Towards a new University Library (1): The Handboogdoelen
In a few years’ time, the University Library will be moving to the University Quarter, where construction and renovation work on the library's new home is in full swing. This summer, thanks to recently digitised photographs from the Allard Pierson Museum, we look back and ahead. Today, part 1: the Handboogdoelen.
Over the past fifty years, hordes of students have passed through the revolving door of the University Library on their way to one of the study rooms or one of the (smaller) conference rooms, such as the Doelenzaal. That room is located in the Handboogdoelen View the photo of the Handboogdoelen here in high resolution., also known as the Garnalendoelen, Grote Doelen or Sint Sebastiaansdoelen. It is an early sixteenth-century building at Singel 421. From around 1880 to 1967, this was the main building and the presumed entrance to the University Library.
The building is so named because the local archery militia originally met there. By the mid-1950s, the building had fallen into such disrepair that it was in urgent need of renovation or replacement. “Approximately three hundred thousand of the one and a half million books owned by the University Library had to be transferred from the dilapidated Handboogdoelen to the former Ceres flour and bread factory on Nieuwe Prinsengracht. The rest are now stored in the Militiegebouw, where there is a high risk of fire, poor ventilation and excessive noise,” wrote the Dutch daily Het Parool in July 1957 with concern.
Coffee machine architecture
The Handboogdoelen was restored, but students did not return: it mainly housed offices and the aforementioned Doelenzaal. A little further on, on the site that had been vacant for thirty years, where St. Catherine’s Church had stood until the war, the current University Library was built at Singel 425, designed by architect Jan Leupen. An ugly hole in the Singel had been filled, but many people also thought what had replaced it was terrible. The building was described as a textbook example of “coffee machine architecture”. Nevertheless, there were and still are coffee ladies and coffee men who have assisted thousands of students over the past fifty years in studying for exams and writing papers and theses in one of the study rooms.
Ambulance entrance
And now a new University Library is being built. Where ambulances delivered their patients to the Binnengasthuis site until the early 1980s, the new main entrance to the University Library on Vendelstraat is now being built, designed by MVSA Architects. The architectural firm refers to it as “a monumental ambulance entrance”. Well done! It all sounds very promising, because there will also be a new façade opening “creating a direct relationship between the public area and the atrium, the heart of the new University Library”. All this can be admired in two or three years' time, depending on how quickly the construction progresses.
And what about the poor Handboogdoelen and Jan Leupen’s “old” University Library? They are expected to be sold, as is the old Militiegebouw (Militia Building) located between them. And so, in the future, the Singel will be UvA-free, because the Aula in the (rented) Oude Lutherse Kerk (Old Lutheran Church) will probably also move.
Next week, part 2: the doorman
