Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1915-09-23

ar wT dustry, enterprise. a0s agS i fou great
SRSsBNHBA ~ fogs and waterways and us sreas
Chip days fell within the limits OF the
seventeenth century. Then ships
of Holland sailed all the seven seas and brought
home wealth and tales of adventure. Then It's
sailors hammered at the arctic ice-pack ana
pushed their trade among tropical spice ISLANDS,
Then it was that De Ruyter sailed up the Thames
with a broom at his masthead; then, too, that
Rembrandt painted and Vondel rhymed. That
also for Holland was a great building age, when
prosperity caused cities to grow, canals to De
dug, ports to be built, and the multiplex activity
of Dutchmen to manifest itself in all kinds OF
markings and shapings upon the surface of their
amphibious land-half earth, half water. Thus
it is the Holland of Rembrandts day and there
about that remains most interesting to the trav-
eler, and it is the buildings then erected that are
most worthy of study and presentation within
her towns.
Amsterdam, when Rembrandt went to settle
there about 1881, was passing architecturaHy
through a period of transition. The small core
of the city, where everything was on a small
scale, still retained many remnants of the me-
dieval age. The canals in it were narrow, the
accommodation for ships was e%xiguous. A grow
ing population and expanding trade we're finding
themselves horribly cramped.
Amsterdam grew like an onion, by layers sur
rounding layers about a center. From time to
time new rings Of canals were added, with radial
connections, and then more rings outside them,
OF course fortified walls were erected round the
whole at different dates, but they never lasted for
long and had to be replaced by new circuits as
the city expanded. The moat of each new circuit
became a canal within the next. Those who were
responsible for the important changes made at
the beginning of the seventeenth century had the
good sense not to destroy every memorial Of
medieval days. In particular they spared some
of the old fortification towers, applying them to a
new purpose and r~etitting them accordingly. Thus
the tower called Montelbaanstoren, which still
stands by the old Schans, one Of the largest
basins of the earlier canal system, was a part Of
the medieval Notifications. They turned it into
a picturesque bell tower by the addition of a
superstructure set up in the year 1906. Though
this was done before Rembrandts day. he omitted
the steeple in an admirable drawing he made Of
it, thus giving one among countless instances
that might be cited, of his attachment rather to
the past than to the coming taste Of the people
of his day. The only other high tower at Am
sterdam drawn by him was the Westertoren or
tower of the Westerkerk on the Prinsengracht,
which unfortunately, we cannot produce in this
place. That tower was a favorite with the folk
of Amsterdam, and l have more than once found
it referred to, in narratives of Dutch exploration,
as a measure of height, as, for instance, when a
glacier cliff is said to have stood out of the sea
about as high as the Westertoren. 1t is a stored
tower, composed of four retreating rectangular
stages, each with columns at the angles, not
unlike some of Wren's towers in the city of Lon
don.
The Westertoren, however, carries us down
rather too late, when Palladian ideas were af-
fecting Dutch architects. This was a feature of
the change of taste. which made the art of Rem.
brandt old fashioned and terminated his pros
Oerity. The Mint tnwnr of 16A0 and tho othars
shown in our illustrations, are examples Of Am.
sterdam steeple architecture of Rembrandt's own
generation. If they must be called fantastic they
are certainly picturesque, and admirably suited
to enliven a canal vista or to poke up out Of a
foreground Of crow-stepped gables.
These are the typically Dutch towers, these
buildings of the great days of Dutch romance.
Earlier towers we can find in Holland, but they
are Gothic, and re-echo the style elaborated in
France. France also set the key of architectural
style in the eighteenth century. In the seven
teenth century Holland stood on her own feet,
and other folk initiated the work of her artists
The Dutch style affected England; 1t was imi-
tated in the remarkable buildings erected in Den
mark for Christian ~. It penetrated to the ends
of the earth. 1t went with Dutch adventurers to
New York, to Ceylon. to the Cape Of Good Hope,
where examples Of it may still be hunted out by
patient searching.
Our Illustrations include a few OF the earlier
towers Of Holland, about which a word or two
must be said. Here, for instance. are the Cathe-
dral and one of the medieval gates OF Maastricht,
neither Of them in any sense Enthusiastically
Dutch. for the Holland that the world admires
was created in the fire of the Reformation wars.
The cathedral church of st. Servatius at Mas
tricht is of early Christian foundation, and 1t is
even claimed that portions OF the existing walls
date back to the sixth century. The building as
we see 1t. however, is a great romanesque
church Of Rhenish style, with restored eleventh
century towers at the angles of its apse and a
later Gothic bell tower adjacent to a side aisle
Utrecht and Delft have bell towers Of a like kind
the upper story being many-sided and many
lgabied. Another such tower is in Paradise itself
IL we are to believe Hubert Van Eyck's picture Of
that delectable land, the famous altarpiece still
at Client, unless the Germans have carried II on
Medieval Maastricht was not a large place
The Cathedral was In the center OF t.; not NOR,
than five hundred yards away are the remains o
the city walls OF 1890. The exigencies of wa
make the military architecture of a given dat,
everywhere much the same. Thus the tower
fanked south gate OF Maastricht is not diteren
in design from many another that can be foun,
in the old cities Of Europe. But though It ha,