Marcelis Goverts Gasthuis

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

CHARITY HOSPITAL WITH GATE, MEMORIAL STONES, GARDEN AND GARDEN FENCE, built in 1877 to designs by H.R. Stoett in Neo-Renaissance style; the small gate, taken from the old charity hospital, is Late Baroque in style. The charity hospital is extraordinarily prominently situated on the singel and opposite the Prinsentuin. The childless married couple Marcelis Goverts and Mayke Marcus purchased a house with garden on the Oostergrachtswal in Leeuwarden in 1658, according to the founding deed to "for the honour of God and in memory of us, cause to be built a charity hospital or common house with a certain number of rooms, to be inhabited for free, and without payment of rent by some widows and further female persons...". The founders, who died respectively in 1660 and 1664, determined that deacons of the Anabaptist congregation would manage it and it is indeed also called the Mennonite Charity Hospital, although the inhabitants did not need to be of Anabaptist background. The charity hospital could be renovated and expanded several times; one of those renovations was completed in 1764 with the installation of the Late Baroque small gate that still exists. In 1876 the guardian-deacons were able to purchase a considerable plot of land on the then still barely built-up Noordersingel, opposite the Prinsentuin. One of the most prominent architects, Herman Rudolf Stoett, was commissioned to create a building plan. It was not a courtyard around a bleach yard or garden, but a wing building in the form of an E with the openings facing south and the singel, just like the much larger, new Sint-Anthony charity hospital that Hermans father Frederik Stoett had designed fourteen years earlier. At the end of 1876 the contract was let; contractor L. van der Zwaag from Leeuwarden was awarded the work for less than 30,000 guilders. In 1877 the charity hospital could be taken into use. In his Medical Topography, city physician Ph. Kooperberg wrote: "It consists of a building of three wings which are joined at the rear by a main building; the whole is only one storey high. There are 20 rooms, most of which are provided on either side of broad, brightly white, well-lit and ventilated corridors." Everywhere was "clean, fresh air" and in the rainwater tanks drinking water was "always abundantly present". The inhabitants each had the disposal of a room with a bed alcove. Almost a century after construction the charity hospital underwent substantial internal renovation. Thereby small apartments of roughly two rooms each were created. The internal corridor structure was thereby respected and the exterior remained unchanged. The exterior was restored in the eighties.

Description

EXTERIOR: Neo-Renaissance building on an E-shaped floor plan, placed in a garden facing south and which is bounded from the public road by an iron fence. Of the three wings, the two outer ones, as well as the connecting rear wing are placed against the adjoining buildings; only the middle one lies entirely free. The internal angles or recesses are filled with diagonally placed, double glass-panelled garden doors. The building, built of brown brick above a grey natural stone drip moulding, is one storey high. The outer and rear wings are provided with hipped roofs; the broader central wing with a truncated hipped roof. The roofs are covered with blue glazed corrugated Frisian tiles, except for the segments above the filled recesses which have a zinc covering. In the middle of the front hipped roofs of the rear wing and on the front hipped roofs of the side wings stand profiled framed, rounded-off chapel structures. The front of the central wing is in the middle built out to a large, right-angled cabin, presumably to obtain sufficient height for the Late Baroque gate relocated there from the demolished charity hospital on the Oostergrachtswal and thereby to enhance the dignity of the entrance. Originally on the cornice of this front there was still a cresting piece consisting of an aedicule with claw pieces and corner pinnacles. In photographs from around 1900 this crowning is no longer present. The Late Baroque gate from 1764, provided with a profiled blank-lacquered lattice door from the fifties, consists of pilasters on either side of square piers and a segmental arch, a segment-shaped tympanum with consoles and a fan-shaped fanlight. Above it a crowning with the arms of the founders, set in rocailles and held by two rather large putti. In front of the gate lies a sandstone step of two treads. The transition from masonry to roofs is laid by rather high and flat cornices with triglyphs and profiled gutters. At the middle gable end the crown and gutter moulding are interrupted and on the interruptions provided with consoles in the form of female heads. All wings are provided in a regular grid with rows of broad six-paned windows. Where windows were undesirable - in the side gables of the wing ends - blind niches were provided. The masonry, especially around the windows, has all kinds of enrichments. All windows and niches are decorated in the reveals with stone blocks on the sides and discharge arches provided with stone blocks and keystones, all of sandstone; in the arch drums are artificial stone roll-work accolades with female heads worked in. The four-paned window of the built-out cabin on the middle gable end has at the bottom a lambrequin of artificial stone and at the top a fan-shaped rooster-comb of sandstone. In the middle of the visible gables of the transverse wing are wall stones placed within roll-work cartouches. One contains the name of the charity hospital and "1877" and the other the founding text of 1658. They both date from the building period, 1877. Two old foundation stones with asymmetrical cartouches that presumably date from 1764 lie in the attic of the charity hospital. The terrain at the front and between the wings is laid out as a simple garden, in which according to old photographs after 1900 two brown beeches were planted in the corners. The boundary with the public pavement and the garden is formed by a simple but for the spatial articulation very important iron fence.

INTERIOR: The originally total twenty dwellings were renovated in the seventies to ten apartments, including the manager's dwelling. During that renovation the corridor structure and the sandstone tiles in the corridors were respected. Otherwise everything was renewed, including the guardian's room, where the marble mantelpiece disappeared (and in pieces was laid in the attic), is renewed. A curved cupboard door on a corner of two corridors is flat on the outside. All roofs have collar-tie roof trusses; those of the broad central wing is supported with struts. The attics are still reasonably originally subdivided into lath enclosures for the (former) inhabitants. On these attics lie the aforementioned wall stones, the mantelpiece from the guardian's room in pieces and still an original wooden small toilet for a chamber pot that sat in all rooms.

Valuation

The charity hospital with gate, garden and fence are of general socio-historical, architectural-historical and urban planning importance

- because of the comb-shaped building volume characteristic for that time for optimal light and air access at this institution for collective habitation;

- because of the Neo-Renaissance style characteristic for architect Stoett and representative for the charity hospital, which externally, except for the cresting piece on the front of the central wing that has been long gone, still exists intact;

- because of the distinguished location on the edge of the protected urban scene, near a meander in the city canal and opposite the Prinsentuin.