Sturm en het stadhuis. Een Duits architectuurdocent corrigeert het werk van Jacob van Campen en Jacob Roman

The Amsterdam Town Hall (1648-1665) of Jacob van Campen was undoubtedly one of the major architectonic attractions of the Dutch Republic. Among the many tourists honouring the building with a visit was the North-German architect Leonhard Christoph Sturm (1669-1719), teacher at the Ritterakademie of Wolffenbüttel, who had a large number of treatises on architecture to his name and reported on his findings during his travels in the Netherlands and France in 1697, 1699 and 1712 in his Architectonische Reiseanmerkungen, which appeared in the year of his death. Among the many buildings in the classicist building style, which he described and criticised there, were also a few town halls, a theme to which Sturm devoted a separate text in 1718. Three of them are entered into more extensively: besides the Amsterdam Town Hall, the Delft Town Hall (1618-1620) of Hendrick de Keyser and the Deventer Town Hall (1686-'88) of Jacob Roman. The Delft Town Hall is denounced as too extravagant; of the Deventer Town Hall Sturm made a far from perfect elevation drawing of the facade on the basis of flawed sketches and memories, for which he subsequently proposed some improvements that had actually already been realised in the building. Nor is the Amsterdam Town Hall spared, in which the absence of a monumental entrance section particularly annoys him, besides a few minor 'shortcomings'. He was not the only one; many foreign travelers felt the same, before as well as after him. However, unlike them, Sturm drew an alternative floor plan, in which instead of the seven low semi-circular arches he had designed a grand staircase, possibly inspired by Vingboons' alternative design for the town-hall, which in his view was indispensable for the town hall of such a large town. In the German treatises he more or less constituted a standard element in theory, although in practice he was mostly absent in the German towns. Furthermore, without commenting on it, the author - without being aware of it? - made some more corrections in the floor plan, such as increasing the number of windows in the side wall by one window, thus producing an odd number, which gave him the opportunity to highlight the central axis. The Amsterdam Town Hall did not only function as a source of inspiration for Sturm in his treatise on town halls. In his Ausführliche Anleitung zur Bürgerlichen Baukunst his younger colleague Johann Friedrich Penther (1693-1749) commended it as the most important specimen of the century, serving as a guiding principle for himself, too, in the relevant chapter of his manual, where he, just as Sturm, presents a few of his own designs for town halls

Sturm en het stadhuis. Een Duits architectuurdocent corrigeert het werk van Jacob van Campen en Jacob Roman

The Amsterdam Town Hall (1648-1665) of Jacob van Campen was undoubtedly one of the major architectonic attractions of the Dutch Republic. Among the many tourists honouring the building with a visit was the North-German architect Leonhard Christoph Sturm (1669-1719), teacher at the Ritterakademie of Wolffenbüttel, who had a large number of treatises on architecture to his name and reported on his findings during his travels in the Netherlands and France in 1697, 1699 and 1712 in his Architectonische Reiseanmerkungen, which appeared in the year of his death. Among the many buildings in the classicist building style, which he described and criticised there, were also a few town halls, a theme to which Sturm devoted a separate text in 1718. Three of them are entered into more extensively: besides the Amsterdam Town Hall, the Delft Town Hall (1618-1620) of Hendrick de Keyser and the Deventer Town Hall (1686-'88) of Jacob Roman. The Delft Town Hall is denounced as too extravagant; of the Deventer Town Hall Sturm made a far from perfect elevation drawing of the facade on the basis of flawed sketches and memories, for which he subsequently proposed some improvements that had actually already been realised in the building. Nor is the Amsterdam Town Hall spared, in which the absence of a monumental entrance section particularly annoys him, besides a few minor 'shortcomings'. He was not the only one; many foreign travelers felt the same, before as well as after him. However, unlike them, Sturm drew an alternative floor plan, in which instead of the seven low semi-circular arches he had designed a grand staircase, possibly inspired by Vingboons' alternative design for the town-hall, which in his view was indispensable for the town hall of such a large town. In the German treatises he more or less constituted a standard element in theory, although in practice he was mostly absent in the German towns. Furthermore, without commenting on it, the author - without being aware of it? - made some more corrections in the floor plan, such as increasing the number of windows in the side wall by one window, thus producing an odd number, which gave him the opportunity to highlight the central axis. The Amsterdam Town Hall did not only function as a source of inspiration for Sturm in his treatise on town halls. In his Ausführliche Anleitung zur Bürgerlichen Baukunst his younger colleague Johann Friedrich Penther (1693-1749) commended it as the most important specimen of the century, serving as a guiding principle for himself, too, in the relevant chapter of his manual, where he, just as Sturm, presents a few of his own designs for town halls

