The Rotterdam book

The Book of Rotterdam

100607_p001-112:030689_HETRotterdamboek 13-12-2010 11:18 Pagina 1

the book of

Rotterdam

Arie van der Schoor

Gemeentearchief RotterdamUitgeverij Waanders, Zwolle


Contents

Foreword 7

Modest beginnings (up to 1570) 9

Initial large-scale expansion (1570-1613) 30

The Golden Age (1613-1700) 51

Changing times (1700-1813) 86

The early stages of modernisation (1813-1880) 121

The second period of major urban expansion (1880-1914) 156

Turbulence in the inter-war years (1914-1940) 215

The Second World War (1940-1945) 274

Rebuilding (1945-1975) 333

A city of renewal (1975-2010) 391

Colophon 448


cords, tapes, CDs etc. Expert archivistshave assisted the author in his search.

Anyone interested in these rich collec-tions should definitely pay a visit to theRotterdam Municipal Archives at Hof-dijk 651, or go towww.gemeentearchief.rotterdam.nl

Ms. Jantje Steenhuis, Director of the Rotterdam Municipal Archives

7

Can the rich history of Rotterdam besummed up in one small book? The ans-wer is yes, it can, if the author possessesknowledge about the subject and canwrite in a concise, clear manner. The his-torian Arie van der Schoor, from the Rot-terdam Municipal Archives, has provedthat this is possible.

The format and chronological lay-out ofThe Book of Rotterdam makes it very easy touse. It is a useful reference book to quick-ly acquaint yourself with the history ofRotterdam, from the alleged attacks bythe Normans to the commemoration ofthe fire boundary in May 2010.

This edition also provides the finest andmost striking images from the enor-mous collection in the Rotterdam Muni-cipal Archives, that is to say.....the authoralready had specific images in mind, but,of course, followed the advice of his col-leagues in the Municipal Archives. Howdo you go about making a selection fromthe huge range consisting of over 18 line-ar kilometres of archives, and a few kilo-metres of books, periodicals and newspa-pers? And what about the hundreds ofthousands of photos, drawings, cards,maps and posters? And then there is alsothe image and sound collection withthousands of films, gramophone re-

Foreword


9

Modest beginnings (up to 1570)

Around 800 AD, the site of modern-day Rotterdam in the Maas-Merwede region wasalready inhabited, but the dam of the Rotte river, from which the city’s name is de-rived and which ensured its development, dates back to around 1270. At the time thatit was granted a town charter in 1340, medieval Rotterdam was still a fairly rural settlement of a few thousand inhabitants. The town and municipal administrationwere still locally and regionally focused, although import, export and transit were increasing due to the fact that a shipping link was being established with the sur-rounding countryside in Holland. By around 1400, Rotterdam had become a port fortransit and transhipping and was one of the smaller towns of Holland and Zeeland.It remained that way for a long time, but the town enjoyed modest growth during thefifteenth century. Monasteries and convents established themselves in the town, inwhich the Heilige Geest and Gasthuis, wealthy religious individuals and brotherhoodswere already providing help and assistance to the poor and needy. The Grote Kerk(dedicated to St. Laurence), which was gaining higher standing thanks to its rebuild-ing, acted as a spiritual centre. Herring fishing was also on the increase, more cargowas being shipped to destinations both within the country and abroad and guildswere forming in industry. Urban life primarily revolved around the dam and the port,which had gained the status of economic centre of Rotterdam. The prosperity of themedieval town suffered somewhat due to the proximity of the powerful town of Dordrecht and competition from towns such as Delft, Leiden, Haarlem, Gouda andAmsterdam. By the close of the fifteenth century, the Hook and Cod wars (known inDutch as Hoekse en Kabeljauwse twisten) had also caused a great deal of damage, fromwhich the town only recovered after 1500. In addition, trade and the merchant navymade use of Rotterdam’s favourable location. During the sixteenth century, the townon the Maas became a key location between Amsterdam in the northern Netherlandsand Antwerp (which dominated the global economy at the time) in the southernNetherlands. The focal point of urban activity and life increasingly tended towardsfishing and shipping and the accompanying industry and the town began to growgradually as a result. The municipal administration expanded with new trade-related groups and gained more influence in all domains, even in that of the church.However, a climate of political and religious tolerance prevailed and no action was taken against the new unorthodox movements that were causing a great deal of turmoil elsewhere.


