N e t h e r l a n d s S t u d y T r i p
Enkhuizen: It's Like Dutch Disneyland.
Our group was lectured on the history of the shape of the bay and the city of Enkhuizen by Tamara Lukacsi
A still harbor as we made our way through the city.
The group hears about the Snouck van Loosenpark, the loveliest social housing neighborhood I have ever seen.
Enkhuizen, like Amsterdam, is a canal town. Notice how closely the cars park to the open water.
The lovely homes along the old harbor.
Wind turbines along the coast.
A view of a reclaimed landscape, sailboats play among the waves in the distance.
At the Zuiderzeemuseum, a rescued lime kiln. Bottle kilns are my favorite building type, and they are quickly disappearing from the landscape in that they have no practical application outside of a museum setting.
The group waits to enter a 'traditional' Dutch home.
Lovely vernacular Dutch buildings.
A windmill demonstrating the ways that water was drained from the landscape
Stoves used to melt coating for waterproofing nets.
The port at Enkhuizen was one of the most important ports in the Netherlands until the harbor silted and Enkhuizen lost its business to Amsterdam. Today its mostly party boats. We took a walking tour with Tamara Lukacsi who showed us some of the early housing projects in the town, including Snouck van Loosenpark, a town within a town. Built in the 1890s the social housing project and park contained elegant cottages for workers.
The city has undergone some revitalization efforts recently due to its proximity to Amsterdam, as people are accepting longer commutes to find affordable housing. While we were there, our group had the opportunity to visit the Zuiderzee Museum, which was established to : “[provide] an image of how people used to live and work around the Zuiderzee between 1880 and 1930, the period which preceded the completion of the IJsselmeer Dam in 1932.” The museum was created as a reaction to when the Zuiderzee was cut off from the North Sea in 1932 due to large, destructive storms. With their access cut off to other waters and becoming an inland sea, the residents were afraid that their culture would diminish. To protect their culture, 130 historical buildings were either bought or donated by municipalities in the Zuiderzee region and moved to a spot in the open air section of the already existing Zuiderzee Museum.
The museum raises a really interesting preservation issue. Some of the buildings maintained in the “village” would have most likely been destroyed. Particular types of buildings, like the lime kilns and some of the specialized buildings would not have lasted outside of a museum. Many of the other buildings could have easily been repurposed in their original setting allowing them to serve as a physical reminder of history. However, is it better to save these buildings to represent history in an inauthentic way, or let them disappear from the landscape?