Sunday, May 24, 2009

Street View


‘Just’ a street in Gouda. No that is not really true… it is located in the historical centre so it is special, but not that special, every town and city (apart from the ones where there has been fighting in WWII) has such city centers. With the sun shining these streets are great to stroll.


This house is from 1643, what it must have seen passing by trough all these centuries… Imagine when you lean to a structure beam, 400 years somebody must have done the same but it is very likely that our world view are so different we would consider eachoter aliens.


A house from the 1700’s. What I find fascinating is that there are about 5 building styles you find in the old towns. The first style is wood, to find these is very rare. Amsterdam has a few and some cities do. These survived because they have some event or emotion attached to it (for one in Amsterdam see here).
Then they started to build in stone, as you seen in the posting of yesterday. What followed then are the 1700’s, like this building, the preceding style was looked down upon, and replaced by the looks of the new time. The 1800’s had a similar style. Moving to the 1900’s the complete building would be destroyed and replaced. But by that time there came the need for expansion of cities so they build new outside the city walls (the city walls and canals were demolished around 1860 when the industrialization started).

What happened over the centuries is that they only modernized the frontals, the structure remained the one of the first house. That is fascinating many people actually live in houses which date back to the first house build on that spot..

6 comments:

Cezar and Léia said...

Hello Marcel!
How was your walking there, I bet it was fantastic! This place seems so quiet and calm!
We liked a lot to know about all details !Very informative! Thanks !
A nice week for you !
Léia

Lois said...

I'm glad you took so many pictures in Gouda! All of the buildings are so beautiful and different. I would never get tired of walking around and just admiring them all!

yudikris said...

Gouda!! Good historical analysis, Marcel... That's entertaining, and very helpful to know better about the buildings!

When I was in High school, I met a friend from Gouda came here to Indonesia (Lily and Ido de Jong)... And thanks, eventually I can see their city today :)

Yudhie

Copenhagen said...

The houses look like miniatures.

Gerald (Ackworth born) said...

I think I remember this house from our very brief visit to Gouda in 1980 - I had forgotten it until now.

crocrodyl said...

This narrow buildings are wonderful! Excellent shots!