Rijkskantoor voor Geld- en Telefoonbedrijf
By the early 1920s the Hoofdpostkantoor (main post office) on the corner of the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal and the Raadhuisstraat was bursting at the seams. Expansion was essential, and it was found on the other side of the Raadhuisstraat. Here, in 1927, the Rijkskantoor voor Geld- en Telefoonbedrijf (the state office for the giro and telephone services) was built, to a design by Joop Crouwel jr. It did, by the way, require the demolition of a block of houses, since the land was still in use.
Connecting Amsterdammers
Among other things, the Rijkskantoor voor Geld- en Telefoonbedrijf handled the telephone connections for Amsterdammers. After all, this was the era in which this way of communicating was becoming available to more and more people. Over the years it became the home base of the PTT (the national post and telecoms service) for the Amsterdam region, and after the split KPN used it for a while too. A few years into this century the KPN logo disappeared from the facade, when the company concentrated its activities near Sloterdijk. For many years after that, the building had no permanent occupants. Except, that is, for the ground floor and basement, because a clever entrepreneur had meanwhile opened an Albert Heijn supermarket there.
Respect for the building
Office WinHov has now transformed the state office building, with respect for its history, into a luxury five-star hotel with 172 rooms. The conversion of the Rijkskantoor started in 2013 and ended up taking two years. Inside, the building has been completely re-planned, but from the outside it still looks like the office it once was.
Swimming in the vault
The W Hotel consists of two buildings. On the other side of the Spuistraat, the hotel also uses the KAS-bank building from 1908. In the basement the former bank vault has been used to build a swimming pool. The original vault doors, weighing 4,000 kilos, have been preserved.
But let's be honest: those civil servants of old did not have a rooftop swimming pool no less than 22 metres long up on the roof. There, hotel guests now enjoy a more than royal view over the Palace and large parts of the city. And that supermarket: it is still there. The question remains whether W Hotel tried to bring that part of the building into the fold as well, so there could have been an entrance on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal...
A tribute to connection
Almost 100 years after the building opened, there is still a touch of the past. Five kilometres of copper pipes and electrical conduit in the W Lounge form a tribute to the former state office building, where connecting Amsterdammers was the whole point.
