Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [49]
The Jordaan and Western docklands
Lying to the west of the city centre, the Jordaan (pronounced “your-darn”) is a likeable and easily explored area of slender canals and narrow streets flanked by an agreeable mix of architectural styles, from modest modern terraces to handsome seventeenth-century canal houses. Traditionally the home of Amsterdam’s working class, with its boundaries clearly defined by the Prinsengracht to the east and the Lijnbaansgracht in the west, the Jordaan’s character has been transformed in recent years by a middle-class influx, and the district is now one of the city’s most sought-after residential neighbourhoods. Before then, and indeed until the late 1970s, the Jordaan’s inhabitants were primarily stevedores and factory workers, earning a crust among the docks, warehouses, factories and boat yards that extended beyond Brouwersgracht, the Jordaan’s northeastern boundary and nowadays one of Amsterdam’s prettiest canals. Specific sights are few and far between, but nonetheless it’s still a pleasant area to wander around.
The pint-sized Scheepvaartsbuurt (Shipping Quarter), part of the city’s old industrial belt and now a mixed shopping and residential quarter, edges the Jordaan to the north, bisected by Haarlemmerstraat and its continuation Haarlemmerdijk. Just to the north lie the Western docklands, or Westerdok, the oldest part of the sprawling complex of artificial islands that today sweeps along the south side of the River IJ, containing many of the city’s maritime facilities. This patch of land was dredged out of the river to provide extra warehousing and dock space in the seventeenth century. The maritime bustle has pretty much disappeared here, but after a long period of neglect the area is rapidly finding new life as a chichi residential quarter, with smart apartments installed in its warehouses and its clutch of elegant canal houses revamped and reinvigorated, especially on Zandhoek. Finally, the working-class neighbourhood to the west of the Westerkanaal, which marks the limit of the Western docklands, is of interest for the Het Schip complex, a wonderful example of the Amsterdam School of Architecture and, perhaps more importantly, an example of social housing at its most optimistic.
The Jordaan and Western docklands |
The Jordaan
In all probability the Jordaan takes its name from the French word jardin (“garden”), since the area’s earliest settlers were Protestant Huguenots, who fled here to escape persecution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Another possibility is that it’s a corruption of the Dutch word for Jews, joden, who also sought refuge here. Whatever the truth, the Jordaan developed from open country – hence the number of streets and canals named after flowers and plants – into a refugee enclave, a teeming, cosmopolitan quarter beyond the pale of bourgeois respectability. Indeed, when the city fathers planned the expansion of the city in 1610, they made sure the Jordaan was kept outside the city boundaries. Consequently, the area was not subject to the rigorous planning restrictions of the main grachten – Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht – and its lattice of narrow streets followed the lines of the original polder drainage ditches, rather than any municipal plan. This gives the district its distinctive, mazy layout, and much of its present appeal.
By the late nineteenth century, the Jordaan had become one of Amsterdam’s toughest neighbourhoods, a stronghold of the city’s industrial working class, mostly crowded together in cramped and unsanitary housing. Unsurprisingly,