Conflicts among the successors ofCharles the Great had weakened the onceso powerful Carolingian Empire over thecourse of the ninth century. Norsemen,particularly the Danes saw their chanceand began to plunder the coastal regionsof the Netherlands. After the merchantsettlements of Antwerp and Dorestad, aswell as Witla on the Maas estuary hadbeen destroyed in 836 AD, the Norsemenwere said to have gone on to reduce theBulgersteyn castle at Rotterdam to ashesshortly afterwards in 838 AD, at least ac-cording to the nineteenth-century histo-rian Peypers, who based his accounts onfantasy and legends. In actual fact, Bulger-

838

steyn did not yet exist then and archaeo-logical data suggest that in around 800AD people had probably only been livingin a modest settlement where the Rottejoins the Maas for a short time. It is notuntil over five hundred years later thatwe may speak of a medieval town calledRotterdam, where Bulgersteyn castle roseup on the site of the modern-daySchielandshuis Historical Museum.

The Norsemen ransack Bulgersteyn castle, litho -graph in: W.N. Peypers, Rotterdam in opkomst,ontwikkeling en bloei. Historische Tafereelen [TheRise, Development and Prosperity of Rotterdam:Historical Scenes] (Rotterdam, 1863)

10

Under attack from the Norsemen


teenth century and fitted with drainagesluices. While work was underway onthe Willemsspoortunnel in 1991, evi-dence of this medieval Rotte-dam wasfound underneath the modern-dayHoogstraat, including an old woodendrainage sluice. The dam must havebeen constructed around the year 1270and as a result a new settlement, Rotter-dam, quickly developed and was firstrecorded between 1281 and 1284.

The remains of the medieval wooden drainagesluice in the dam of the Rotte, excavated by theBureau Oudkundigheid Onderzoek Rotterdam[Rotterdam Office for Archaeological Research]in 1991

c. 1270 Modest beginnings (up to 1570)

11

The damming of the Rotte: the beginnings of Rotterdam

A small settlement on the lower reachesof the Rotte is mentioned in documentsfrom the eleventh century as Rotta andthis predecessor of Rotterdam creatednew settlements by developing the land.The old settlement of Rotta was lostaround 1150 as a result of severe stormsurges and flooding that affected the en-tire region. As a response to these disas-ters, administrators and inhabitantsconstructed dikes before 1200 along thegreat rivers Maas and Hollandse IJssel inorder to protect the region. Openings inthe front of the dike that posed a danger,such as the Rotte, through which waterfrom the countryside drained into theMaas, were dammed off in the thir-


1299

12

Many different parties attempted totake advantage of the political unrestthat existed in Holland and Zeeland fol-lowing the murder of the count Floris Vin 1296. Floris’ son Jan was too young torule, which meant that Floris’ nephew,Jan van Avesnes from Henegouwen,came over to put matters in order. Thetown of Dordrecht and a number of no-blemen from Zeeland, includingWolfert van Borselen, Lord of Veere, as-

sisted him in this regard. After some-thing of a struggle, Wolfert was able totake over actual power in Holland. On17 March 1299, he granted town privi-leges and exemption from tolls to thesmall town of Rotterdam in order tohelp promote his position in the West-ern Netherlands against the enemytowns of Schiedam and Dordrecht, butthis was short-lived: Wolfert van Borse-len was murdered by his adversaries in

Delft on 1 August 1299 and thenewly-acquired town charter ofRotterdam was quickly revokedsoon afterwards.

Engraving of Wolfert van Borselen(‘Heer Wolfert Vander Vere’) in OudeChronyck van Hollandt (An Old History ofHolland), an edition of the Divisiekroniek(a collection of historical accounts andstories written by Cornelius Aurelius)from 1517

Wolfert van Borselen favours Rotterdam


there, this privilege allowed, amongother things, freedom from tolls in thecounty of Holland and exemption froma number of taxes, permission to holdannual markets and, of course, great ad-ministrative and judicial powers. In con-trast however, such privileges also camewith obligations, such as the provisionof soldiers to the Count in wartime, butthe legal foundation for the further de-velopment of Rotterdam had been laid.

