Woonhuis, Van Harenstraat 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

Introduction

BLOCK OF 4 COTTAGES, Van Harenstraat 2-4, Hollanderstraat 20 and Wijnhornsterstraat 9, forming part of the HOLLANDERWIJK COMPLEX.

The Hollanderwijk was built in 1915 on commission of the Housing Association Leeuwarden to designs by Willem Cornelis de Groot in Transitional style. The association purchased in 1912, to the south of the railway yard, a wedge-shaped plot of land of nearly 3 hectares. In an initial design the architect filled the area with 201 dwellings in fourteen uniform north-south oriented building strips. The 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 led to varied 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 shops) with strongly varied floor plans and architectural forms were created at the edges of the neighbourhood, on the corners and along the access street.

In 1980/'83 a complete renovation of the neighbourhood took place. The internal layout of the dwellings was thoroughly altered. At the rear, kitchens/storage rooms were built out which brought urban planning and architectural changes, but these were quite well concealed by planting and disturb the overall appearance only minimally.

DESCRIPTION OF EXTERIOR: The building block of 4 cottages consists of 2 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, fitted with small glazing bars, are proportionately balanced with the facade plane. The dwellings are built of greyish-brown brick and enlivened with various ornaments of red pressed brick. Decorative brickwork at the height of the under and over sills of the windows are found in all dwellings, also in the gable tops. While the relieving arches above the facade openings already display diversity, the arch drums are filled with great imagination with ever different brick mosaic. Each street received its own distinctive mosaic pattern. Finely detailed zinc water downpipes with collection tanks also enrich the appearance, but during renovation most were replaced by simple plastic specimens. The side roofs that are visible are covered with blue glazed Frisian curved tiles; the rear slopes with the close-fitted tiles of this type. All attic spaces are lit by roof dormers or windows in gable tops. The roof outline was originally enlivened considerably by chimneys built up from the roof ridge. During the neighbourhood's renewal in the nineteen-eighties most chimneys disappeared. The dwellings in corner locations are more spacious. Wijnhornsterstraat 9 has a half-hipped gable top with a canopy recess at the entrance and a side bay that is closed off; Hollanderstraat 20 has two half-hipped gable tops and a side bay.

INTERIOR: The small dwellings originally consisted of a room and a rear alcove with fixed beds, a corridor with a steep stair, a room under the roof and a yard space 5 metres deep with a lean-to and a privy; the larger dwellings had an extra room or kitchen below and sometimes under the roof also an extra 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 corridors retained their original form; some with the original tile floor or remnants thereof. Apart from these floors the interiors fall outside protection.

VALUATION

The block of dwellings Van Harenstraat 2-4, Hollanderstraat 20 and Wijnhornsterstraat 9 is of major general importance from a social-historical, architectural-historical and urban planning perspective

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

- as a row of dwellings in the neighbourhood project which occupies a striking place in the oeuvre of architect W.C. de Groot as a neighbourhood 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 neighbourhood of a lively urban planning approach with striking and subtle spatial variations in the street layout and placement of the dwellings.