Zandhoek, Realeneiland
Why is it significant?
Walk slowly along the cobbles and look at the row of old houses facing the water: narrow brick fronts, wooden shutters, gables in a line like soldiers on parade, and boats moored right below the front steps. You have just stepped back almost four hundred years.
Key Facts
| Place | Zandhoek, Realeneiland |
|---|---|
| Address | Zandhoek, 1013 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.38720, 4.89000 |
| Part of Walk | Red Brick Dreams: Amsterdam School, Het Schip & the Western Islands |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk slowly along the cobbles and look at the row of old houses facing the water: narrow brick fronts, wooden shutters, gables in a line like soldiers on parade, and boats moored right below the front steps. You have just stepped back almost four hundred years.
This is the Zandhoek, the Sand Corner, on the island called Realeneiland. The Western Islands were made in the early 1600s, when Amsterdam was booming and needed space for its most dangerous and smelly trades: shipyards, tar boilers, rope walks, warehouses. Better to keep the fire risk outside the city walls, out here on the IJ. This island is named after the Reael family, merchants who owned the land.
And the sand? Empty ships returning to sea needed weight in their holds, or they would roll over in the first strong wind. So here, on this quay, sand was sold as ballast, measured and loaded by the shipful. Sand was big business in a country where every new street, every new island had to be raised above the water first.
Look for the house called De Gouden Reael, the Golden Reael, with its name stone on the facade. In 1940 the Amsterdam writer Jan Mens published a novel with that title, set right here on the Zandhoek, and it made this forgotten corner famous across the country. In the twentieth century these houses were close to collapse. That they still stand is thanks to restorers who saw value where others saw slums.
At the end of the quay you will see a white wooden drawbridge, the Drieharingenbrug, the Three Herrings Bridge, connecting this island with Prinseneiland. With the gabled houses behind it and the boats below, it is one of the loveliest corners of the whole of western Amsterdam. Cross it, wander past the warehouses of Prinseneiland, and follow the water east to the last island, Bickerseiland.