The Beurs van Berlage (literally Berlage's stock market) is a building on the Damrak, in the centre of Amsterdam. It was designed by architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage and constructed between 1896 and 1903. It influenced many modernist architects, in particular functionalists and the Amsterdam School. It is now used as a venue for concerts, exhibitions and conferences.
The building is constructed of red brick, with an iron and glass roof, and stone piers, lintels and corbels. Its entrance is under a clock tower, while inside lie three large multi-storey halls, with offices and communal facilities grouped around them.
The aim of the architect was to modify the styles of the past by emphasizing sweeping planes and open plan interiors. It has stylistic similarities with some earlier buildings, for instance St Pancras station and the work of H. H. Richardson in America, or the Castell dels Tres Dragons, Barcelona, by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. True to its nineteenth-century roots, it maintains the use of ornament in a civic structure.
On 2 February 2002 the civil ceremony of the wedding of King Willem-Alexander and Máxima Zorreguieta took place in the Beurs van Berlage.
The Beurs van Berlage has a café located on the Beursplein side and the tower is also open to the public.
Development history In the course of the 1870s, it became clear that Amsterdam needed a new Merchants’ Exchange. The existing Zocher Exchange of 1848 had not only become too small due to the economic upturn, but the building—nicknamed “the mausoleum”—had also fallen out of fashion stylistically. The Central Station, designed in 1876 and located opposite the old exchange, made this even more apparent.
The need for a new exchange, combined with the Central Station as the new gateway to the city, gave rise to a lengthy debate between the municipality on the one hand, and entrepreneurs organized in the Chamber of Commerce and architects organized in Architectura et Amicitia (A et A) on the other. The municipality wanted to spend as little money as possible, the entrepreneurs wanted a new exchange as quickly as possible, and the architects—led by A et A chairman Jan Springer—wanted an architectural masterpiece that would form part of a grand urban development plan connecting the Central Station with Dam Square.
The ‘Beursquaestie’
In 1879, the municipal council appointed a committee to assess the feasibility of the exchange designs that had already been submitted. On 19 November of that year, the committee issued a report, which, however, was never discussed. On 18 October 1882, the council designated the recently filled-in Damrak, between Dam Square and the Oude Brug, as the site for the new exchange. It was to be financed as much as possible by the merchants themselves, and at the initiative of Adriaan Heynsius an “exchange tax” was introduced.
In June 1883, the municipality of Amsterdam announced its intention to launch an international design competition.
However, Architectura et Amicitia (A et A) disagreed with the draft competition program that had been prepared. In the interest of its members, it wanted the competition to be restricted to a national one and demanded that the names of the jury members be announced in advance. In November, it submitted a petition to the council outlining its demands. Of the four demands contained in this petition, the council adopted only one — relating to the jury procedure.
Subsequently, disagreement arose over the location where the exchange should be built. The building site designated by the municipality had the advantage that no houses would need to be expropriated and that ships could still dock in the unfilled section of the Damrak. However, this resulted in an irregular, trapezoidal plot which, given the minimum required surface area for the new exchange and the limited width of the Damrak at that point, was also extremely elongated. Someone therefore mockingly remarked that “the site would be better suited to a municipal bowling alley than to an exchange building.”
At the end of December, municipal council member A. Prins, with the support of A et A, submitted a proposal to fill in the Damrak entirely and construct a square exchange building directly opposite Central Station. Not long afterward, others followed Prins’s example. On 30 January 1884, the civic association Burgerplicht submitted an exchange plan for Dam Square, published in 1879 by Muysken and De Kruyff. Shortly thereafter, A.L. van Gendt presented a plan for an exchange designed as a counterpart to the Royal Palace on Dam Square.
All of these proposals were duly reviewed by a committee for their technical and financial feasibility, and for a time it appeared that Van Gendt’s plan would prevail. Even the Alderman for Public Works, Jac. Ankersmit, was persuaded. However, the residents of Dam Square and the Warmoesstraat demanded such exorbitant compensation for expropriation that he failed to secure approval from the municipal council. As a result, the original trapezoidal building site was ultimately reinstated in the competition program.
Contest The final competition program and the composition of the jury were announced on 28 June 1884. In order to prevent favoritism and nationalist sentiment, each design was submitted not under the name of its author(s), but under a motto. +MottoAuthor(s)PrizeimageYL.M. Cordonnier1st prizeIn hoc signo florescoJ.F. Groll, F. Ohmann2nd prizeLa Bourse ou la vieJ. Vollmer3rd prizeMercaturaeH.P. Berlage, Th. Sanders4th prizeAmmerackL. Klingenberg, E. Tauschenberg5th prize The number of submissions was unexpectedly high. The 199 entries (in fact 201; two designs arrived too late) were displayed in the Rijksmuseum to be assessed by the jury. The jury met for the first time on 10 November, and the final vote took place on 15 November. The jury report was published in French in the Algemeen Handelsblad.