De architectuurtekeningen van de kinderen van het Utrechtse Burgerweeshuis

In the Topographical Atlas of the municipal archives of Utrecht there is a unique collection of drawings. They were made by orphan boys from the Reformed orphanage on the responsibility of art teacher Arnoldus Koopman who was employed there from 1766 to 1805. A quarter of the 296 preserved drawings fall under the scope of architecture, of which one-third concerns accurate studies of columns and two-thirds are drawings of stairwells, roof timbers and roof constructions. The greater part of them was signed and unfortunately just a small part of them was dated. On the basis of these datings it is to be assumed that most of them were made during the last period of their makers' stay in the orphanage, which they usually left around the age of 24. Apart from these there are twelve drawings on various subjects, probably chiefly from the period between 1770 and 1780. These are the most interesting ones. They include, for instance, designs for town halls and country estates, for domed summerhouses and garden houses, as well as a beautiful sketch of an organ front. There often was a connection with the trade for which the maker was being educated, frequently the trade of carpenter, but also of decorative painter (a ceiling), cabinetmaker (the organ) or stained-glass artist (garden houses with a lot of glass). From a stylistic point of view the designs are rather conservative in character; the new neo-Classicism of those days is hardly noticeable

Een schouwburgprijsvraag uit 1837. Het bekroonde ontwerp van Robertus van Zoelen in de bouwkundige klasse van de Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten te Amsterdam

In the first half of the 19th century no theoretical education for architects existed in the Netherlands, but since 1817 there was a Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam where, among other subjects, architecture was taught. In 1837 the academy held a special competition for a city theatre, which was won by the Amsterdam carpenter’s son Robertus van Zoelen (1812-1869). On the basis of a prescribed programme the competitors had to make a sketch first, and subsequently they were given one month’s time to design more accurate construction drawings. In this article earlier and later competitions are dealt with, the architectonic design and the layout of these theatres, which could accommodate approximately 1500 visitors. Van Zoelen’s creation was uncommonly monumental for Dutch standards and was hardly comparable to the wooden theatre of city architect Jacob Eduard de Witte situated on Leidseplein in Amsterdam at that time. The author discusses other theatres in the Netherlands and Europe. Since around 1750 good acoustics and visibility for all the visitors were aimed at, the form of the stage in connection with this, as well as the external recognizability of the theatre by means of an entrance under a column portico. There were advanced designs in several European cities and Van Zoelen had heard of them, but no more than that. It is likely that he never crossed the national borders and derived his knowledge from books and colleagues, such as the managing director of the Amsterdam academy Martinus Gerardus Tétar van Elven. Just as at the French academy of architecture, which served as an example for the Dutch academy in many respects, the competitions were highly academic and theoretical in character

Wat er staat is zelden Waterstaat. Overheidsbemoeienis bij de vormgeving van katholieke kerkgebouwen in Gelderland in het tweede kwart van de negentiende eeuw

For a long time the name ‘Churches of Public Works’ was automatically given to the neoclassical Churches from the second quarter of the 19th century, which went up under the supervision (and partly after the plans) of engineers of the department of Public Works. The construction of these churches was State-aided. This name concerned simple brick hall churches without columns with a white-plastered interior and a peristyle or pilaster facade on the front, crowned with an elegant cupola-tower. Research in the Dutch province of Guelderland however proved that examples of the churches as described above mostly were planned by individual architects. The department of Public Works was responsible for subsidized projects of poor, mostly catholic municipalities. The state only subsidized what was absolutely necessary. The engineers removed columns, pilasters and cupolas from the plans of individual architects in consideration of finances. Churches, built under the supervision of the Department of Public Works thereby mostly were unadorned brick buildings in which functionality prevailed. The three Standard types, which gradually developed in Guelderland stood out by format and not by artistic composition. The smallest variety was a one-aisled hall church without columns constructed back to back with the presbytery and with an unpretentious ridge turret on the facade. If money was available the second type often was provided with a simple tower. Only the largest variety had three aisles, mostly with the middle nave and side-aisles under one continuous hipped roof. Exuberance was not realizable to the Catholics in Guelderland. The assumption that the Department of Public Works only tolerated the classical style is not true, Gothic plans by individual architects were not excluded. The department however objected to the blending of style, for example the combination of gothic vaults and classic pilasters. The pure application of style was the first consideration

