Kaaspakhuis, Zuidergrachtswal 1

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, in Dutch. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

Description

Introduction

CHEESE WAREHOUSE WITH ANNEXES; at the front originally an office, in the middle the warehouse and at the rear wagon houses with stables and a double dwelling, designed in 1902 in renewal style by Zytse Siewert Feddema. Altered several times for other functions, but externally still largely original.

Near the city canal and the old watercourse the Potmarge, the surroundings have long been an area of much commercial activity. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, the neighbourhood between Potmarge and Achter de Hoven was developed by several private individuals, resulting in very dense building along and between the streets Tulpenburg, Hovenierstraat, Fabriekssteeg and Achter Tulpenburg. Along the canal and the main streets came substantial plots; at the Zuidergrachtswal and Achter de Hoven west side indeed filled with mansions and townhouses. On the inner streets, cramped plots of land with modest working-class housing. The arrangement of public space left much to be desired. The entrance to the most important thoroughfare, the Romkeslaan, which in 1877 received official status, also remained initially narrow. Around 1890 the municipality had all streets in hand and they were paved. In 1896 several buildings were demolished and a portion was used for a considerable widening of the Romkeslaan. The other portions became available as building land on the east side of this street. In the following years several houses and two substantial warehouses were built there. The back streets have been renovated since the nineteen-sixties, as have almost the entire western and southern part of the eastern building line of the Romkeslaan. On the eastern side now stand two monumental warehouses with some modest building between them. They are still able to spatially shape the Romkeslaan.

Cheese merchant Jorrit de Jong purchased the mansion Zuidergrachtswal 2 at the end of the nineteenth century and also purchased the building land at the corner of that embankment and the Romkeslaan. He commissioned architect Zytse Siewert Feddema to make a plan for a cheese warehouse with office, wagon house and two dwellings. For this construction, part of the wall of the mansion could be used and to this house, on the garden side, a kitchen with scullery also had to be added. In July 1902 the plan was ready for tender and in 1903 the warehouse with the other functions could be occupied.

Architect Feddema created a quirky building that does not really fit the built surroundings and provides a, particularly colourful, accent to it. Zytse Siewert Feddema was born as the son of a carpenter in Leeuwarden in 1863. After, like his younger brother Hero, learning the basics of the building trade from his father, he went to Amsterdam at the age of 16 to further his education. Brother Hero remained in Leeuwarden. Zytse even soon travelled on to Antwerp and returned to his birthplace in 1883. This partly foreign education may have meant that this Feddema was one of the most original designers of his time in Leeuwarden with surprisingly varied approaches and styles. He did not shy away from neo-styles - the extravagant neo-renaissance double kiosk on the Koningsstraat and Voorstreek from 1897 is an example of that - but renewal with some Art Nouveau details are also found in his oeuvre, of which this warehouse is characteristic. Feddema in any case distinguishes himself as an architect with considerable attention to decorative details. Even for commissions for purely commercial functions - for example the former paper factory on the Tuinen - he apparently considers the representative value of an ornamental form so important that he proposes it and is allowed to apply it by his client.

Description EXTERIOR: The building has an elongated, nearly rectangular floor plan that increases slightly in width and bends slightly towards the front on the Zuidergrachtwal. For the most part it is three storeys with a hipped roof of shortened height, but the front of just over two window bays deep is built out to four full storeys under a flat roof. The difference in functions: at the front office, the warehouse in the large central section and in the two rearmost sections with wagon house and stabling and the double dwelling, is also expressed in the colour of the building material used. The front is built of orange facing brick and the warehouse in red pressed brick. Wagon house and dwellings are now whitewashed. The front has a natural stone plinth, a cordon moulding of the same material terminates the first storey and also the weathercocks (above iron I-beams) for the relief of the double warehouse door and the two windows on either side and door and window in the side gable are of natural stone. The remaining window openings with mostly the original windows of various kinds are relieved by cement stone lintels with a rounded profile above the openings, above which radiating relief arches are built in. The non-original warehouse doors have wrought-iron grilles in pure Art Nouveau forms and the gable anchors in the front section also have a whiplash form; in the warehouse section bar anchors. The fourth storey with only a window at the front has three fields of cement plaster left exposed, a broad base field and two on either side of the window where 'Jorrit de Jong' and 'Anno 1902' were inscribed, but are now blank. After stepped transitions on the sides, the crowning of the front is no longer in original condition. The open-worked balustrade has disappeared, but the built-out pilasters, of which the one on the corner is placed diagonally, are still present although they lack their decorative capitals. Between the business premises and the adjacent mansion (in one hand at the time of building) an inset intermediate section has been built that is just one window bay wide and three storeys high with a flat roof. Below is a door, above it a French door behind a semicircular balcony with an elegant wrought-iron railing with Art Nouveau characteristics. The side gable of the front contains a vertical window series in the same forms as those in the front gable. This is followed by a chimney flue built up from the second storey and on the second storey a charming semicircular two-light window with arch soffit and toothed relief of cement stone. The rear building of three storeys and roof is built of dark red pressed brick with bands of orange facing brick at floor height. The arrangement of the gable is almost symmetrical. In the centre are the hoist doors set in an element framed by pilasters that was built up in front of the roof. This built-in hoist room with double hoist door, pilasters and with balustrade and hoist beam at the top was removed in the nineteen-seventies and the roof shield has hardly been visible since. On either side of this central element, the warehouse has on each storey three segmentally closed windows; only in one place doubled. The windows lack their original glazing pattern of six panes and none of the doors is still original. The symmetrical regularity is broken in the furthest southern bay by a double door under a segmental arch, originally the entrance to the wagon house. The roof shield is covered with dampened corrugated Frisian tiles. This is followed, set back slightly, by a two-storey element with flat roof containing wagon parking, two horse stables and hayloft. It contains on both floors in the centre a double business door with on either side small, high-placed and segmentally closed windows. Next to this is the double residential building element lying in the building line, two storeys and a shortened hipped roof high with on the ground floor two coupled doors, the left for the upper dwelling, and two windows and above two windows, all straight-edged with segmental relief arches.

INTERIOR: The building has been altered many times internally; in the nineteen-seventies most severely for the purposes of a socio-cultural youth work organisation. The office spaces have also been reconfigured with partition walls here and there. Most of the changes are easily reversible. The warehouse spaces have been provided with wall coverings in various places. The mostly round timber supports - only a few are square-sawn - all still stand in their original positions, as do the stairs in the office section. Right at the back of the warehouse a completely new flight of stairs has been inserted on the southwest side. The roof, still in original condition, has received an internal lining. The passages to wagon house and double dwelling, now of different ownership from the warehouse, have been bricked up. The original division of wagon house and double dwelling have also suffered from functional changes.

EVALUATION

Warehouse with offices, wagon parking places, stables and double dwelling of general cultural-historical and architectural-historical importance by virtue of

- the warehouse function realised in a representative and characteristic renewal style with Art Nouveau elements and externally disturbed in only a few places;

- the special place the building occupies in the oeuvre of the remarkable architect Z.S. Feddema;

- the prominent position in the urban fabric at the corner of the southern canal ring building and a street where the building forms a special ensemble with another large warehouse in renewal style.