vm. MTS

English translation

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Description

Introduction

School building with wall and metalwork for secondary technical education built in 1934/'35 in the Dudok manner, the cubic Amsterdam School style, designed by architect Andries Baart sr., lecturer in building design at the school. In 1915 a secondary technical school had been established in the Vredeman de Vriesstraat next to the craft school founded several decades earlier. In early 1933 consultation the national government proposed building a new secondary technical school, which would also provide sufficient expansion possibilities for the craft school. The latter would then be able to occupy the existing secondary technical school. New building plans were studied and in March lecturer in building design Andries Baart sr. was commissioned to draw up plans. As early as 19 April the architect submitted his first sketch plan, a plan which was largely followed subsequently, though consultation with the Ministry of Education and the National Building Authority took another year. On 24 May 1934 the construction could be put out to tender and on 14 June the contract was awarded to contractor H. van Heeswijk in Best. In January 1936 Princess Juliana opened the school with the unveiling of a bust of her mother. In a newspaper article shortly before the opening a characterisation is given: "The simple yet carefully designed building closes off the Westerpark in clean lines (...) The new Secondary Technical School, designed in flat-roof construction, expresses in its clear portrayal of the two wings and corner section the trend of the more businesslike and newer direction of architecture." The new secondary technical school came into being in a characteristic neighbourhood from the Interwar period, a neighbourhood with mainly homes for the middle class and the well-to-do on mostly spacious roads and streets interspersed here and there with a small park. The most remarkable green space provision in the neighbourhood is the Westerpark. Laid out in 1874/'75 as a freshwater pond surrounded by landscaping which functioned until 1888, the area was redesigned and extended into a park in 1926. On the first section of the adjoining Molenstraat stood a remnant of a mill and a few industrial buildings and on the corner of the Westerparkstraat there was still a considerable plot of vacant land. Entirely in the young tradition of the neighbourhood where remarkable buildings such as Coornhertschool, Wilhelminaschool, Dominicus and Pelikaankerk were situated on street corners, the secondary technical school also ended up on this corner and on the edge of the extended park. Architect Baart (1885-1969), who began as a teacher at the Leeuwarden craft school, subsequently took a management position at such a school in Amersfoort, but returned to Leeuwarden in 1922 as an independent architect and was soon able to also give instruction in building design at the secondary technical school. In those circles Baart evidently built up a reputation, as in 1927 he was able to design an industrial school for Velzen, a substantial school building in stylistically pure and decorative Amsterdam School style. At the end of 1931 Baart gave a lecture on the occasion of an exhibition of architect W.M. Dudok in museum Het Princessehof. In 1932 Baart (in collaboration with city architect Krook) designed the craft school for Zwolle in the Dudok style and the secondary technical school in Leeuwarden designed shortly afterwards was also realised in that style.

Description

EXTERIOR: School building consisting of two wings on Molenstraat and Westerparkstraat of three storeys with flat roofs, a corner section of varied cubic elements and an attached machine hall with glass barrel roof. The school site is bounded from the public space by a brick wall, on which a decorative wrought-iron railing in art deco forms is provided with the same double swing gate. This gives more specific form to the exceptional siting in the urban structure.

The two classroom wings are simple brick boxes with window bands which are articulated only by narrow wall divisions and on the ground floor also by rounded mouldings of dressed hard stone. Below, the windows are therefore primarily vertically articulated. On the upper storeys they are more horizontally articulated and there the windows consist of broad lower sections with casement windows and tall, broad fanlights with small glazing bars, all executed in steel. The brickwork of the ground floor is of purplish-red brick and the remaining masonry is built of a bright reddish-brown stone, which creates refined colour nuances. In form a subtle effect is likewise achieved in that the brickwork of the south wing on the side of the corner section curves out slightly and is rounded. From the short east side of this wing a projection with semi-circular closure is provided over the second and third storeys and above an entrance section at the end of the central corridors, provided with window frames and brick parapets. After this element the volume steps back a bay with a quarter-round closure of a brick parapet and window frame on the ground floor. The corner section with special functions consists of varied rectangular volumes with a low rounded element: the porter's lodge which projects forward like a garden pavilion and on that side is also the support for the concrete canopy above the entrance. On the other side the canopy is supported by a column. Above this entrance section and canopy lies the high stairwell, which is lit by a window frame bordered by purplish-red brick with vertically oriented windows. Slightly displaced behind the stairwell rises the tower: a substantial brick pilaster with art deco letters 'M T S' in Oberkirchner sandstone. Next to that begins the other classroom wing at a height of two storeys to be continued after a bay at three storeys height. The corner section thus forms a striking composition of cubic volumes which to a significant extent lends the building its character.

Behind the west wing in which a transformer house is also built stands the original machine hall: a rectangular building element with masonry in places offset in colour (purplish-red and reddish-brown) and a glass barrel roof. A glass frame was present on the front which later, presumably in the nineteen-sixties, was provided with a low parapet. On the exterior the only intervention which has affected the integrity.

INTERIOR: The wings contain central corridors with rooms on either side. The corridors connect to each other in a rectangular hall (with bust of Wilhelmina), where behind the main entrance there is still a vestibule and where the porter's lodge is nearby. The structure of these rooms and of all classrooms is still original. The stairwell connects to the central hall. The stairs have broad and heavy granite steps and substantial wooden railings. A lift shaft was installed in the spacious stairwell in the nineteen-seventies. A stained-glass window placed behind the light frame of the stairwell, donated at the opening by students and former students, designed by W. Bakker and executed by J. Haasdijk, was destroyed by warfare in 1942 but was more or less reconstructed in 1946. All circulation spaces are tiled, on the floor block-patterned in beige and yellow with black borders, on the walls light yellow with a decorative border of green, red and black. Only small sections of these coverings are damaged or missing. In the south wing an administrative space is followed by a still original room of the director, including among other things wooden wainscoting. This room, but also all classrooms are provided with recessed suspended ceilings. Various intermediate frames with draught doors have been renewed; some are still present. Many of the original doors are still present. The machine hall retains the original floor tiling of alternating beige and yellow stripes with black borders between them. The approximately two-metre-high wainscoting is executed in fair-faced brickwork and plastered above that. At the very top of the long walls heavy I-beams are incorporated, apparently not for the structure of the building but probably for the meanwhile lost function. The glass roof truss structure rests on steel trusses, all still in original condition.

The interior has been affected in a number of places by various alterations, but in broad outline and in many components the original design is still recognisable.

APPRECIATION

School building with wall and metalwork of general cultural-historical and architectural-historical and urban planning significance because of

- the especially externally preserved stylistic purity in the Dudok manner;

- the important place which the building holds in the life and oeuvre of architect Baart;

- the urban planning siting as a space-forming accent in the Westerparkwijk and on the edge of the Westerpark.