Woonhuis, Oostergrachtswal 47

English translation

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Description

Introduction

Front mansion designed in the 1860s in sober Eclectic style, used institutionally for decades and previously partially rebuilt and broken through with properties 37 to 47.

The Grachtswal, only separated into the Zuidergrachtswal and Oostergrachtswal after the opening of the Nieuwe Kanaal in 1895, has for centuries had very varied, largely continuous building development, mainly country houses of the wealthy. Map material shows at that embankment an alternation of large plots with substantial buildings and extensive gardens. This can be read from the meticulously drawn city map that Johann Hermann Knoop drew around 1760. One of the most remarkable buildings was the Marcelis Goverts Gasthuis founded in 1658, consisting of a front house with gate and rooms around a court behind. The gasthuis was sold after the new construction at the Noordersingel in 1877 together with three adjoining dwelling houses. Parts of the gasthuis stood behind the buildings for a long time, where no trace of it can now be found. In the middle of the nineteenth century the housing density of the Grachtswal and surroundings had increased so much that the city council, just south of the gasthuis, brought a small ferry into the waterway in 1849 for access to the area, the first of seven ferries that maintained a connection over the city moat. Furthermore in the same year 1849 the exercise field behind the buildings was moved to a site at the Kalverdijkje, because shooting practice was becoming a danger to the residents. The wooden embankment facing of the quay was replaced in 1859 by a stone quay wall and soon the quay was paved. In contrast to the Zuidergrachtswal which still has some older building, the Oostergrachtswal with building from the last quarter of the previous century appears to have only developed after the dismantling of the city. In this period, after the renewal of the quay, the building through renewal and new construction indeed changed age completely, but the new houses remained mostly mansions.

Data on building history have not been found and the occupation history likewise provides no clarity on the dating of the property. In the middle of the nineteenth century the then building was owned by the Du Tour van Bellinchave family; until 1862 Freule Fokel lived there. Possibly it was renewed after that. Until 1878 reformed minister Egbert Lasonder lived there with his wife and servants and subsequently his fellow minister Willem F.K. Klinkenberg lived there until 1893 with his wife and servants. From 1893 to 1899 Anna H. van Boelens, widow of Cornelis Wickers occupied the property and from 1899 to 1908 Heinrich Gustav Wilhelm Sprenger with family and servants was the resident. Sprenger was one of the most wealthy inhabitants of Leeuwarden: merchant, vice-consul of Spain and director of the Leeuwarder Courant. When his neighbours moved out of the much larger property number 47, he moved immediately. In number 45 merchant in butter and cheese Tj. Halbertsma then came to live with family and servants. After his death in 1927 Mr. J.F. van Beeck Calkoen, judge at the Arrondissementsrechtbank came to live there and after his departure in 1936 a Dijkstra family. After the world war the property was occupied by Klaas van der Molen and Christina M.S. Dijkstra. In 1971 the property was incorporated into the provincial planning service then established in these properties and was substantially rebuilt for that function. The Thorbecke Academy of the Noordelijke Hogeschool and finally the Waterschap Friesland were the subsequent users.

Description

EXTERIOR: Mansion on a rectangular ground plan three window bays wide and two full storeys under a low hipped roof. The property stands in a closed facade wall and is constructed above a plinth faced with hardstone and a breast wall with profiled under-soffit band of purple-brown brick. Between the storeys there is a natural stone band with under-soffit band of the upper windows. The large windows, below without glazing bars as sash windows and above T-windows are straight-topped and covered with cock combs. The door with a hardstone step is framed and crowned, provided with two consoles with acanthus ornament. The panel door was presumably renewed in the 1950s and it is possible that simple leaded glass was also introduced in the fanlight at that time. The facade is finished with a flat wooden cornice provided with profile mouldings and a profiled gutter moulding. On the roof slates lie blue-glazed Frisian corrugated tiles and the corner of the roof carries a zinc-clad pinnacle. On the front slope stands a broad, husk-shaped closed roof dormer with two-part window. The rear facade with below two casement glass-panelled doors and a window and above three windows, all straight-topped, is entirely plastered flat.

INTERIOR: Through the conversion for office use the structure of the property has changed drastically, but important interior components have been preserved. The entrance is no longer used, but hall and part of the corridor are still present. The staircase has disappeared. Approximately in the middle of the depth of the property a transverse corridor has been laid which is connected with openings to the adjoining plots. Before that corridor the front room (except for the entrance which has been moved) is still essentially intact, including among other things a fine Neoclassical stucco ceiling with mouldings and central and corner ornaments, window casings and a substantial, mottled rosy-brown marble fireplace in Neobaroque forms. The rear room contains a similar fireplace in an asymmetrical location because the space has been altered. Otherwise system ceilings have been installed. The attic has been converted and boarded in for office functions.

VALUATION

Mansion of general cultural historical and architectural historical importance

- because of the particularly externally well-preserved stylistic purity in simple Eclectic forms;

- because of special, original interior components, in particular of the front room;

- because of the marked place of the building in the history of the canal embankment development;

- because of the urban planning location as one of the important elements in the closed canal development.