As Seen from a Dutch Window 



627 



tied; and this I suspect will be very 

 often, for the canal at its side is six feet 

 higher than the basement floor. No 

 wonder that Diderot was surprised that 

 the Dutchmen ever dared to go to sleep. 

 In Holland an architect must be a hy- 

 draulician as well, and every contract 

 has a safety clause allowing extra pay- 

 ment for each pile in excess of the stipu- 

 lated number. Practically all of the 

 houses of Amsterdam rest on piles. This 

 gave rise to the remark of Erasmus : "I 

 know a city in which the people live like 

 rooks, in the tops of trees." 



THE DUTCH HOUSE; 



Of course these piles never reach solid 

 ground, and at any time they may con- 

 clude to go deeper, either individually or 

 in concert. This causes the houses in 

 time to lean, and unfortunately they do 

 not all take the same direction. There 

 seems to be a sort of architectural jam- 

 boree, and in looking down one of the 

 old streets one is startled at the angles 

 which the house fronts make with the 

 vertical. Some lean forward, as if im- 

 patient to start in a race across the city ; 

 others rear backward, like an unwilling 

 criminal dragged to justice; some lean 

 together like conspirators, while others 

 show an inclination to separate, as 

 though they were school-girls fresh 

 from a quarrel. A stranger's first im- 

 pulse is to to exclaim, "Surely these 

 houses will some day fall." The Hol- 

 lander will promptly answer, "But they 

 never do." 



The heavy material — tile — used for 

 covering the houses makes it necessary 

 to have steep roofs; hence, in order not 

 to waste valuable space in high attics, 

 the roofs all extend in the direction of 

 the length of the house, placing a gable 

 on the front and on the rear. Project- 

 ing from the comb of practically ever)i 

 front gable there is a covered beam 

 carrying a heavy hook on which a pulley 

 can be hung. This is of great value in 

 moving, for a rope can be passed over 

 this pulley and the heavy furniture 

 hoisted or lowered at will. In the strict 

 sense of the word, flats are not common, 



but in the larger cities the majority of 

 the houses are four-storied and accom- 

 modate two families, one occupying the 

 two lower floors and the other the two 

 upper floors. Thus all of these houses 

 have two front doors, one opening 

 directly into a hallway attached to the 

 lower apartment, while the other is at 

 the bottom of a stairway whose upper 

 end is the hall of the apartment two 

 stories up. The upper house is called 

 bovenhuis, from boven, above. It is not 

 a cow-stable, as some have thought, 

 from bos, bovis, etc., the Latin for cow. 

 In classic Leyden, Latin signs are quite 

 common. There a room offered for the 

 occupancy of a student is never indi- 

 cated by the ordinary sign "Kammer te 

 huur," "Room for rent," but in its stead 

 the Latin equivalent, "Cubicula lo- 

 canda." 



The long stairway referred to makes 

 moving a difficult task if every piece of 

 furniture is carried up; but by having a 

 wide window in the center of the front 

 on each story, the heavier pieces can be 

 hoisted as mentioned. This obviates the 

 necessity for having wide, easy stairs ; 

 and, since they would require so much 

 space, narrow stairs are the rule. As in 

 many of the European countries, there 

 is a tax on windows, not that there is 

 any objection to windows, but because 

 they are taken as an exponent of the 

 magnitude, hence value, of the house. 

 The use of the wide window as an exit 

 for furniture diminishes the necessity 

 for more than one window, and the an- 

 nual payment of tax to the city is corre- 

 spondingly diminished. In this case 

 necessity serves as a virtue. 



the; dutch housemaid 



Frequently the doubling up of fami- 

 lies in a single house is a great con- 

 venience. Every morning all of the 

 loose rugs in a house must be shaken. 

 For this service two strong girls are 

 needed ; hence if a family keeps only one 

 servant, it arranges with its cofamily for 

 cooperative shaking. The intimacy be- 

 tween the two families may be very 