Naturally, the report met with criticism. It was considered rather brief, and there was disagreement with the jury’s requirement that the building should be “picturesque.” This requirement had not appeared in the competition program and resulted in all classical designs being excluded from the prizes, while many critics did not wish to see yet another Rijksmuseum or Central Station.
Of the entries exhibited at the Rijksmuseum from 27 November to 14 December, five were invited to participate in a closed competition, including the design by Berlage and his associate Sanders. In this second round, which took place in 1885, the designs were adapted to meet the jury’s wishes. For this purpose, the jury drafted a new competition program, which—like the previous one—first had to be approved by the municipal council.
Once again, various parties attempted to exert influence—this time with greater success. The maximum budget was fixed at 2 million guilders (rather than approximately 2 million guilders), and municipal council member Gosschalk succeeded in having the requirement removed that the five participants in the closed competition must retain “the arrangements and architectural character of their first design,” since otherwise, he argued, “one would be bringing in the Trojan horse in which [...] not Greeks [...], but the official State architectural style is concealed.”
Of these five designs, the project submitted under the motto Y by the French architect L.M. Cordonnier was selected as the winner on 3 June 1885. The five prize-winning designs were exhibited from 10 to 24 June at Arti et Amicitiae.
However, a reader of the journal De Opmerker discovered that design Y had been “literally copied” from the town hall in La Rochelle. To convince doubters, the design Y was displayed in the shop window of Van der Land on the Kalverstraat alongside images of the town hall of La Rochelle. Subsequently, several architects sent a letter to the municipal council on 23 June, requesting that the design be carefully reconsidered.
At the council meeting of 24 June, the jury report was rejected—not only because of the plagiarism issue, but also because the jury had completely disregarded the cost estimates. The executive board (Burgomaster and Aldermen) was then asked to investigate both matters.
Regarding the plagiarism issue, the board referred the matter back to the jury. The jury, however, had no intention of revising its judgment, leaving the board with no choice but to accept the design. As for the budget, the board personally requested cost estimates from the first two prize-winners, Cordonnier and Groll, which—after certain economies—did not exceed the stipulated maximum of 2 million guilders.
On 6 January 1886, the council met to discuss the board’s conclusions. Gosschalk described it as “a masterpiece of diplomatic art.” However, he had no confidence in the proposed “economies.” As an architect, he knew that the eventual construction costs would likely exceed the estimate and nullify the savings, and he therefore believed the project should be postponed. Moreover, 1885 had been a very poor year for trade. There was so little commercial activity that the Zocher Exchange would suffice for the time being.
Nevertheless, the report of the executive board was adopted without a vote. The sealed envelopes were then opened, and the prizes were awarded to the five winning designs—without any of the winners actually being permitted to execute their project.
After this, the exchange issue was shelved for the time being, even though the exchange tax continued to be levied.
The ‘Official Project’ In November 1886, J. Coninck Westenberg succeeded J. Ankersmit as Alderman for Public Works. The new alderman made efforts to bring the matter to a swift conclusion. He commissioned the municipal architect A.W. Weissman to produce a new design for the exchange. This plan was presented to the council on 3 May 1887 and was composed of the best elements of the first two prize-winning competition designs: the floor plan by Groll and Ohmann, praised by the exchange traders, and the architectural design of Cordonnier.
By awarding the prizes, the municipality had effectively purchased these designs, and there was no legal provision preventing it from using them as it saw fit. The indignation over this course of action was considerable, and during a council meeting in February 1888 the proposal was rejected by a large majority. However, the exchange tax was not abolished, and the exchange question continued to smoulder.
In 1891, the matter gained momentum once again. On 22 January of that year, the Executive Board and the Chamber of Commerce agreed to build the exchange “on the section of the Damrak that has already been filled in or, if necessary, to be further filled in.” When this proposal was discussed by the council on 25 January, however, it was rejected.
Instead, from three earlier plans—those of Prins, Krasnapolsky, Van Gendt and Werker—the council selected the Werker plan, which proposed constructing the exchange between Oudebrugsteeg and Papenbrugsteeg and required the expropriation of a large number of houses on the Warmoesstraat. To complicate matters further, during the council meeting of 4 February it was pointed out that the report of the committee appointed in 1879 had never been discussed. The report was therefore finally taken into consideration.
Ultimately, the council opted for the Werker plan, but this plan also failed after its associated expropriation proposal was rejected by the Lower House (Second Chamber) in September 1892, seemingly ending any chance of creating a boulevard along the Damrak.
Meanwhile, Amsterdam’s economic situation continued to deteriorate. In the spring of 1894, an ad hoc committee was appointed to investigate “how the existing exchange might be improved.” This proved to be feasible and would result in savings of 75%.