De Amsterdamse stadhuisplannen uit de jaren voor 1648

Before building on the Amsterdam Town Hall was started in 1648 in accordance with the design of Jacob van Campen, a whole range of different plans had been manufactured for at least eight years. Eight of these plans, of divergent character, are now known. In one case just a rough draft of a ground plan has come down to us, in a second case a carefully worked out facade, in a third a completely elaborated design. Some were made by Van Campen himself, others by the architect Philip Vingboons, one possibly by Cornelis Danckerts de Ry, and several of them anonymous, the author still being uncertain. The names of famous connoisseurs of classical architecture have been suggested as authors, such as Pieter Post and Constantijn Huygens. Apart from their authorship, the correct date of most of these projects was also highly problematic. Consequently, their logical sequence has been the object of scholarly debate for many decades. Nevertheless, this has not resulted in a generally accepted chronology so far, although the most recent, suggested by Koen Ottenheym in his book about Vingboons, is to be regarded as the most probable. For the best skeleton for dating the undated designs is given by the successive resolutions of the 'Vroedschap' (town council), which in the period 1639-1648 changed the measurements for the new town hall that they wanted to build several times. These measurements were published for the first time by Boeken 1919, and have functioned as the chief arguments for every serious attempt at dating ever since. As, of course, the size of the plans to be produced was related to the format prescribed by the commissioners. Unfortunately, however, one art historian, Wouter Kuyper, has almost totally disregarded these facts. In two short articles published in 1976 and 1977 as well as in a professed handbook to seventeenth-century Dutch architecture - his widely consulted ‘Dutch Classicist Architecture’, published in 1980 - he presented his own theses for authorship and dating. As regards the former, they were very speculative and as regards the latter often very arbitrary, and moreover partially conflicting, since his interpretation is not only in conflict with the most logical order, but in each instance his next interpretation also differs from the one given before. And this without commenting on it, let alone arguing these changes. What is worse, in order to arrive at his conclusions, he not only repeatedly ignored and concealed the clearly stated sizes in the respective solutions which did not fit in with his own variable interpretations, he also more or less falsified the facts in his manual at least on one occasion, in order to arrive at this utterly unfounded 'reconstruction' of an Italianate Dam-Square project by Constantijn Huygens, to whom Kuyper attributes the so-called Monogram-style Design, but whose interference is completely hypothetical. Notably, in order to get his design integrated into a site plan made by Danckerts he tacitly increased its size. Consequently, there is every reason to examine the way in which Kuyper arrives at his conclusions, which have never before been explicitly challenged by other scholars. Hence this historiographical article which analyses all the arguments that have been put forward since the beginning of the debate for dating and attributing the projects known, in an attempt to formulate the most reasonable solution to the partly still open questions raised by this very complicated matte

De toren als theoretisch probleem in de classicistische bouwkunst. Een verkenning in de hoogte

The architecture of ancient Hellas and Rome had a strongly horizontal character. The most monumental type of building from this cultural sphere - the classical temple - bears witness to this. From the Renaissance, when throughout Europe this classical architecture was the source of inspiration for contemporary building, the temple was the pre-eminent aesthetic ideal. Consequently, its proportions, which were considered harmonious, were in principle also normative for completely different types of building created later and indispensable ever since. One of these types of building which had become enormously popular after Antiquity was the tower - a major heritage from the Middle Ages which people were reluctant to part with when building churches and town halls even after 1500, particularly north of the Alps. The tower was pre-eminently a vertical building, so that it could only with great difficulty fit in with the architecture of the Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism, inspired as it was by the classical heritage. The theme of this essay is the question how this contradiction between a tradition, necessary for a tower, and a theory which could not quite cope with it, was reconciled in The Netherlands in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fact is that even leading treatise writers in Italy, France and Germany were not able to come up with a satisfactory answer to this question, while others for the same reason conveniently ignored the whole problem and make no mention at all of the phenomenon tower. In Dutch practice too, it was only rarely that a solution was found resulting in a 'classical' tower that was more or less satisfactory both from an aesthetic and a theoretical point of view. Nevertheless, on the basis of the international 'Vitruvian' theory of architecture, as it gradually developed after 1500, a number of rules were formulated which a 'classical' tower - just as any other 'classical' building - had to comply with. However, some of these rules proved to be conflicting, when superposition of columns or pilasters was applied in order to subdivide a tower into various floors. Exact measures were laid down for each of the five types of columns, which left little space when various types were superpositioned, and in combination with other rules, such as a gradually decreasing height of the floors, resulted in a knot that could hardly be disentangled. When testing Dutch towers from the period of the Dutch Republic for compatibility with these rules, even the work of renowned architects, such as Hendrick de Keyser or Arent van 's-Gravensande fails as not much better than unskilled labour. In the early eighteenth century some Gerrnan authors, such as Sturm and Decker, were to find ingenious solutions, but these were too complicated and costly to apply in The Netherlands. At the end of the century their compatriot Samuel Locke went farthest in his search for a both beautiful and classically sound tower. He devoted an entire folio volume with numerous tables to it, in vain, for his own final project makes it clear that a really 'classical' tower can actually not exist

