject to fashion, which meant that relatively few nineteenth-century shop fronts in their original state have been preserved. Shop fronts are therefore often younger than the rest of the building of which they form a part. This building is one of the rare shops with a residential storey where both the shop front and the residential storey remain virtually untouched and still form an architectural unity.

Description

The building, situated on a corner and constructed on a rectangular footprint, has one storey beneath a complex hipped roof clad with boulet tiles and a smaller flat roof. The richly decorated facades have moulded plastered plinths on the ground floor, basket-arch windows with keystones in the moulded arches, which rest on pilasters with Renaissance decorative motifs and spandrels with linear ornaments. The corner entrance bay has a modified entrance beneath a fine wooden oriel window with a rectangular plan. This rests on consoles with gilded lion heads and mascarons and is fitted with basket-arch windows with keystone between fluted corner pilasters with cherub heads in the composite capitals, a lower edge with diamond heads and spandrels with moulded edging on either side of the keystone in the arch. The oriel window is terminated by an entablature with a gilded rosette and projecting cornice. The facade sections on either side of the oriel window are fitted with fluted pilasters identical to those of the oriel window. The facades are terminated by an entablature with festoons in relief in the friezes between consoles which support the projecting moulded gutter line. Above the left bay of the facade on the Gedempte Singel, the roof is enriched with an abbreviated hip roof clad with zinc tiles with moulded edging and a round window in a zinc roof light with gilded satyr head. On the oriel window stands a small wooden tower with basket-arch windows, on which sits a helmet roof clad with zinc imitation shingles. This Welsh helmet is crowned by an equally wooden octagonal lantern with tall egg-shaped finial with steep spire. The outer bay of the facade on the Nieuwe Huizen has an additional storey beneath a flat roof with entablature with cornice, which is supported by consoles. The windows in this structure are squared-off between pilasters with Ionic capitals. The right side facade is blank and is only enlivened by the entablatures of the storey and superstructure. In the flat left side facade are several squared-off facade openings and a roof dormer with a simple balcony supported on iron brackets, which divides the entablature in two.

Valuation

The characteristic building has architectural-historical value as a fine and well-preserved example of late nineteenth-century shop/residential house architecture in a typical late nineteenth-century building style. The carefully designed, image-defining building has, owing to its representative character and its situation on an important location, also urban planning and ensemble value.