You have probably seen them at some point: those cheerfully painted buildings on the Spuistraat, with a snake several metres long climbing the facade of number 199. Until they were cleared in 2015 they were the last big squatters' stronghold in the city centre. But the name attached to them, the Tabakspanden (Tabak buildings), has nothing to do with tobacco or a factory. It refers to a man: Hendrik Tabak, the biggest slumlord Amsterdam has ever known.
From vegetable cart to property
Tabak was born in Amsterdam in 1900. As a twelve-year-old, so he later liked to tell, his father sent him into the city with a handcart full of fruit and vegetables, with orders not to come home until everything was sold. He made money hand over fist. At eighteen he bought a horse and cart, and by 1918 he had saved enough for his first little building. Around 1930 he settled on the Spuistraat, where he set up a vegetable wholesale business and later garages. Round the back, on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, he dealt in second-hand cars.
On the wrong side in the war
Tabak's life, as the magazine Ons Amsterdam aptly put it, can simply be divided into three: wrong before the war, wrong during the war and wrong after the war. During the Second World War he bought vegetables at the Central Market Halls for the German occupiers, and became friends with the notorious remover Abraham Puls, whose firm emptied the homes of deported Jewish Amsterdammers. In his trade in scarce goods Tabak was protected by Hans Blumenthal, second in command of the Sicherheitsdienst (the Nazi security service). During the Hunger Winter he even had police guarding his stronghold on the Spuistraat. He is estimated to have earned hundreds of thousands of guilders from his dealings with the occupiers.
He would rather earn a hundred guilders by swindling than a thousand by honest trade.
Ons Amsterdam on Hendrik Tabak
A kingdom of bricks
After the liberation Tabak was arrested, convicted of collaboration and locked up in an internment camp on Texel. But by 1946 he was walking the streets again, having cunningly convinced the court of his poor health. In the first post-war years he picked up the car trade again and invested the proceeds in property. At the height of his little kingdom Tabak owned 118 buildings and 800 homes in Amsterdam. Especially in the stretch of the centre between the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal and the Singel he bought building after building, knocking them through into large car parks. A city council spokesperson once sighed to Het Parool newspaper: the Spuistraat belongs to Tabak, you have little say there.
The fatal robbery
The end came in 1974. Tabak had just been sentenced to a few months in prison for demanding key money from new tenants, an illegal practice slumlords used to cash in extra. But before he had to report at the prison gate, he was robbed in his own garage on the Spuistraat and relieved of a few thousand guilders. A week later, at the end of January 1974, he died. The police spoke of a causal link between the robbery and his death. Amsterdammers were only too happy to believe it: Tabak, people joked, died from losing those few thousand guilders, not from his injuries. There were plenty of suspects, half the city loathed the slumlord, but his killers were never found.
The Tabakspanden live on
After his death Tabak's buildings on the Spuistraat were named after him. They changed hands eight times in thirty years, without anyone managing to redevelop them. In 1983 they were squatted by some two hundred people and grew into a famous creative stronghold, with the Slangenpand (snake building) at number 199. Only in March 2015, after 32 years and with help from the ME (riot police), were the buildings cleared. And so the name of an unscrupulous swindler clung to the city well into the twenty-first century.
More about this corner of the city? Read how the Nieuwezijds Achterburgwal became the Spuistraat, or about the great fire on the Damrak in 1963.
- 01At his peak Tabak owned 118 buildings and 800 homes in Amsterdam.
- 02His car parks were designed by architect Piet Zanstra; the biggest, on the Marnixstraat, is now known as Europarking.
- 03Tabak lied so habitually that even the secret service could not establish his correct first name after his death.
- 04The robbers were never found; according to former BVD (Dutch security service) officer Frits Hoekstra, even the Rode Jeugd (Red Youth) had plans to kill him.
- 05In 1987 Spuistraat 199 got its famous snake on the facade, designed by artist Patries van Elsen: the Slangenpand was born.
