Haarlemmerpoort
Why is it significant?
Stand at the edge of Haarlemmerplein and face the pale gate with its row of columns, looking for all the world like a Greek temple that took a wrong turn into a Dutch square.
Key Facts
| Place | Haarlemmerpoort |
|---|---|
| Address | Haarlemmerplein 50, 1013 HS Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.38500, 4.88310 |
| Part of Walk | Red Brick Dreams: Amsterdam School, Het Schip & the Western Islands |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand at the edge of Haarlemmerplein and face the pale gate with its row of columns, looking for all the world like a Greek temple that took a wrong turn into a Dutch square. This is the Haarlemmerpoort, and it is a lovely little paradox... a city gate built at the very moment city gates stopped mattering.
It went up between 1838 and 1840, designed by the city architect Cornelis Alewijn, close to where older gates had guarded the road to Haarlem since the seventeenth century. It was built for a royal entrance: King William the Second rode in through it in 1840 to be inaugurated, and the gate was officially named the Willemspoort in his honour. Amsterdammers, who have never liked being told what to call things, ignored the official name almost at once.
So what was a gate for, in the age of steam? Mostly money. The city taxed goods coming in, grain, peat, meat, and a gate like this was a customs post dressed up as a monument. Beside it ran the Haarlemmertrekvaart, dug in the early 1630s, the first Dutch canal built for passenger barges pulled by horses. You bought a ticket, sat in the cabin, and a horse on the towpath hauled you to Haarlem on a timetable so reliable that people planned their days around it. Some historians like to call it one of the first scheduled public transport services in Europe.
Take a good look at all this classical order: the columns, the triangular pediment, the calm symmetry, the stone pretending to be eternal. Keep that picture in your head, because this walk is about the rebellion against it. Less than a century after this gate, a young architect from a poor Jewish family would build homes for dockworkers barely a kilometre north-west of here that look like nothing else on earth... rippling walls, brick that curves like fabric, a tower with no purpose except joy.
Today the gate holds apartments, and bicycles flow around it rather than through it. Walk west from the square, cross the water, and let the trees of the Westerpark swallow you.