The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1915-09-25

1 SWE FM& the romance VI lu6 bhihy
I'm ,mMG Dutch romance is the child of in
Xdb GNI4kA dustry, enterprise, logged courage,
GNBHOMkAJ fogs and waterways, and its great
NNT W. 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 ls
sailors hammered at the arctic icepack ana
pushed their trade among tropical spice islands
Then 1t 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 be
dug, ports to be built, and the multiplex activity
of Dutchmen to manifest itself in all kinds OF
makings and shapings upon the surface OF their
amphibious land-half earth, half water. Thus
it is the Holland Of Rembrandt's 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 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 %exiguous. A grow
ing population and expanding trade were 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 fertilization towers, applying them to a
new purpose and ~refitting 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 Rembrandt's 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 / 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 storied
tower, composed of four r~etreating 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
perity. The Mint tower of 1910, and the others
shown in our illustrations, are Example of Am
4 sterdam steeple architecture of Rembrandts own
generation. If they must be called fantastic they
are certainly picturesque, and admirably suited
tn anliVen n canal vista or 70 nOka I'm ont Of a
foreground of crow-stepped gables.
I These are the typically Dutch towers, these
3 buildings of the great days of Dutch romance.
1 Earlier towers we can find in Holland, but they
4 are Gothic, and re-echo the style elaborated in
I France. France also set the key of architectural
3 style in the eighteenth century. In the seven
r teenth century Holland stood on her own feet,
and other folk initiated the work of her artists.
8 The Dutch style affected England; it was imi-
r tated in the remarkable buildings erected in Den
mark for Christian w. 1t penetrated to the ends
r of the earth. 1t went with Dutch Adventures to
y New York, to Ceylon, to the Cape of Good Hope,
u 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 cnurch Oh ST. SerVattus 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
we see it, however. is a great romanesoue
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
gabled. Another such tower is in Paradise itself,
h If we are to believe Hubert Van Eyck's picture of
e that delectable land, the famous altarpiece still
X 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
X the city walls of 1890. The exigencies of war
make the military architecture of a given date
everywhere much the same. Thus the tower.
n fanked south gate of Maastricht is not different
in design from many another that can be found
a in the old cities Of Europe. But though 1t had
% TIL EDIlnAE RAII M Moran -. -,