Arty Calls

Hendrik Petrus Berlage's Exchange Building

In 1881 he joined Th. Sanders in an Amsterdam architectural office. And from 1884 to 1889 they were partners.

This is their competition design of 1884 for the ‘Amsterdam Exchange’. It reached the semi-finals out of 119 entries which was when this version was submitted. The earlier version was much richer in ornament, particularly the interior. However, when asked to produce more detailed plans, they stripped down the extravagance to keep within the projected budget. The jury were not pleased with this meanness. The style could loosely be called Dutch Renaissance, which doesn’t tell you much; of more interest is the overtly Italianate style of the interior which Berlage seems to have picked up, not only from his training but, at first hand in Italy.

In 1886 Berlage said, ‘If we want to be honest, then we must admit that artists of the last half of the Nineteenth century do nothing but “copy”’ and that what we should be looking for is a new, non-derivative, style. Yet his designs of this period, such as ‘Vestibule of a Royal Palace’, ‘Design for a Painter’s Studio’ and especially his ‘Monument Historique’ mercilessly plunder past buildings.

In practice the buildings of the Sanders period are more sedate, less eclectic, than Berlage’s competition entries. ‘De Hoop’ 1883-4 was a working men’s coffee house. The façade was asymmetrical. The main innovation was in trying to limit the stone strips and plaster, which often covered buildings, to expose the brick it was made of, but they don’t seem to have tried too hard.

The Focke & Meltzer building, ‘Kalverstraat 152’ of 1884-6 is a small block of offices with a shop on the ground floor. The building is stone-faced and is covered in things like granite columns, bronze capitals, lunettes, a turret and so on. It even has wooden pediments in the bay window frames. That’s not to say it is a bad building, not that Berlage would eventually dispose of historical elements, but we may see them more effectively integrated into the structure of the building.

Berlage left Sanders in 1889 but it wasn’t until 1891 that he got his first commission. It was to build a house for Dr. E.D. Pijzel at 72 Van Baerlestraat. There’s not much stone used to disguise the building material, merely three short bands at basement level. Berlage had been working on stripping back superficial ornamentation as the design for the office building of Kerkhoven & Co. at Herengracht 115 shows. Although not as explicit as the Pijzel house it does show a movement towards less decoration and covering of the brick. The Pijzel house has no palatial pretensions; it’s comfortable being just a rather well-to-do town house.

Berlage then built two office buildings for ‘De Nederlanden Van 1845’ – one in 1894-5 and the other in 1895-6. The first one was in the Amsterdam Muntplein. The main feature is the rounded projection to house the staircase and terminating in a turret. As well as the wide, low arches for the shop windows, the general impression is vaguely historic and haphazard. Symmetry is lacking but some order is present. He was aiming for what he calls, ‘Unity in Plurality’. In other words, he felt that an irregular design that still holds together is better than a simple symmetrical and repetitive pattern. The second ‘De Nederlanden Van 1845’ in the Hague Kerkplein also had an irregular façade. For example the fenestration on one street differs from the other, especially at the top where on one side there is a photographer’s studio with dormer windows and on the other side there is a porter’s dwelling with a recessed balcony below an arcade. The staircase for this second building is similarly placed but does not project as obviously as it’s original design or the Muntplein office. This building is topped by a tower with a stepped gable. There is a fair degree of ornament on both buildings, largely by the sculptor Lambertus Zijl, for example the carved stone above the entrance to the Kerkplein branch. Both buildings were somewhat regularised when extensions were built: the Kerkplein in 1901 and 1909 and the Muntplein in 1911.

 In 1896 Berlage was appointed to give technical advice to the Amsterdam Exchange Committee. In October he managed to convince the committee that he should build it. The plan was in some ways similar to his original plan, in that it would be divided into three halls for stock, corn and produce. The Stock Exchange wanted to be separated from the others so he placed the postal, telegraph and telephone facilities, which they all had to have easy access, between the Stock Exchange and the Corn and Produce Exchanges which he placed side by side. The Stock Exchange, in any case, was bigger than the other two and, partly because it was allocated an irregular width of site. Berlage expressed satisfaction with the plot of land because its limited shape made for a more interesting design challenge requiring a concise individual solution. The plan was completed with adding surrounding offices and, at the main entrance, vestibules and cloakrooms above which was housed the Chamber of Commerce with its conference meeting room. The internal spaces are all rectangular except on the Eastern side where the plot widens. This is expressed in the exterior at the centre of the Eastern façade where three arched windows become gradually deeper in order to remain parallel with the other side of the building. Berlage allows the difference in shape between the two sides of the site to show in the room design but remain harmonious.

Generally the features that have been mentioned before can be seen to bear fruit in the exterior: asymmetry, towers, unadorned brick, a knowledge and awareness of historical forms but greater concision in the expression of internal spaces and with disposal of superfluous decoration. Berlage said, ‘I have made of it a question of principle. The main distribution is now expressed as much as possible in the silhouette’ and ‘Order is regularity, even where it appears not to be present, even where there are no so-called academic plans, also where we have nothing to do with symmetry, in the usual sense of the word.’

The ground floor of the interior of the Produce Exchange has wide arches, one for every two bays of the two arcades above with openwork balustrades. There are steel roof trusses below the double glass roof. The floor is in Java teak but the columns are connected by a strip of granite so that the columns don’t appear to stand on wood.

In the Stock Exchange the bases of the roof trusses are asymmetrical.

The Corn Exchange has different lighting requirements due to the need to judge samples of corn. This is expressed internally by straight girders and externally by raising roof to gain greater light on the Northern elevation.

In the Chamber of Commerce conference room the original Romanesque arch over the public gallery had to be split into three as cracks appeared when the building settled on its foundations. Despite carpeting the room also turned out to have a loud acoustic echo so curtains were placed half way up the wall and over the doors and the remaining wall spaces wainscoted.

Copyright Ade Annabel 1980