Woonhuis, Willemskade 12 A

English translation

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Description

Introduction

MANSION from around 1890, now in use as an office, remarkable externally for its well-preserved Neo-Renaissance style.

After the southern city fortifications were dismantled and converted into public spaces in the years 1840, the southern urban edge has been completely restructured since the late 1860s. The city moat was straightened and on both sides quays were constructed on which spacious building plots were laid out, mostly developed with mansions. An almost continuous development of buildings of mostly two storeys and a width of three to five bays was created during the last decades of the nineteenth century. In the northwestern facade of this building there is one of the most decorated facades.

Description EXTERIOR: Building on a deep rectangular ground plan with new rear extension now connected to the buildings Prins Hendrikstraat 8 and 10. Sandstone stoop with wrought iron gate. The front facade is three bays wide and two storeys high with a half-hipped roof. The facade is articulated by pilasters of light brown brickwork and decoratively worked ashlar elements with sandstone basements, list capitals with knobs on the first storey and Corinthian capitals adorned with garlands on the second storey. Sandstone plinth with waist rail and sill band. Frieze on the transition between first and second storeys, consisting of decorative tile panels between impost blocks with triglyphs. Cornice of panels between impost blocks with cup-shaped motifs and dentil course under a moulded gutter. Closed T-windows, covered by cock's combs with keystones. Simple front door with fanlight. Half-hipped roof with blue glazed flat Frisian tiles and on the edging hanging zinc palmettes. In the centre of the front pitch a brick capstan with pilasters and edging, without pediment and small chapels on either side.

INTERIOR: The internal appearance of the building has suffered greatly through extension and alteration in the seventies, although the new work is certainly characteristic of that period. Traces of the original interior are found notably in the front parlour, the back parlour on the upper storey and the staircase with cast-iron balusters from the second storey to the attic. The front parlour possesses an exuberantly decorated stucco ceiling with a large roundel with large central ornament of mainly foliage, rich spandrels with portrait medallions and foliage in the corners and a moulded edge with among other things an acanthus list. The rich cornice of the removed chimney mantel is still present. The back parlour, to which an alcove has been added, has a suspended system ceiling above which the fairly well-preserved edges of a decorated stucco ceiling are visible. The back parlour on the upper storey has a stucco ceiling with a moulded and decorated list and a substantial central ornament. This parlour possesses panelled doors with surrounds, also a double and a narrow single door for wall cupboards.

VALUATION

Mansion of general architectural-historical and urban-planning importance because of

- the externally well-preserved and stylistically pure Neo-Renaissance style and the internally retained elements in that style;

- the prominent location near a corner in the ensemble of continuous moat-front building of mansions in the southern urban expansion.