Woonhuis, Harlingerstraatweg 69

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

Triple DWELLING forming part of a COMPLEX of 70 MIDDLE-CLASS HOUSES, realized in 1919-1921 in Interbellum style for the Coöperatieve Vereniging Woningbouw according to designs by Doeke Meintema. 17 large houses of two storeys with shallow hipped roofs at Harlingerstraatweg 45 to 73 and Marssumerstraat 1 and 2 and 53 small houses of one storey with high, broken hipped roofs at Marssumerstraat 4 to 18 and 3 to 9, Franekerstraat 68 to 74, Menaldumerstraat 2 to 18, Bildtsestraat 7 to 25 and 14 to 32 and Engelumerstraat 1 to 15.

Architect Doeke Meintema stood for simplicity of architecture; his buildings were to evoke an image from which one could read how the functional spaces fitted together and also had to show how they were built and which building materials were applied. He called his buildings a very small piece of art. Following a commemorative exhibition after his death it was written: "Precisely the unpretentious quality, the rejection of fashionable trends, the appreciation of own, sturdy character, is so attractive in the work of Meintema".

The complex of 70 houses is townplanistically lively woven into the larger whole of the district. The characteristic architecture of both the large and small houses and the lively articulation in offsetting blocks of two and four houses and some longer rows nonetheless provide a strong architectural and spatial coherence. This lively grouping with front gardens of varying depth on streets with broad profiles for that time somewhat evokes the atmosphere of a garden city. During a renovation at the end of the seventies the original layout of the houses was modernized without the division suffering greatly. The new exterior doors and window arrangements were given a different form at that time, causing the metre of windows and door lights no longer to correspond.

Description

EXTERIOR: The triple house forms part of a group of 15 houses on the Harlingerstaatweg and two at the corner of Marssumerstraat which offset slightly in relation to each other. The housing block is two storeys high and built on a rectangular plan. Each has a detached storage building of brick of one storey with a hipped roof covered with tiles. The houses are provided with tent roofs with a fairly shallow roof pitch, covered with red Dutch profiled tiles and equipped with ridge chimneys and zinc gutters. The walls are laid in light mottled red brick in Flemish bond without recessed mortar joints. The masonry is enlivened in a restrained manner with slightly recessed and projecting gable sections with brick decoration. At the first storey, parapet sections supported and capped by header courses project slightly and at the top of the first storey, by way of a frieze, every third course one course of brick is laid out, between which the windows are set, a horizontal plastic feature which is capped by a header course running the full width and depth which forms relieving arches above the upper windows. The entrance bays project slightly with on the corners every three courses a toothing pattern and towards the top now and then a projecting end. House no. 69 has a door in the east side gable. This entrance section is framed by a wide band of slightly projecting brickwork which is partly worked vertically beside the door and contains side lights; a brick section which does not continue across the first storey. The original doors were replaced during the 1978 renovation with doors, also with four-pane lights, but with different proportions; within the frames low, four-part fanlights. The facades are opened on the ground storey beside the entrance sections with double or triple six-pane windows. On the storeys above four-pane windows in the same metre as below and above the entrance sections always a four-pane window. In the side gables below a six-pane and above a four-pane window. In the rear gables below a four-part window unit with central opening doors and a back (kitchen) door with a narrow vertical light. On the upper storey three four-pane windows, two of which serve as side lights to a door with French balcony.

INTERIOR: The large houses originally had on the ground storey a layout of corridor combined with stairwell; behind that the kitchen and beside it the rooms en suite and on the upper storey a landing with two small bedrooms above the corridor/kitchen in front and rear and two large bedrooms above the living rooms. The suite structure has been broken through in virtually all houses to create one large living room. The interior with panel doors among other things is otherwise extremely simple. The interiors fall outside the protection. Furthermore, during the renovation several other alterations took place. For instance, the canopies located behind the kitchen were removed.

VALUATION

The triple middle-class house is as an element of the complex of 70 houses of general historical, architectural-historical, architectural and townplanistic importance

- as a relatively early example of cooperative construction of middle-class houses just before the financial turning point in social housing;

- because of the important place the complex of houses occupies in the oeuvre of the prominent architect Doeke Meintema;

- because of the externally almost intact (except for doors and windows) Interbellum style on a restrained and new architecture no longer referring to historical styles, whereby the large, austere houses received some brick expressionism;

- because of the lively grouping of the houses, whereby the architect through block-wise but also coupled offsetting in the streets with already broad profiles and especially at the corners suggested so much space that a garden-city-like result was achieved, an image which was further shaped by the demarcations with privet hedges.