Spaarndammerstraat
Why is it significant?
Stop on Spaarndammerstraat and look down its length, at the bakeries, the shopfronts and the brick corners with their Amsterdam School flourishes. It feels like a perfectly ordinary high street. But the line it follows is far older than anything built on it.
Key Facts
| Place | Spaarndammerstraat |
|---|---|
| Address | Spaarndammerstraat, 1013 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.39000, 4.87990 |
| Part of Walk | Red Brick Dreams: Amsterdam School, Het Schip & the Western Islands |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop on Spaarndammerstraat and look down its length, at the bakeries, the shopfronts and the brick corners with their Amsterdam School flourishes. It feels like a perfectly ordinary high street. But the line it follows is far older than anything built on it.
The name comes from the Spaarndammerdijk, the dike that carried the road from Amsterdam towards the village of Spaarndam, near Haarlem. For centuries the IJ, to the north of here, was not a calm canal but an open arm of the Zuiderzee, tidal and stormy. Dikes like this one were what stood between the city's western edge and the water. If you notice side streets sitting a little lower than the main road, that is the ghost of the dike talking.
Everything changed in 1876, when the North Sea Canal opened, with great locks at IJmuiden. Suddenly Amsterdam had a direct route to the sea, and the water levels behind the locks could be controlled. New harbours were dug, the land between the railway and the water filled up with industry, and the old dike became just a street. In the 1910s and 1920s, homes for the dockers, timber workers and railwaymen rose on both sides of it.
The result was a neighbourhood sealed in like an island, with the railway to the south and the harbours to the north. That isolation made the Spaarndammerbuurt famously close-knit, a place where people knew whose child was whose and where the corner shop was the news agency. It also made it poor, and for long stretches of the twentieth century, forgotten by the rest of the city.
Look up at the corners as you walk. Many of the blocks along here were built by the same generation of architects who worked with de Klerk, and you will catch rounded balconies, brick lettering and windows that look like portholes. Follow the street north towards the water, and turn right for the old timber harbours, where a tower stands on a strange stilted bridge.