Kaaspakhuis, Burgemeester Le Coultrestraat 3

English translation

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Description

Introduction

The CHEESE WAREHOUSE on Burgemeester Le Coultrestraat was built for cheese merchant P.J.M. Veldt. It was designed in the first decade of the twentieth century in Transitional architecture with elements from Neo-Dutch Renaissance and references to Art Nouveau. The building is characteristic of the typology of a cheese warehouse, thanks to the series of windows with shutters in both the front façade and the side façades. However, it is more richly ornamented than the average cheese warehouse. The cheese warehouse is situated between detached dwelling houses, with the front façade facing east. N.B. The wooden double door in the front façade on the ground floor has been modernised.

Cheese production has a long history in Bodegraven and the surrounding area. In 1882 the weekly cheese market in Bodegraven was established, which set in motion the commercial production and distribution of cheeses. In the cheese warehouses the cheeses lay on shelving to ripen. The shelving, in which the cheeses had to be regularly turned to prevent mould, simultaneously formed the structure of the warehouses. In the long side façades of the warehouses are series of windows, through which ventilation in the warehouses was regulated to promote the ripening process. By means of the shutters in front of the windows, direct sunlight could be excluded.

Description

The cheese warehouse is constructed on a rectangular floor plan in red brick over two storeys under a gabled roof with grey smoked Dutch tiles and a zinc gutter on wooden clamps. Around it a mortared plinth under a roll moulding. Straight-edged windows with mortared drip mouldings, behind blinds with an accolade termination at the top, articulated façades.

The front façade (east) is a spout gable and has three window bays. Centrally in the façade three double doors one above the other. The panel doors on the first floor and in the gable top are filled with diagonal laths and have fanlights. In the front façade segmental arches above the door and windows on the ground floor, round arches above the windows on the first floor. The arches themselves are decorated with red and yellow facing brick; in the arch barrels a block pattern of yellow facing brick and red brick. Speckled bands of yellow facing brick and ornamental wall anchors between and on either side of the windows. A stepped frieze of yellow facing brick along the façade edge. A sandstone saddle back and a square neck on a sandstone corbel, crowned by small pediments all around, form the central termination of the façade.

In the side façades the series of windows are placed under segmental arches with yellow facing brick blocks above the windows. Below the windows concrete drip mouldings.

Valuation

The early twentieth-century cheese warehouse is of general importance for its cultural-historical typological value as a characteristic expression of the cheese industry and distribution which has strongly determined the socio-economic history of the region and is also of great significance nationally.

Moreover, the warehouse is of general importance for its architectural-historical value as a characteristic example of Transitional architecture with elements from Neo-Dutch Renaissance and Art Nouveau.

The exterior of the cheese warehouse is in a high degree intact.