Kaaspakhuis, Pieterstraat 3

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

Block of four CHEESE WAREHOUSES built around 1882 as a single complex on behalf of Alkmaar cheese merchant J.N. Groen. The front facades of the warehouses, erected in a sober eclectic style, face Pieterstraat; the rear facades are separated by a narrow quay from Kaarsemakersgracht.

Description

Block of four cheese warehouses built on a rectangular ground plan, each three storeys high under a gabled roof covered with red Dutch tiles with the ridge line perpendicular to the street. The two southern warehouses (nos. 5 and 7) are slightly wider than the two northern ones. Between the gabled roofs of nos. 3 and 3a there is a wooden intermediate section with a flat roof, by means of which both attics are connected to each other. The external walls are built in red machine-made brick in Flemish bond with pointed joints. The front (W) and rear facades (E) of the four buildings are executed as spout gables and are almost identical. The eight spout gables are topped with a roller course and sandstone coping and string stones, and are equipped with five ornamental wall anchors at the height of the underlying beams. In the middle of each facade on each storey there is a fixed double warehouse door of standing bead moulding. The warehouse doors decrease in height and width going upwards: the doors on the ground floor are wider and taller than those on the first and second storeys, the attic doors in comparison with the latter narrower and lower. All warehouse doors except those on the ground floor have a small diamond-shaped opening in both door leaves, filled with glass. On either side of the warehouse doors on the ground floor and the first two storeys there are small round-arch windows: in the two northern warehouses one on either side of the door, and in the wider southern buildings two on either side. All round-arch windows have a plastered drip moulding and around the relieving arch an externally built semicircular ring of headers. Most windows are equipped with a fixed shutter of standing bead moulding with a diamond-shaped opening filled with glass (from the inside the shutters can be removed from the frame). The two outer warehouses (nos. 3 and 7), however, have six-paned round-arch windows in the lower windows of the rear facade. The southern warehouse (no. 7) also has such windows on the second storey. The windows of the rear facades are provided with (three) anti-theft bars on the ground floor and the first storey. The two side walls are closed and equipped with ornamental wall anchors at the height of the storey floors. Internally, the four warehouses are still largely in their original condition and contain, among other things, floored storey beam layers with wide sections and a collar-tie roof truss with standing roof boarding of wide sections. In front of most warehouse doors there is a double floor hatch so that the cheeses could also be hoisted from inside (attached to an iron hook beneath a hoisting beam in the attic). The warehouses are interconnected by doorways halfway along the party walls.

Evaluation

The four former cheese warehouses are of general interest due to their architectural and cultural-historical value as well-preserved cheese warehouses from the last quarter of the 19th century, built in a sober eclectic style, illustrative of flourishing cheese trading in Alkmaar. The warehouses have situational value due to their distinctive location on Kaarsemakersgracht in a part of the city centre with predominantly warehouses and factory buildings, in the vicinity of the cheese market.