Houthavens & Pontsteiger
Why is it significant?
Walk to the edge of the water and look up at the tower that seems to be carrying a bridge on its shoulders: a slab of apartments lifted high above the ground and balanced across two legs. That is the Pontsteiger, named after the old ferry pier, and it is the newest chapter of this whole walk.
Key Facts
| Place | Houthavens & Pontsteiger |
|---|---|
| Address | Pontsteiger, 1014 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.39320, 4.88680 |
| Part of Walk | Red Brick Dreams: Amsterdam School, Het Schip & the Western Islands |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk to the edge of the water and look up at the tower that seems to be carrying a bridge on its shoulders: a slab of apartments lifted high above the ground and balanced across two legs. That is the Pontsteiger, named after the old ferry pier, and it is the newest chapter of this whole walk.
The water in front of you is the Houthavens, the timber harbours, dug in the 1870s as the North Sea Canal opened Amsterdam to the sea again. Wood was the raw material of everything, houses, ships, furniture, pilings, and it came by the shipload from Scandinavia and the Baltic. Logs lay floating in the basins, stacked on the quays, sawn and stored in the yards behind. The men who handled them lived in the Spaarndammerbuurt you have just walked through.
Have a look at the street signs on the new islands around you. One of them is called Libau-eiland, after Libau, the old German name for the Latvian port of Liepaja. It is a name that points straight across the Baltic, back along the routes the timber travelled.
After the Second World War the port moved west, ships grew too big, and the timber trade drifted away. By the end of the century the Houthavens had become a half-empty edge of the city, all sheds, fences and open water. Then, from the 2010s, a new district began to rise here, built on the old piers and on islands, with homes, schools and a waterfront path.
Architecturally this is a fascinating place to compare with Het Schip. A hundred years apart, both answer the same question: how do you build a home that makes people proud of where they live? De Klerk used brick, craft and ornament. The Pontsteiger uses height, steel, glass and a view of the whole IJ. Walk east along the water now, towards the long colourful block standing on stilts at the end of the old pier.