De Amsterdamse bouwmeester en landmeter Jan Jacobszoon Bolten (1738-na 1811)

The Amsterdam architect and surveyor Jan Jacobszoon Bolten (1738-after 1811) is one of many private architects whose name pops up now and then in the literature. This essay, for the first time, sketches his quite varied career. Since mid-1768 he held the post of architect and surveyor in the district of Zutphen, a position that he gave up again after just one year, probably because he couldn’t get by on his wages. His task consisted mainly of minor maintenance work. His biggest assignment was the large-scale repair of the roof of the Gothic Broeren church in Zutphen, which would lead to a blinding row with the master carpenter of the district, Barthold Bobbink (1715-1779). Bolten’s wonderful drawing of the roof construction is the only drawing by him that has survived. The work would only be finished later, under Bolten’s successor Teunis Wittenberg (1741-1816), who had also applied for the position in 1768. The present, elegant spirelet was designed by him in 1772. Bolten returned to Amsterdam, although he remained active in the province of Gelderland. In 1771-72, in Nijkerk, he extended the meeting hall of the local government, the so-called ‘ambtsjonkers’ and by drawing up conditions, specifications and budgets he was involved in the plans for a new church tower there. This tower would eventually be built in 1775-76, after a design by fellow Amsterdam architect Hendrik Gerrit van Raan (1751-1821). It is not clear whether Bolten himself also made designs for this tower. In any case, in 1775, he also entered the competition for the new town hall in Groningen, which was eventually won by Jacob Otten Husly (1738-1796). From Bolten’s entry only an untidy description accompanying the drawings remains in the municipal archives, so that it is difficult to picture what his project must have looked like. It may have been similar in character to that of the Amsterdam drawing master Jan Uijtewaal (1733-1795): a sort of gigantic countryhouse with a modest portico instead of the large temple peristyle specified in the competition’s programme. Nevertheless, Bolten’s efforts were rewarded with an honourable mention by the jury. Over time, Bolten had also established himself as a cartographer but his last known activities were of a quite different nature. As co-founder (1779) of the Society of Mathematical Science ‘Een onvermoeide Arbeid komt alles te boven’ (relentless Labour overcomes everything) he published two short essays about locks in 1796. Before that, in 1780, he had been involved in a – rather unsuccessful – experiment with a tilted paddle wheel for water mills in the Nieuwe Vaart waterway in Amsterdam. These were designed by the brothers Antoine George Eckhardt (1740-1810) and Frans Frederik Eckhardt (1741-1825) from The Hague, a very versatile, be it very idiosyncratic pair of inventors. After the failed experiment they went to London for a couple of decades and treated the British to an avalanche of new and inventive creations. Not so Bolten. He spent the rest of his days in anonymity and in 1810 moved to Naarden – his wife’s native town – where he vanished in the fog of history.De Amsterdamse bouwmeester en landmeter Jan Jacobsz Bolten (1738-na 1811) is een van die vele particuliere bouw­kundigen, wier naam