Let's fly away

The Amsterdam City Archives has a photo exhibition about 100 years of KLM the Dutch airline.

Look how simple flying was in the early days.

Famous passengers.as Josephine Baker in 1928.

And Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer in 1954.

Emigrants on their way to Australia in 1950. Between 1947 and 1961 126.000 Dutch people left for Australia to build a new life there. Driven by the poor economic prospects in their own country and the fear of a third World War. Most people went by ship but KLM organised special emigrant flights at reduced rates.

Amazing how comfortable to fly this way.

Rembrandt

A selfportrait of the world famous painter Rembrandt in the City archive in Amsterdam. He was an inhabitant of Amsterdam and the city archive has many documents about his life which are exhibited now. With the newest techniques as augmented reality (AR) the original documents are made accessible with image and sound and digital illustrated with artpieces from over the world.

Maybe I am to old for the modern way, it makes me very nervous to handle all those attributes with I-pads and headphones. in a public room. I liked to watch the precious original old handwritten documents from the 17th century in thick books and admired the people who worked with pen and ink all day long to give us after all those centuries an inside view of someones life as his mariages, his loss of his wife Saskia, his depts and alligations of dishonorable behaviour when painting a woman with bare shoulders!

History of Amsterdam

In 1613, four hundred years ago this year, Amsterdam city council decided to build the canal ring. This ambitious expansion was a direct consequence of the city's turbulent growth. From the late sixteenth century onwards, Amsterdam developed into an international commercial metroplolis that surpassed most other European cities in population. It attracted people from all over the world. Amsterdam was truly booming.

The Amsterdam City Archive has an interesting exhibition about this expension with original maps, architectural plans and cityscapes to tell the story of an unique period in the Golden Age, the era in which the city acquired the half-moon shape for which it has become famous.

The Blue Bridge.

Around 1585 Amsterdam had a population of 30.000. A hundred years later, that figure had increased by a factor of more than six, to over 200.000. In the Golden Age hundreds of thousands of people flocked to Amsterdam in search of work. 

A big fire spread to some fifty houses and tanneries after lighting struck on July 27th 1679.

Old handwritings from 1613.

Some pottery  from the 17th century found in the grounds of Amsterdam.

The practical housewife

In the Amsterdam City Archive I saw these magazines from 1931 called "The practical housewife". They were published by a big department store "Vroom & Dreesmann", which still exists. The housewife in those times had to run a "business" and she needed some advices apparently. In the left one she admires her linen closet which is a luxury as the text says.
The right one has the text "Spring is coming" and she has to decorate her home with new carpets.
It is nice to see how things have changed for women here in almost a century. Most of them have a job now and the household has become a lot easier with all the electrical devices, nothing to stay at home for all day.

Amsterdam City Archive

The Amsterdam City Archive is situated in a beautiful building "de Bazel"  which dates from 1926.

 

I love the way they made the floors with the coloured tiles.

Even the ceiling is decorated.

Originally the building was a bankbuilding which these heavy safe-doors in the cellar reminds of.

These Drawers Orphans' Chamber archives are amongst the oldest records in the Amsterdam City Archives. It is a huge collection which occupies 256 metres of shelf space and spans five centuries. The earliest item dates from 1309.