So What About Amsterdam?

The range of canal houses, skinny, wide, tall and short and all unique

Of course the title of this post can be taken in two ways.  I will leave which way you want to take it up to you.  I spent two days in Amsterdam and having to say that it is one of the busiest crowded European cities I have been in.  Possible the sheer numbers of people does not rival Rome but due to its narrow streets, canals, sheers numbers of bicycles, cars and people, the place seems to constantly be moving in a low ebb of chaos of movement.  Perhaps this is not helped by the fact that probably a significant proportion of the people are stoned or under some influence or another.

No your eyes are not deceiving you - the house is leaning out and over

Evidence of the leaning gables

So I decided the best way to avoid the crowds on the street was to get into the canal, not literally into it, but to go for a canal boat cruise.  One thing I had noted right away, and it was not because I had been smoking some funny cigarettes, was that the many of the fronts of the houses seemed to be leaning in towards the canal or at funny angles.  Some definitely seemed to have sunk a little bit on one side.  It was very difficult to try and capture this on camera as it is so obvious to the eye but less obvious when reduced to 2D.  But perhaps you can see it a bit in my pictures.

Trying to capture the crookedness seen in many houses. If you look at the balcony door bottoms of the centre house you can see that they are rarely square.

In anycase, I found this part of Amsterdam the most interesting.  The shapes of the gable tops, the width of the houses, the colours, the windows, the doors – all of them unique and different in each house.  But I did solve the mystery of the leaning houses.  Apparently they were built that way for two reasons: first of all, because the houses were so narrow, as taxes were determined by the frontage width of a house, it was impossible to move furniture and other large items up the stairs.  So most houses or storehouses, and you can still see them, have a protruding beam at the top with a hook.  To that was attached a pulley to pull things up to the various floors.  The slight lean out made it easier to hoist objects without hitting the house.  Also the slight outward lean also reduced the wear and tear on a building by rain ensuring that it drained off and did not drip down causing damage.

A very skinny house wedged between two others. Very low taxes

However, even though house tax was determined by the width of the house, they could be as high and as deep as one could go.  As such often these narrow houses would extend all the way back to the next block and were often at least 4 storeys high.  Oh, another point about them leaning outwards was that it was felt that it made them look bigger.  As for the sagging sides that can be witnessed in some buildings, that is because since Amsterdam was built on what once was a swampy area, there has been some sinking over the centuries and despite the very deeply buried wooden piles used to support the house, some have sunk markedly.  And it looks like Amsterdam has just got on with it and made the doors and windows work to the slump instead of vice versa.

Many different gable ends and their noted beams protruding from the top

I did like the variety of able tops – stepped, angular, ornate, simple, etc… The attention given to design and detail is always quite evident.  It is a very distinct essence, these houses of Amsterdam.  And in the canal, away from the craziness of the streets, one could get a good view of the variety of architecture.

Bridge after bridge down the canal