Woonhuis, Wijnhornsterstraat 2

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

BLOCK OF 11 WORKING-CLASS DWELLINGS, Wijnhornsterstraat 2-6, Starterstraat 1-9 and Hollanderstraat 14, part of the HOLLANDERWIJK COMPLEX.

The Hollanderwijk was built in 1915 on the instructions of the Housing Association Leeuwarden to the design of Willem Cornelis de Groot in Transitional style. The association purchased a wedge-shaped plot of almost 3 hectares south of the railway facilities in 1912. In an initial design the architect filled the area with 201 dwellings in fourteen uniform north-south oriented building strips. The public health inspector objected to the rigid approach and the following design with 177 dwellings was much more lively from an urban planning perspective. The urban planning approach was reason to also vary the architecture. The 139 standard dwellings (with minor variations) were placed as terraced houses in the strips; the 38 larger dwellings (of which two were shops) with strongly varied floor plans and architectural forms were created at the edges of the district, at the corners and along the access street.

In 1980/'83 a complete renovation of the district took place. The layout of the dwellings was substantially altered during this. Kitchens/storage areas were extended at the rear which brought about urban planning and architectural changes, but these are well concealed by planting and disturb the whole only to a minor extent.

DESCRIPTION EXTERIOR: The chevron-shaped building block of 11 working-class dwellings consists of 8 small dwellings and three corner dwellings. The small dwellings are three bays wide with a door and two windows; the corner dwellings are somewhat larger. Both the width and height of doors and windows with fanlights, provided with small glazing bars, are in balanced proportion with the facade plane. The dwellings are built of greyish-brown brick and enlivened with all manner of decorative details of red pressed brick. Brick courses at the height of the undersills and oversills of the windows are found on all dwellings, also in the gable tops. While the relieving arches above the facade openings already show diversity, the arch drums are filled with constantly varying brickwork mosaic executed with great imagination. Each street received its own characteristic mosaic pattern. Finely detailed zinc gutters with collecting trays further enriched the image as well, but during renovation most were replaced by simple plastic examples. The hipped roofs visible are covered with blue glazed Frisian corrugated tiles; the rear slopes with the dulled tiles of this type. All attics are lit by dormer windows or windows in gable tops. The roof contour was originally enlivened quite considerably by chimneys that were built out from the roof pitch. During the renewal of the district in the eighties most chimneys disappeared. The dwellings on the corner locations are more spacious. Wijnhornsterstraat 2 was a shop dwelling and has an additional double bay; the shop part has hipped roofs and the dwelling a gable top. Starterstraat 2 has a gable top on the Wijnhornsterstraat side and Hollanderstraat 14 has a gable top and beneath it at the corners snouts with projecting brickwork.

INTERIOR: The small dwellings originally consisted of a room and a rear alcove with fixed beds, a corridor with stairs, a room under the roof and a yard space 5 metres deep with a lean-to shelter and a privy; the larger dwellings had an extra room or kitchen downstairs and sometimes under the roof also an extra partitioned-off small room. During the renovation carried out from 1980 to 1983 the interiors of all dwellings were adapted to the demands of modern residential comfort. The corridors retained their original form; some with the original tiled floor or remnants thereof. Apart from these floors the interiors fall outside the protection.

VALUATION

The block of dwellings at Wijnhornsterstraat 2-6, Starterstraat 1-9 and Hollanderstraat 14 is of great general social-historical, architectural-historical and urban planning importance

- as an element in the district which occupies an important place in the social-historical history of working-class housing at the turning point from the quantitative to the qualitative approach;

- as a dwelling strip in the district project which occupies a striking place in the oeuvre of architect W.C. de Groot as a district with unity in architecture that shows great variations down to details to strengthen urban planning liveliness, characteristic of the Transitional style;

- as an element in the district of a lively urban planning approach with striking and subtle spatial variations in the street layout and the placement of the dwellings.