The Beurs van Berlage is a building on the

Damrak The Damrak is an avenue and partially filled in canal at the centre of Amsterdam, running between Amsterdam Centraal in the north and Dam Square in the south. It is the main street where people arriving at the station enter the centre of Amsterda ...

, in the centre of

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

. It was designed as a

commodity exchange The New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is a commodity futures exchange owned and operated by CME Group of Chicago. NYMEX is located at One North End Avenue in Brookfield Place in the Battery Park City section of Manhattan, New York City. ...

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Hendrik Petrus Berlage Hendrik Petrus Berlage (21 February 1856 – 12 August 1934) was a Dutch architect. He is considered one of the fathers of the architecture of the Amsterdam School. Life and work Hendrik Petrus Berlage, son of Nicolaas Willem Berlage and An ...

and constructed between 1896 and 1903. It influenced many

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

architects, in particular functionalists and the

Amsterdam School The Amsterdam School (Dutch: ''Amsterdamse School'') is a style of architecture that arose from 1910 through about 1930 in the Netherlands. The Amsterdam School movement is part of international Expressionist architecture, sometimes linked ...

. It is now used as a venue for concerts, exhibitions and conferences. The building is constructed of red brick, with an iron and glass roof, and stone piers,

lintel A lintel or lintol is a type of beam (a horizontal structural element) that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented structural item. In the case of ...

s and

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the st ...

s. Its entrance is under a high

clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure which house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another build ...

, while inside lie three large multi-storey halls formerly used as trading floors, with offices and communal facilities grouped around them. The aim of the architect was to modify the styles of the past by emphasizing sweeping planes and

open plan Open plan is the generic term used in architectural and interior design for any floor plan that makes use of large, open spaces and minimizes the use of small, enclosed rooms such as private offices. The term can also refer to landscaping of h ...

interiors. It has stylistic similarities with some earlier buildings, for instance

St Pancras station St Pancras railway station (), also known as London St Pancras or St Pancras International and officially since 2007 as London St Pancras International, is a London station group, central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Bor ...

and the work of H. H. Richardson in America, or the Castell dels Tres Dragons,

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

, by

Lluís Domènech i Montaner Lluís Domènech i Montaner (; 21 December 1850 – 27 December 1923) was a Spanish architect who was highly influential on '' Modernisme català'', the Catalan Art Nouveau/Jugendstil movement. He was also a Catalan politician. Born in Barcelon ...

. True to its nineteenth-century roots, it maintains the use of ornament in a civic structure. On 2 February 2002 the civil ceremony of the wedding of King

Willem-Alexander Willem-Alexander (; Willem-Alexander Claus George Ferdinand; born ) is King of the Netherlands, having acceded to the throne following his mother's abdication in 2013. Willem-Alexander was born in Utrecht as the oldest child of Princess Beatr ...

and Máxima Zorreguieta took place in the Beurs van Berlage. The Beurs van Berlage has a café located on the Beursplein side and the tower is also open to the public.

External links

*
Beurs van Berlage Tower Panorama
– AmsterdamTips.com

VR panoramas by Tolomeus {{Authority control Bell towers in the Netherlands Rijksmonuments in Amsterdam Commercial buildings completed in 1903 Concert halls in Amsterdam Art Nouveau architecture in Amsterdam Art Nouveau commercial buildings Former stock exchanges in the Netherlands Towers in Amsterdam

Further reading

External links