Woonhuis, Van Blomstraat 1

English translation

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Description

Introduction

BLOCK OF 4 WORKERS' DWELLINGS, Van Blomstraat 1-3, Hollanderstraat 30 and Wijnhornsterstraat 14, forming part of the HOLLANDERWIJK COMPLEX. The Hollanderwijk was built in 1915 on the commission of the Woningvereeniging Leeuwarden to the design of Willem Cornelis de Groot in Transitional style. The association purchased in 1912, to the south of the railway depot, a wedge-shaped piece of land of almost 3 hectares. 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 prompted the architect 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 shophouses) with strongly varied floor plans and architectural forms were created at the edges of the neighbourhood, at the corners and on the access street.

In 1980/'83 a comprehensive renovation of the neighbourhood took place. The layout of the dwellings was substantially altered in the process. Extensions of kitchens/storage rooms were added to the rear sides which brought about urban planning and architectural changes, but which have been reasonably concealed from view by planting and disturb the whole only to a minor extent.

EXTERIOR DESCRIPTION: The building block of 4 workers' dwellings consists of 2 small dwellings and two corner dwellings. The dwellings are three bays wide for a door and two windows. Both the width and the height of doors and windows with fanlights, provided with small glazing bars, relate proportionately to the facade. The dwellings are built of greyish-brown brick and enlivened with various ornamental features of red pressed brick. Decorative brick courses at the height of the upper and lower sills of the windows are found in all dwellings, also in the gable tops. While the relieving arches above the facade openings already show diversity, the arch voussoirs are filled with great imagination with constantly different brick mosaic. Each street has been given its own characteristic mosaic pattern. Finely detailed zinc gutters with collection boxes likewise enrich the appearance, but during the renovation most were replaced by simple plastic examples. The visible side roofs are covered with blue glazed Friesian corrugated tiles; the back roof pitches with the covered tiles of this type. All attics are lit by roof dormer windows or windows in gable tops. The contour of the roofs was originally enlivened not a little by chimneys that were laid up from the roof ridge. During the renovation of the neighbourhood in the eighties most chimneys disappeared. The dwellings in the corner locations are more spacious. Wijnhornsterstraat 14 has a half-hipped gable top and a cut-off corner with projecting brickwork; Hollanderstraat 30 has a half-hipped gable top without corner cutting.

INTERIOR: The small dwellings originally consisted of a room and a rear-lying alcove with fixed beds, a hallway with a steep stair, a room under the roof and a yard 5 metres deep with a lean-to and a privy; the larger dwellings had an extra room or kitchen downstairs and sometimes under the roof also an extra small enclosed room. During the renovation carried out from 1980 to 1983, the interiors of all dwellings were adapted to the requirements of modern residential comfort. The hallways 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 Blomstraat 1-3, Hollanderstraat 30 and Wijnhornsterstraat 14 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 workers' housing at the turning point from quantitative to qualitative approach;

- as a dwelling strip in the neighbourhood project which occupies a striking 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 in order 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 course of streets and the placement of the dwellings.