The town charter of Rotterdam of 7 June 1340,from the Old City Archive

1340 Modest beginnings (up to 1570)

13

Following the short-lived town charterof 1299, Rotterdam gradually developedduring the fourteenth century into a set-tlement that aspired to become a largertown. The counts of Holland had settheir sights on the political and econom-ic power of towns and they capitalisedupon the wishes of their subjects. CountWillem III had already granted privi-leges of a town to part of Rotterdam in1328, whilst his son and successor CountWillem IV granted a permanent towncharter to the whole of Rotterdam in ex-change for payment on 7 June 1340. Forthe estimated 2000 people who lived

A permanent town charter for Rotterdam


There are no images or maps in existencethat depict the town of Rotterdam at thetime that it was granted a town charterand the oldest maps showing images ofthe town date back to the sixteenth cen-tury. We therefore do not know what thetown looked like in the fourteenth or fif-teenth centuries, although eighteenth-century town history enthusiasts in Rot-terdam in particular did not hesitate toproduce detailed prints of Rotterdamaround 1300 or 1400 AD. However, his-torical and archaeological data have

1340

made it possible to produce a reliable re-construction of a map of the young me-dieval town around the mid-fourteenthcentury. Using the courses of old riversand waterways in the ground, informa-tion about the distribution of plots ofland, but also information about me-dieval manorial lease fees paid to countsthat has survived as written records, apicture emerges of very modest build-ings along the Rotte and around the damin an otherwise rural area.

Reconstruction of themap of Rotterdamaround 1340, drawing byD. Wijnand based on adesign by C. Hoek

14

Reconstruction of Rotterdam at the time that its towncharter was granted


of this kind from Rotterdam to the Schieat Overschie, for which Rotterdamwould bear the costs. This canal, knownas the Rotterdamse Schie, was complet-ed ten years later. The addition of the Del fshavense Schie between the docks atDelfshaven on the Maas and the Schie,the construction of which in 1389 wascommissioned for the same purpose bythe town of Delft, fearful of competi-tion, gave rise to ‘the three Schies’.

The point at which the three Schies join atOverschie, detail from a map of the regional waterboard (Hoogheemraadschap) of Schieland (1684)

c. 1350 Modest beginnings (up to 1570)

15

The ‘Rotterdamse Schie’ is completed

A town charter is no guarantee that atown will prosper. Although Rotterdamhad a favourable location on the Maasand the Rotte, it did not possess a ship-ping link with towns in Holland such asDelft, Leiden and Haarlem. The littletown could therefore not perform a tran-sit role in the considerable amount oftrade to and from England that existedat the time, as Schiedam could thanks tothe river Schie that flowed to Delft. Twodays after the town charter of 1340 wasgranted, Count Willem IV also commis-sioned the regional water board ofSchieland to dig a useful shipping canal


After Count Willem V had been declaredinsane in 1358, he was replaced by hisbrother Albrecht, who granted permis-sion to Rotterdam on 8 May to build for-tifications around the town. Duringthese uncertain times when the Hookand Cod wars began, many towns as-pired to protect and expand their terri-tory for reasons of preserving their ownexistence and their desire to expand. In

1358

order to dig a moat, Rotterdam was per-mitted to expand the town boundaries.To the West, the Coolsingel became thetown moat and defences appeared. Evi-dence has shown that the first stonetown gates and town walls had alreadybeen built before 1400. During excava-tion works in the 1930s, 1960s and 1980s,remains of medieval walls and towerswere exposed for a brief period. The

most spectacular find,however, was in 1989when fourteenth-centu-ry town defences werefound several metres be-low ground level againstthe backdrop of the fu-turistic cubical housesnext to Blaak NS rail sta-tion.

Remains of the fourteenth-century southern town wallat Blaak NS Station in 1989,photograph courtesy of theMunicipal Archive

16

The town is fortified


The Rotterdam book

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