UvA buildings | The building under the clock
After the Amsterdam Academic Club left the building on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal last summer, it stood empty. At least, that is what the occupiers of the building thought last week. But it turned out to be in use by the Facility Services department. This week’s UvA buildings series is a two-part feature on the building that long housed the medical faculty's venereal disease clinic.
“The Amsterdam Academic Club is actually an imitation of an imitation. It was founded in the mid-1990s on the initiative of then-CvB president Jankarel Gevers, following the example of faculty clubs at American universities, which in turn were based on faculty clubs at British universities. There is something nineteenth-century and elitist about the term 'club': a person must be nominated by two or three members to become a member, and pass a selection committee. In the past, this often meant that a new member had to be a gentleman of standing.”
So said the president of the Amsterdam Academic Club (AAC) at the time, Meindert Fennema, in an interview with Folia in January 2008. He also said that back then, 15 years ago now, potential new members of the club no longer had to go through an approval committee, though “the club” was still a kind of private society for members. Specifically, it was meant for scientists and alumni of the UvA to talk about weighty science and gossip about petty UvA acrobatics over a snack and a drink.
Under the clock
The premises of the (now former) AAC are part of the nineteenth-century Binnengasthuis building complex, the site of the UB currently under construction. A new pharmacy with a waiting room appeared in a corner of the complex in 1875, right at the entrance to the hospital. The building was designed by Amsterdam architect Abraham Nicolaas Godefroy, who gave the building “a snappy roof window with a clock,” according to Hilde de Haan and Ids Haagsma in their book Al de gebouwen van de Universiteit van Amsterdam. It later housed the polyclinic for venereal diseases.
At a time when STIs were still talked about in a secretive way, it was of course out of the question for patients to report them publicly. This is how the typically Amsterdam expression “walking under the clock” came into vogue, for people who had to seek treatment for chlamydia, the clap, gonorrhoea or another STI. Until the GGD largely took over the treatment and prevention of venereal diseases and the Binnengasthuis moved to Amsterdam Zuidoost as Academic Medical Center in the early 1980s, it became quiet in the building “under the clock.”
Dancing to live music
But then Jankarel Gevers came to the UvA as college president in the 1990s and the building was given a new purpose: the AAC. After initially enjoying great success and membership - at the time of Fennema's presidency, there were around 1,300 members - the club gradually ended up in the Binnengasthuisterrein's forgotten corner, especially after venerable emeriti and successful alumni were seen less and less frequently. They were replaced by laborers for the construction of the UB and local residents who came there on Friday afternoons to dance to live music. But the club was never meant for them.
For lack of academic interest, the club was closed last summer. There were only 600 members left, too few for a balanced budget. The door was closing - until last Monday, when the entrance was broken through and the door reopened. The UvA called it “trespassing”, but the occupiers - students, climate activists and squatters – believed they were within their rights. The UvA and the municipality saw things differently: On the instructions of the municipality, the police intervened.
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