Woonhuis, Menaldumerstraat 14

English translation

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Description

Introduction

Double DWELLING forming part of a COMPLEX of 70 MIDDLE-CLASS HOUSES, realised in 1919-1921 in Interbellum style for the Coöperatieve Vereniging Woningbouw according to the design of 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 favoured simplicity of architecture; his buildings were to conjure an image from which one could read how the functional spaces related to one another and also were to show how they were built and which building materials were employed. He called his buildings a very little bit of art. Following a commemorative exhibition after his death, it was written: "Precisely the unpretentious, the rejection of fashionable trends, the appreciation of its own, sturdy character, is so attractive in the work of Meintema".

The complex of 70 houses is woven together in an urbananistically lively manner into the larger whole of the district. The characteristic architecture of both the large and small houses and the lively articulation in stepped blocks of two and four houses and some longer strips 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 renovation at the end of the 1970s, the original arrangement of the houses was modernised without the layout being greatly affected. The new exterior doors and window divisions were given a different form at that time, whereby the metre of windows and door lights no longer corresponds.

Description

EXTERIOR: The housing block forms part of a group of 53 houses on Marssumerstraat, Franekerstraat, Menaldumerstraat, Bildtsestraat and Engelumerstraat of one storey with large, broken roofs. The groups of houses step in relation to one another. The houses are built on rectangular floor plans. They have attached outbuildings of one storey, built of brickwork and provided with hipped rooflets with pantiles. The walls are laid in light mingled red brick in Flemish bond without recessed jointing. The header courses for the relief of door and windows are extended as a slightly projected course over full width and depth. The original doors were replaced during renovation in 1978 by doors, likewise with four-pane lights, but with different proportions; within the frames low, four-part fanlights. The houses are on the ground floor further opened with (renovated) nine-pane windows. In detached side facades a six-pane window. The rear facade opened with casement doors with glazing bars and a rear (kitchen) door with a narrow vertical window. All houses have high broken roofs where the lower roof slopes are slightly curved inward. The roofs are provided with zinc gutters. Each house has a substantial gable on front and rear roof slope, provided with a double four-pane window with a wooden gable top and a saddle roof with overhang.

INTERIOR: The houses originally had on the ground floor a layout of corridor adjoining stair hall; behind it the kitchen and alongside it the rooms en suite and under the roof three, quite small bedrooms. The suite structure has been removed in virtually all houses to create a large living room. The arrangement with among other things panelled doors is otherwise extremely simple. The interiors fall outside the protection. Furthermore, during renovation a few modernisations took place. Thus the awnings present behind the kitchen were removed.

VALUATION

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

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

- by reason of the important position the complex of houses holds in the oeuvre of the prominent architect Doeke Meintema;

- by reason of the externally virtually (except for doors and windows) well-preserved Interbellum style in a restrained and new architecture no longer referring to historical styles, whereby this type of house is characterised by the remarkable broken roof;

- by reason of the lively grouping of the houses, whereby the architect by means of block-wise but also coupled staggering in 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.