af en toe in de literatuur opduikt. In dit opstel wordt voor het eerst zijn loopbaan geschetst, die van een grote veelzijdigheid getuigt. Vanaf de zomer van 1768 vervulde hij het ambt van architect en landmeter in het kwartier Zutphen, dat hij al weer na een jaar neerlegde, vermoedelijk omdat hij van het salaris niet rondkomen kon. Zijn taken bestonden hier voornamelijk uit het verrichten van kleinere onderhoudswerkzaamheden; zijn meest omvang­rijke opgave vormde het grootscheepse herstel van het dak van de gotische Broerenkerk in Zutphen, dat tot een hoogoplopend conflict met de meester timmerman van het kwartier, Barthold Bobbink (1715-1779), zou leiden. Boltens fraaie bouwtekening van de constructie van de kap vormt de enige die überhaupt van zijn hand bewaard gebleven is. Het werk zou pas voltooid worden onder verant­woordelijkheid van Boltens opvolger Teunis Wittenberg (1741-1816), die ook in 1768 al naar de post had gesollici­teerd. De huidige elegante dakrui­ter uit 1772 is door hem ontwor­pen. Bolten keerde terug naar Amsterdam, maar bleef van daaruit ook in Gelderland actief. Voor de ambtsjonkers van Nijkerk vergrootte hij in 1771-'72 het Ambtshuis en was hij middels het maken van bestekken en begro­tin­gen betrokken bij de plannen voor een nieuwe kerktoren in het stadje, die uiteindelijk in 1775-'76 naar ontwerp van zijn stadsgenoot Hendrik Gerrit van Raan (1751-1821) verrees. In hoeverre Bolten daarvoor ook zelf ontwerpen heeft vervaardigd, blijft onduidelijk; in elk geval dong hij in 1775 ook vergeefs mee bij de prijs­vraag voor het nieuwe Stadhuis van Gronin­gen, die uiteindelijk door Jacob Otten Husly (1738-1796) werd gewonnen. Van zijn inzending is slechts de rommelige bij de tekenin­gen behorende beschrijving in het stadsar­chief achtergeble­ven, zodat we ons van zijn project moeilijk een voorstelling kunnen maken. Mogelijk had het wel wat weg van dat van de Amster­dam­se tekenmeester Jan Uijtewaal (1733-1795): een soort kolossaal uitge­vallen buitenhuis met een beschei­den portiek, in plaats van de grote tempel­peristy­le die het prijsvraag­pro­gramma had verlangd. Toch werden zijn inspannin­gen in het juryrapport met een loffelijke melding be­loond. De laatste bekende activiteiten van Bolten, die in de loop der jaren daarnaast ook als kaartenmaker zijn brood verdiende, bevinden zich op een geheel ander vlak. Als medeoprichter van het Genootschap der Mathemati­sche Wetenschappen 'Een onvermoeide Arbeid komt alles te boven' (1779) zou hij in 1796 in het verenigingsblad twee korte beschou­wingen over schutsluizen publiceren. Al eerder, in 1780, was hij betrokken geraakt bij een (niet bijzonder succesvol) verlopende proef met een hellend schep­rad voor watermolens in de Nieuwe Vaart te Amsterdam. Ontwerpers waren de Haagse gebroe­ders Antoine George Eckhardt (1740-1810) en Frans Frederik Eckhardt (1741-1825), een bijzonder veelzijdig, maar ook bijzonder eigen­wijs uitvinders duo, dat kort na de mislukking van het experiment voor enige decennia naar Londen vertrok, waar zij de Britten nog met een hele vloot aan nieuwe inventieve creaties zouden verrassen. Dat deed Bolten zelf niet; hij sleet zijn verdere levensdagen in de anonimiteit, om in 1810 slechts naar Naarden - de geboorteplaats van zijn vrouw - te verkassen, waar hij in de nevelen van de geschiedenis verdwijnt

