Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1915-09-24

pushed their trade among LrOp1cal spice 1Sidnuo'
Then it was that De Ruyter sailed up the Thames
with a broom at his masthead; then, too that
Rembrandt painted and Vondel rhymed mat
also for Holland great building age, when
prosperity caused cities to grow. canals to be
dug, ports to be built, and the multplex activity
of Dutchmen to manifest itself in all kinds OF
makings and shapings upon the surface OF their
amphibious land-haf EARTH half water Tnus
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 architecturally
through period Of transition. The small core
Of the city, where everything was on smaH
scale, still retained many remnants OF the me-
dieval age The canals in it were narrow, the
accommodation for ships was exiguous. grow
ing population and expanding trade were finding
themselves horribly cramped.
Amsterdam grew like an onion, by layers sur
rounding layers about center. From time to
time new rings of canals added, with radial
connections, and then 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 canal within the next. Those who were
responsible for the important changes made at
the beginning of the seventeenth century had the
medieval days. In particular they spared some
of the old fertilization towers applying them to
new purpose and reftting them accordingly Thus
the tower called Montelbaanstoren, which still
stands by the old Schans, one of the largest
basins of the earlier canal system, part of
the medieval Notifications They turned it into
a picturesque bell tower by the addition of
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 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 the Westertoren or
tower of the Westerkerk the Prinsengracht,
which unfortunately, we cannot produce in this
place. That tower favorite with the folk
of Amsterdam, and have more than once found
it referred to- in narratives of Dutch exploration,
as measure of height, as for instance, when
glacier cliff is said to have stood out OF the sea
about as high the Westertoren. 1t is 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
lperity The Mint tower of 1910, and the others
shown in our illustrations are examples of Am
sterdam steeple architecture Of Rembrandts 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 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 feet,
and other folk initiated the work of her artists.
The Dutch style affected England; it was imi-
tated in the remarkable buildings erected in Den
mark for Christian ". 1t penetrated to the ends
of the earth. 1t went with Dutch adventures 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 few of the earlier
towers of Holland, about which a word or two
must be said. Here, for instance 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 it is
even claimed that portions of the existing walls
date back to the sixth century. The building as
it, however, is a great romanesque
church of Rhenish STYLE with restored eleventh
century towers at the angles of its apse and
later Gothic bell tower adjacent to side aisle.
Utrecht and Delft have bell towers of like kind.
the upper story being many-sided and many
gabled. Another such tower is in Paradise ITSELF
If we are to believe Hubert Van Eyck's picture OF
that delectable land, the famous atarpiece still
at Client, unless the Germans have carried it of
Medieval Maastricht was not a large place
The Cathedral was in the center Of it; not more
than five hundred yards away are the remains of
the city walls OF 1890 The exigencies of war
make the military architecture of a given date
everywhere much the same Thus the tower
fanked south gate of Maastricht is not different
In design from many another that can be found
10 the old cities of Europe. But though it had