VIII
The City of Ninety Islands
From all practical points of view, if, indeed, it is stretching the metaphor a bit with regard to smells and scenes (to preserve the alliteration), Amsterdam may be considered the Venice of the Netherlands. Like Venice it seems to have as many canals as there are blood vessels in the human body; like Venice it is the home of the damp cellar, for the city is built upon piles.
In the erection of a new building in Amsterdam the first thing they do is to pump out the site, and, after they have it fairly dry, keep on pumping to prevent it from filling up again; when the structure is completed they celebrate the event by the installation of a permanent pump in the basement which they must needs start running at stated intervals to diminish the volume of water that has seeped in through the cracks. The driver of piles takes the place of our stone mason, for of piles is the city’s foundation. A foot at a whack, these piles are sunk into the sand. They are then morticed with mud, girders are strung between them, and behold! the house on stilts commences to assume its architectural design. By and by the mud loses its adhesive properties to a certain degree, and the building commences to lean dangerously forward or backward, although without the dire results that one might imagine.
Amsterdam is the largest and most commercially important city in Holland. Founded in 1204 by Gysbrecht II, who built a castle here, and choked the flow of the river Amstel by throwing a dam across it—from which more or less momentous event the town derived its appellation,—Florins V, of Binnenhof fame, favored the place to the extent of granting its exemption from the taxes imposed by Zeeland and Holland. In 1311 it was formally absorbed by the latter province. From that time on Amsterdam gathered greater importance as a commercial center, until, in the early years of the seventeenth century, after the Dutch had finally succeeded in beating off the Spaniards, the establishment of the Dutch East India Company added its might to raise Amsterdam to the rank of the foremost mercantile community in the world. Later she commenced to gravitate slowly down the incline of trade and her cogs refused to take hold again until the latter half of the nineteenth century, although at the time of the dividing of the Dutch Republic, when King Louis Bonaparte took up his residence in Amsterdam in 1808, she was considered the third greatest city in the French Empire. To-day she has advanced well past the half million population mark. Although as regards her foreign trade she does not profess to compete with Rotterdam, as a money market and clearing house for colonial products she is preëminent in the Netherlands.
The Dam—a large square that owes its name to the fact of its being the eastern boundary of Lord Amstel’s embankment across the river—is the axis around which Amsterdam revolves. It is literally the hub of the Dutch universe. Every electric car in the place starts from the Dam, and in due course of time will wind its way back again. The principal edifices adjacent to it are the Royal Palace, the Nieuwe Kerk, or New Church, and the imposing post and telegraph offices.
Completed in the year 1655 at a total cost of more than $3,000,000, this Royal Palace was originally the Town Hall, but when Louis Bonaparte came upon the scene the Dutch made him a present of it for his use as a royal residence. At a later date King William I of Holland handed it back to the city, whose property it still remains, instead of that of the Crown; so that when Wilhelmina makes her annual ten days’ visit to Amsterdam she comes more as a private citizen and is the guest of the city for the period of her stay. With its 264 feet of length and its 207 of width it seems rather a strain upon the imagination to picture the Royal Palace as standing upon stilts; but such is actually the case, for its foundations consist of 13,659 piles (to be absolutely accurate) driven from forty to sixty feet into the sand.
The difference in ages between the Nieuwe Kerk, just around the corner from the palace, and the Oude Kerk, or Old Church of Amsterdam, is that the Oude Kerk was erected in 1300, whereas they didn’t commence work upon the Nieuwe Kerk until a hundred and eight years later. Both were doing their religious duties before America was discovered. Successive conflagrations destroyed different parts of the Nieuwe Kerk and the first service in the building as it stands to-day was not celebrated until 1648. The church contains the tombs of three of Holland’s famous fighting admirals, that of Admiral de Ruyter included, in addition to the hermes bust of another, and the mausoleum of a Dutch lieutenant of marines, van Speyk by name, who, during the revolution of Holland, “maintained on the 5th of February, 1831, before Antwerp, the honor of his native flag at the cost of his life” by blowing up his gunboat in the harbor of Antwerp to prevent it from falling into the possession of the enemy. Since 1814 four kings of Holland have taken the oath of the constitution in the Nieuwe Kerk and here, on September 6, 1898, Wilhelmina was formally inaugurated Queen of the Netherlands—an event recently commemorated by the installation of a handsome stained glass window in the church. Well might the Nieuwe Kerk be said to be the Westminster Abbey of Amsterdam.
Connecting the Dam with the central railway station is the wide Damrak, part of which was at one time a canal. In the opposite direction wiggles the narrow Kalverstraat, Amsterdam’s principal shopping street, thronged in the late afternoon and evening with that part of the population of the city that isn’t sipping coffee in the windows of its cafés.