Woonhuis, Waling Dijkstrastraat 2

English translation

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Description

Introduction

BLOCK OF 4 FOLK DWELLINGS, Waling Dijkstrastraat 2-4, Hollanderstraat 24 and Wijnhornsterstraat 11, forming part of the HOLLANDERWIJK COMPLEX.

The Hollanderwijk was built in 1915 on commission of the Housing Association Leeuwarden according to a design by Willem Cornelis de Groot in Transitional style. The association purchased in 1912, south of the railway depot, 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 inspector of public health raised objections to the rigid approach and the following design with 177 dwellings was much more lively from an urban planning perspective. The urban planning approach prompted the architecture to be varied as well. The 139 standard dwellings (with minor variations) are placed as intermediate dwellings in the strips; the 38 larger dwellings (of which two commercial dwellings) with strongly varied floor plans and architectural forms came about at the edges of the neighbourhood, on the corners and on the access street.

In 1980/'83 a comprehensive renovation of the neighbourhood took place. The layout of the dwellings was thoroughly modified in the process. At the rear, kitchens/storage areas were extended which brought about urban planning and architectural changes, but which are reasonably concealed from view by planting and disturb the whole only to a minor degree.

DESCRIPTION EXTERIOR: The building block of 4 folk dwellings consists of 2 small dwellings and two corner dwellings. The dwellings are three bays wide with one door and two windows. Both the width and the height of doors and windows with fanlights, fitted with small glazing bars, are in balanced proportion to the facade surface. The dwellings are built of greyish-brown brick and enlivened with various decorative elements of red pressed brick. Speckled courses at the height of the upper and lower lintels of the windows are found on all dwellings, also in the gable tops. Whilst the relieving arches above the facade openings already show diversity, the arch voussoirs are filled with ever-changing masonry mosaic with great imagination. Each street has received its own characteristic mosaic pattern. Finely detailed zinc rainwater pipes with collection basins also enriched the appearance, but during renovation most were replaced by simple plastic examples. The visible hip roofs are covered with blue glazed Frisian corrugated tiles; the rear pitches with the angled tiles of this type. All attics are lit by roof dormers or windows in gable tops. The roof contour was originally enlivened considerably by chimneys which were built out from the roof ridge. During the renovation of the neighbourhood in the eighties most chimneys disappeared. The dwellings at the corner locations are more spacious. Wijnhornsterstraat 11 has a hipped roof and on an extended additional bay a half-hipped gable; Hollanderstraat 24 a half-hipped gable top and a cut-off corner with corbelling.

INTERIOR: The small dwellings originally consisted of a room and a rear-lying alcove with fixed beds, a passage with a steep stair, a room in the roof and a yard of 5 metres deep with a lean-to and a privy; the larger dwellings had an additional room or kitchen below and sometimes in the roof also an additional partitioned small room. During the renovation carried out from 1980 to 1983 the interiors of all dwellings were adapted to the requirements of modern living comfort. The passages 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 Waling Dijkstrastraat 2-4, Hollanderstraat 24 and Wijnhornsterstraat 11 is of great 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 folk housing at the turning point from quantitative to qualitative approach;

- as a row of dwellings in the neighbourhood project which occupies a prominent place in the oeuvre of architect W.C. de Groot as a neighbourhood with a 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 pattern and the placement of the dwellings.