The Van der Pekbuurt in Amsterdam North was the first official neighbourhood built in Amsterdam Noord. Designed by Amsterdam architect, Jan Ernst van der Pek (1865-1919), the neighbourhood was built in 1918 and completed in 1926. The neighbourhood was built with a garden village design, a place for workers to live in greenery and decent houses. There is great cohesion between the neighbourhood layout and architecture. Every household had its own front door. In addition, Van der Pek thought the houses should also have some aesthetic value. As a result, the blocks of houses in the neighbourhood were characterised by a yellow ‘band’, a horizontal decorative stripe on the side of a building and other decorative elements.
During World War II, the adjacent Fokker factory, located at the Papaverweg, was occupied by the Germans. As a result, the factory was unfortunately also the target of several bombings. The Germans, however, saw this coming and did their best to camouflage the factory. They had built small houses on the roof of the factory's halls, so that seen from the air it was indistinguishable from the surrounding blocks of houses. Several attempts were made to bomb the factory in July 1943. Large parts of the factory were eventually hit, and after the war, the entire factory moved to Schiphol Airport; however, the neighbouring Bloemenbuurt and Van der Pek neighbourhood were also hit, as well as the Sint Rita church. This resulted in the death of over 200 civilians.
In 1947, after all debris from the bombed houses was cleared, rebuilding of the destroyed blocks began. The destroyed houses were mainly on the south-west of the neighbourhood. The buildings on Heimans Road, which housed schools before the bombing, were rebuilt as Airey houses, a type of house that originated in Great Britain which consists of prefab concrete elements. Several other blocks of houses in the neighbourhood were rebuilt by architect G.J. Rutgers in the style of the original houses; however, due to lack of funds, the distinctive yellow bands are missing on these properties. As a result, when walking through the neighbourhood, it is easy to see which buildings were bombed during the bombing and later rebuilt – those with the band being built before the war and those without after. In 2023, the bombardment that occured 80 years ago and was commemorated on 17 July the Nieuwe Noorder Begraafplaats in Amsterdam Noord where a monument was placed.
what the archive is about
The Living Archive explores the potential of (post)industrial heritage to transform production in our cities. We collect stories with participatory heritage methods. The nodes for the local collection efforts are Fab City Hubs (FCH). The collection has been carefully assembled by FCH teams who have been learning about, co-creating and applying participatory heritage-making approaches, emotion networking methodology, oral history principles and creative perspective-taking. Select tags and categories to filter stories in the archive below. Explore their connections in the network graph.