Vier ingenieurs als stadsbouwmeester

In the second half of the eighteenth century a number of important developments took place in Dutch architecture, resulting in the rise of austere Neoclassicism at the expense of flamboyant rococo. The ornamental Louis XV style made way for the architectonic Louis XVI style. The aim was to link up more closely with the Dutch Classicism of Pieter Post and Jacob van Campen again, as practised during the heyday of the Republic. The Amsterdam 'stadsfabriekambt' (public works), which was thoroughly reorganized on the initiative of mayor Pieter Rendorp in 1746, played an important part in this metamorphosis. For some time Rendorp had been annoyed at the poor level of architecture in consequence of the lack of theoretical knowledge of the major designers, who were usually no more than just traditionally schooled bricklayers and carpenters who had risen from the contractors' business. In his eyes they were under the misconception that beauty in architecture was a matter of decoration, instead of proportion. With the aid of military engineers, who had indeed received thorough training, the architectonic level of the official town buildings was to be improved from then on. In other places too, they made their entry into 'civil' architecture. Four such engineers in succession were at the head of the Amsterdam public works. All four of them were attracted from outside the town, obviously because educated talent could not be found within the town walls. These were Gerard Frederik Maybaum (from 1746 to 1768), Cornelis Rauws (from 1768 to 1772), Jacob Eduard de Witte (from 1772 to 1777) and Johan Samuel Creutz (from 1777 to 1787), respectively; the last mentioned, unlike his predecessors, was part of a triumvirate apart from himself including the land surveyor Johan Schilling and the actual town architect, Abraham van der Hart. These four outsiders have made an important contribution to supplanting rococo, described as the New Flamboyance, by the Noble Simplicity of Neoclassicism, which was spiritually rooted in the rediscovery of classical Greek art by Winckelmann. In cooperation with Rendorp, Maybaum introduced the fronton in the Old Men's Home (1754-'57) for the first time in half a century. Rauws played an important part in the return to authentically Dutch sources of inspiration. As to type - construction in several floors with crowning domed tower where for a hundred years a low 'Italian' gate without superstructure had been customary - his Muiderpoort (1769-'71) was strongly related to specimens dating from the middle of the seventeenth century. After he had perished in the fire of 1772 at the Theatre recently converted by himself, his successor continued his work along the same lines. Within the framework of a kind of Dutch Revival, De Witte was the first in Amsterdam who consistently applied the classical temple facade with pediment and columns again on large buildings; witness his projects for the new Town Theatre at Leidseplein (1773), the 'Huis onder 't Zeil' at Dam square (1774) and his contribution to the competition for the Town Hall of Groningen (1775). His Reformed Church in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel (1774-1775) was also austerely designed, just as most of his designs for smaller buildings in the service of the town. Unfortunately, De Witte was dismissed due to fraud in 1777 and the person who in the new division of tasks was charged with the care of the town buildings - Van der Hart - being a traditional self-taught architect himself, opted for a less spectacular architectural style, a sober brick Classicism, reducing the number of classical elements to a minimum. His colleague Creutz, who was much more international in his outlook, appeared to have to turn to public commissions from outside the town walls and a private practice in order to realize his aspirations. Within this framework he designed the country house Rijnhof near Leyden (1774), the Rechthuis of Westzaan/aan (1781) and the Reformed Church of Urk (1787). Moreover, in Westzaan he effectively realized the ideal of international Greek Revival, the symbol of Noble Simplicity, something utterly new in The Netherlands: a portico with four detached columns

De Kerk en het Rechthuis van Westzaan. Johan Samuel Creutz buiten de poorten. De bijdrage van het Amsterdamse bouwvak tot de architectonische modernisering van een Noordhollands dorp

In the eighteenth century, at a forty years' interval, two large new buildings arose at Westzaan, a small village in the Zaan region northwest of Amsterdam, dominating the village silhouette to this day. One is a good example of the so-called 'New Flamboyance' of the middle of the century, the other of the 'Noble Simplicity' succeeding it as a reaction some decades later. In 1740-'41 the medieval church was first replaced by a new building in Rococo style: only the existing tower was preserved, which was however to collapse in 1843. The new church acquired a ground plan in the form of a Greek cross, a form going back to the Noorderkerk in Amsterdam (1620-'23) by Hendrick de Keyser. Elements characteristic of the rococo-period are the rounded-off corners of the arms of the cross, and the elegant Dutch gable above the right-angled closure of the east wall; the latter had originally been intended to be repeated at the transept gables. Subsequently, between 1781 and 1783 a new court-house appeared, commissioned by the bailiff and secretary of the judicial district, Simon Jongewaard jr., next to the church in the place where a simpler building had preceded it. The design of the court-house had been made by the Amsterdam town architect Johan Samuel Creutz. It was a very small, but also very modern building in neo-Classicist style which owes its significance to the peristyle of (four) detached columns at the front, the first of its type realized in The Netherlands. However, at the same time the court-house still possessed many elements which were characteristic of Baroque and Rococo, such as the linking in pairs of the portico columns, the rounded-off corners and the elegant cupola on the roof with its buttresses swerving out concavely. The cube-shaped building has two floors, of which the general layout and decoration have been well preserved in general. It has been suggested that the Court-house of Westzaan is a simplified version of a project Creutz may have submitted for the prize contest for the new Town Hall of Groningen in 1774, because there a portico had been explicitly required. However, apart from this portico the design with the motto of Honor Vitae Delicia, which for graphological and orthographical reasons can probably be attributed to Creutz, shows few similarities. What’s striking about this latter plan is notably the cupola crowned with an obelisk - a kind of Pickelhaube - possibly to be traced back to the book of examples of De Neufforge. The cupola and the general layout of the facade of the Court-house itself are more likely to have been inspired by a contemporary print of an (unknown) Italian church facade which was to be included in a Dutch print work in 1786