The Van Houten Monuments. A Reconstruction of the methods of Eelke van Houten (1872-1970) Walther Schoonenberg

Abstract

In the 1930s, as Chief Inspector of the Amsterdam Municipal Building and Housing Department, Eelke van Houten (1872-1970) devoted himself to placing old sculpted gables, salvaged from demolished houses, on newly built houses in Amsterdam’s inner city. He was quite successful in this and continued his efforts even after his retirement, in 1936, with the full support of both the city of Amsterdam and the Planning Authority. Van Houten kept an inventory of all the available gables and made sure that this inventory was distributed among builders, architects and the like, which prompted a lively trade in gables. Van Houten brought together supply and demand in an effort to give all the available gables a new place in the city. Based on certain stylistic qualities that are characteristic for new buildings of the 1930s, the Bureau of Monuments and Archaeology (BMA) has designated 205 inner-city houses as so-called ‘Van Houten Houses’.

Recovered documents from Van Houten himself, such as the inventory and a notebook, have revealed though that Van Houten’s actual involvement was limited to only 65 houses. By writing articles in daily newspapers and weekly magazines, in which he advocated his approach, Van Houten stimulated a large-scale following of his method. Some houses with old gables are not on the BMA list because they lack the stylistic characteristics of ‘Van Houten Houses’. The private houses in which Van Houten was personally involved form a heterogeneous group with many differences between the individual houses.

There are houses with the stylistic qualities that are characteristic for new buildings of the 1930s, but also traditional houses that are almost indistinguishable from those built in previous centuries and are therefore not known as ‘Van Houten Houses’. The Inspector preferred this last group of traditionally built houses but wasn’t always successful in obtaining the quality he was after. He had to rely on ‘amicable consultations’. Van Houten aimed for the same restorative approach as restoration architect A.A. Kok. He wanted to build in the same way that Kok restored. His method fits in with pre-war views on the preservation of historic buildings, of which A.A. Kok was a prominent representative.

Van Houten greatly admired A.A. Kok and closely collaborated with him. Van Houten’s method of placing old gables on newly built houses was an important contribution in the 1930s in preserving Amsterdam’s cityscape, in a time when there was scarcely any protection. In saving hundreds of gables he contributed to the fact that the inner city at first sight looks a lot older than it actually is. A straightforward historiography, characterized by modernist views on ornament, style and ‘progress’, would not do justice to the much more complex reality of Amsterdam.