Bastiaan de Greef and Willem Springer, architects of a changing city (1856-1890)

Abstract

In 1856 alderman for Public Works Isaäc Warnsinck (1811-1857) reorganized the municipal building company of Amsterdam, the Stadsfabriekambt. He appointed three principal officials according to their expertise: the city engineer, the city architect and the managing director of Public Works. This intervention was necessary, because due to lack of money and inefficient organisation, Amsterdam was not capable of maintaining the existing city, let alone of preparing itself to a new development. Amsterdam had been reduced to a mere shadow of itself and the water city with its stock of buildings was the only tangible proof of lost power and esteem. Consequently, intervention was urgent, for in the new era of pre-globalization with colonialism and the formation of European nations as important actors Amsterdam became a link in a new network of commercial connections on land and sea. Regular services connected the North-Sea Canal to the Suez Canal, while through the continental railway network the city was within four hours’ distance from Paris.

Amsterdam became a major industrial and financial centre, initiated by the free market. The public authorities limited themselves to regulations and maintaining public order, but the administrative machinery had to be reinforced and expanded. New public buildings were necessary as indispensable facilities in a growing city. Bastiaan de Greef (1818-1899), who was appointed city architect in 1856 and his assistant Willem Springer (1815-1907), appointed in 1858, knew the city and the Stadsfabriekambt, where they had become acquainted with hydraulic engineering and civil architecture in combination with their schooling at the academy of art. The maintenance and new construction of all the buildings in the city was entrusted to them. The bridges that had to be lowered because of the tram were also part of it, realized with new materials and techniques, the design of which was to define the nineteenth-century appearance of Amsterdam to a great extent. In his designs of schools, police stations and fire stations the city architect expressed his public task in the cityscape; initially in unused buildings (the barracks at Prinsengracht) or on empty sites. Since the Education Act of 1857 school buildings became a new phenomenon with architectural meaning in the cityscape.

Publication of the nineteen schools built between 1861 and 1873 led to national publicity. The Leprozenhuis (leper house) was available for the new university, but although extreme economy was required, in the design of the Physiological Laboratory De Greef raised the building with a view to increasing the beauty of the city. De Greef left a small number of signed drawings. Springer left four sketchbooks, which can be read as an anthology of the entire oeuvre. This makes attribution of a separate oeuvre to the architect or his assistant complicated. Moreover, Springer also had his sons Jan L(udovicus) and Jan B(ernard) assist him at his office. Particularly the contribution of Jan L., the talented designer of the city theatre, raises questions. The duo De Greef – Springer has practically been written out of history. They were hidden behind the imposing career of city engineer J.G. van Niftrik, so that there was no place left for them in architecture historiography. In view of their significance in the transformation process of the city this is not justified.