Woonhuis, Van Harenstraat 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

BLOCK OF 5 WORKERS' DWELLINGS, Van Harenstraat 1-5, Hollanderstraat 18 and Wijnhornsterstraat 8, forming part of the HOLLANDERWIJK COMPLEX.

The Hollanderwijk was built in 1915 on the commission of the Woningvereeniging Leeuwarden to a design by Willem Cornelis de Groot in Transitional style. The association purchased in 1912 a wedge-shaped plot of almost 3 hectares south of the railway depot. 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 next design with 177 dwellings was much more lively from an urban planning perspective. The urban planning approach prompted the architects to vary the architecture as well. The 139 standard dwellings (with minor variations) were placed as terraced houses in the strips; the 38 larger dwellings (of which two shop houses) with strongly varied floor plans and architectural forms were realised at the edges of the district, on the corners and on the access street.

In 1980/'83 a comprehensive renovation of the district took place. The layout of the dwellings was substantially altered in the process. Kitchens/storage rooms were extended on the rear sides which brought about urban planning and architectural changes, but these have been nicely screened from view by planting and disturb the whole only to a minor extent.

EXTERIOR DESCRIPTION: The building block of 5 workers' dwellings consists of 3 small dwellings and 2 corner dwellings. The dwellings are three bays wide with a door and two windows. Both the width and height of doors and windows with fanlights, furnished with small glazing bars, are in balanced proportion to the facade surface. The dwellings are built of greyish-brown brick and enlivened with all manner of decorative details in red pressed brick. Speckstone courses at the height of the under and top edges of the windows are found on all dwellings, also in the gable tops. While the relieving arches above the facade openings already display variety, the arch barrels are filled with great imagination with ever different brick mosaic. Each street has received its own characteristic mosaic pattern. Finely detailed zinc rainwater downpipes with collection pans also enrich the appearance, but during the renovation most were replaced by simple plastic examples. The side roofs that are visible are covered with blue glazed Frisian curved tiles; the rear roof panels with the weathered tiles of this type. All attics are lit by dormer windows. The outline of the roofs was originally enlivened not a little by chimneys built up from the roof surface itself. During the renewal of the district in the nineteen-eighties most chimneys disappeared. The dwellings on the corner locations are somewhat more spacious. Wijnhornsterstraat 8 has rounded gable tops on its two street fronts; Hollanderstraat 18 an asymmetrical, rounded gable top.

INTERIOR: The small dwellings originally consisted of a room and a rear alcove with fixed beds, a hallway with a steep stair, a room under the roof and a small yard 5 metres deep with a lean-to and a privy; the larger dwellings had an additional room or kitchen downstairs and sometimes under the roof also an additional partitioned room. During the renovation carried out from 1980 to 1983 the interiors of all dwellings were adapted to the demands of modern living comfort. The hallways retained their original form; some with the original tile floors or remnants thereof. Apart from these floors the interiors fall outside the protection.

VALUATION

The block of dwellings Van Harenstraat 1-5, Hollanderstraat 18 and Wijnhornsterstraat 8 is of great general importance from a social-historical, architectural-historical and urban planning perspective

- as an element in the district which occupies an important place in the social and historical development of workers' housing provision at the turning point from the quantitative to the qualitative approach;

- as a housing 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 reinforce 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 course of the streets and the placement of the dwellings.