How Berlage designed a district that still gives Amsterdam its face.
Around 1900 Amsterdam was bursting at the seams. The city had more than half a million inhabitants, and many working-class families lived in cramped, damp homes. The Housing Act of 1901 finally gave councils and housing associations the means to do something about it.
For the land south of the city, between the Amstel and the Schinkel, the council asked the architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage for a plan. His first design, with winding streets in a park-like landscape, was approved in 1905 but turned out to be too expensive and impractical. In 1915 he drew a second, far more urban plan: broad avenues, squares and long, closed housing blocks around inner gardens. In 1917 the city council adopted it.
Berlage set out the main lines. The street fronts were filled in by young architects of the Amsterdam School, among them Michel de Klerk, Piet Kramer and Margaret Staal-Kropholler, the first woman to practise as an architect in the Netherlands. With brick, undulating facades, little towers and decorative brickwork they turned ordinary rented flats into small works of art.
This is how the Rivierenbuurt, the Apollobuurt, the Stadionbuurt and a large part of the Nieuwe Pijp came about. Walk through them today and you still see the plan almost everywhere: in the straight avenues, the squares where the streets meet and the endless red brick.
Berlage had never designed a city when he got the commission in 1900. He read up, above all in the book by the Viennese planner Camillo Sitte on building cities according to artistic principles. A handful of big ideas came out of it, and you can still see them today.
Monumental in layout, picturesque in detail.
H.P. Berlage on his first plan
Not endless straight streets of separate houses, but a city you experience as a sequence of spaces: avenues, squares, vistas. Every street had to lead somewhere.
A whole block becomes one design, with a continuous street front and a shared inner garden. Not the individual house but the whole counts: a gesture towards the collective.
One axis runs from a new bridge across the Amstel to Victorieplein. The other runs along Minervalaan to a new station in the south. The rest of the district is arranged around them.
Where the avenues meet, there is a square. And at the key points a public building or a tower, so you can see from afar where you are heading.
Villas, upper flats with their own front door and walk-up apartment blocks side by side. Three quarters of the homes became walk-up flats, built by housing associations and private developers.
Rows of trees, green strips and canals are part of the plan. Berlage drew not only the streets but also the planting.
Plan Zuid was designed twice, and even the second plan was not built exactly as Berlage drew it. Many ideas were realised, some turned out differently, and a few only came decades later.
From a new Amstel bridge to Victorieplein, and along Minervalaan to the south.
The Berlagebrug opened in 1932, with the Wolkenkrabber as the landmark on Victorieplein. Minervalaan became the stately avenue Berlage had in mind.
A station at the end of Minervalaan, as the finishing point of the grand axis.
Amsterdam Zuid station opened in December 1978, roughly where Berlage had placed it in 1915. The Zuidas business district later grew up around it.
A large university hospital, in the middle of the new district.
On that site De Klerk and Kramer built their famous workers' housing.
An academy of fine arts, an artists' house, a people's hall and a Catholic church, as landmarks along the avenues.
Almost none were built. After the war, hotels appeared on those sites: the Hilton instead of the academy, the Apollo Hotel instead of the artists' house and the Okura instead of the people's hall.
In the south-east, low houses of two storeys with a roof, after a 1915 competition design by J.F. Repko.
The garden city never came. From the late 1920s long housing blocks went up here: the southern part of the Rivierenbuurt.
An urban canal with hard stone quay walls.
The canal got green, sloping banks. Anyone walking along it today will probably not call that a loss.
Brick, tiled roofs and wooden frames: the city guarded the unity.
Architects of the New Building movement, with concrete and glass, hardly got a look in. Duiker's Open Air School was tucked away in an inner courtyard.
The city asks Berlage to draw up a plan for the land south of the city.
Councils and housing associations get money and rules to build decent, affordable homes.
In January the council adopts Berlage's plan with winding streets. It turns out to be too expensive and is never carried out.
On 27 March Berlage delivers a new, more urban plan: avenues, squares and closed blocks.
On 25 and 26 October the city council debates Plan Zuid and adopts it. Building can begin.
In July alderman De Miranda opens the housing complex by De Klerk and Kramer, built for the socialist housing association De Dageraad.
Michel de Klerk dies on his 39th birthday. Piet Kramer becomes the leading figure of the Amsterdam School.
On Cliostraat Jan Duiker builds a school of glass and concrete: modernism arrives.
J.F. Staal's Wolkenkrabber is finished, and on 28 May Berlage's bridge across the Amstel opens.
Berlage dies in The Hague, aged 78.
Some 17,000 Jewish Amsterdammers live in the Rivierenbuurt. About 13,000 of them will not survive the war. In July the Frank family goes into hiding.
Daniël Willinkplein becomes Victorieplein. The avenues that meet there are named after Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. In 1956 Stalinlaan becomes Vrijheidslaan.
In December Amsterdam Zuid station opens, roughly where Berlage had drawn his Zuiderstation.
A plan is nothing without people who want it, pay for it and build it. Behind Plan Zuid stood administrators who made the city build for itself, and designers who turned ordinary homes into works of art.
Urban planner, 1856-1934H.P. BerlageThe father of the plan. He also built the Stock Exchange on Damrak and designed the bridge across the Amstel that bears his name.Read the story
Alderman, 1859-1936Floor WibautA wealthy timber merchant turned socialist. As alderman he made sure the city itself started building.Read the story
Alderman, 1875-1942Monne de MirandaStarted as an eleven-year-old diamond worker. As alderman for housing he opened De Dageraad.Read the story
Architect, 1884-1923Michel de KlerkThe great talent of the Amsterdam School, known for Het Schip. Designed De Dageraad together with Kramer.Read the story
Architect, 1881-1961Piet KramerAs architect of the Public Works department he drew more than 500 bridges, of which some 220 were built.Read the story
Architect, 1879-1940J.F. StaalBuilt the Wolkenkrabber on Victorieplein, the first residential tower in the city.Read the story
Architect, 1891-1966Margaret KrophollerThe first woman architect in the Netherlands. Built housing blocks on Holendrechtstraat.Read the story
City sculptor, 1884-1970Hildo KropCity sculptor of Amsterdam. His sculptures adorn bridges and facades all over Zuid.Read the story
Architect, 1890-1935Jan DuikerDesigned the Open Air School with Bernard Bijvoet: light, air and concrete in a district of brick.Read the story
1Built for the socialist housing association De Dageraad. De Klerk and Kramer made the facades undulate and the corners curve, with little towers as exclamation marks.
2Twelve storeys tall: the first high-rise in Amsterdam. With a lift, central heating, hot water and rubbish chutes it was far ahead of its time.
3Hildo Krop placed Berlage in the middle of his own district, like a guardian of his plan.
4Glass, concrete and as much fresh air as possible, for healthy children. The opposite of the brick of the Amsterdam School.
5Anne Frank lived here from 1933 until July 1942. On 12 June 1942 she was given her diary, three weeks before the family went into hiding.
6Berlage's last major work, with engineer Cornelis Biemond. The bridge tower carries a ceramic relief by Hildo Krop.
