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The Former Amsterdam Main Post Office, currently a shopping mall known as Magna Plaza, is a monumental building located at
Description at monumentenregister.cultureelerfgoed.nl, official website for Dutch cultural heritage
File:Koninklijk Postkantoor Amsterdam 1854.jpg, Drawing from 1854 of the older Royal Postoffice at Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 192, which was taken down in 1897
File:C.H. Peters Post Office Amsterdam 1.jpg, 19th century drawing of the Main Postoffie as seen from the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal
File:C.H. Peters Post Office Amsterdam 2.jpg, 19th century drawing of the side of the Main Postoffice as seen from the Raadhuisstraat
File:Amsterdam Postkantoor.jpg, Amsterdam Main Postoffice in 1900.
The Former Amsterdam Main Post Office, currently a shopping mall known as Magna Plaza, is a monumental building located at Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal
The Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal () is a street in the centre of Amsterdam. The street runs north-south without intersecting major streets other than the intersection with Raadhuisstraat at its halfway point, right behind the Royal Palace. On the eas ...
182, Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
, Netherlands
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, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
. It was built in 1895–1899 in Neo-Gothic
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
and Neo-Renaissance
Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range ...
style. The building has been a rijksmonument since July 9, 1974, and is part of the Top 100 Dutch heritage sites
The Top 100 Dutch heritage sites is a list of rijksmonuments in the Netherlands, established in 1990 by the Department for Conservation ( Monumentenzorg, today the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed). The Top 100 was a selection of historical m ...
.Description at monumentenregister.cultureelerfgoed.nl, official website for Dutch cultural heritage
History
The Amsterdam Post Office was built in the period 1895–1899, designed by Cornelis Peters. It replaced the Royal Post Office of 1854, which was designed by Frederik Willem Conrad and Cornelis Outshoorn, which served as a gallery shortly before being taken down in 1897.Exterior
The exterior is heavily decorated with polychromatic brick with details in dressed stone, including framing for all windows and doors. Across the roof edges are a large number of dormers, each with their owncrow-stepped gable
A stepped gable, crow-stepped gable, or corbie step is a stairstep type of design at the top of the triangular gable-end of a building. The top of the parapet wall projects above the roofline and the top of the brick or stone wall is stacked in ...
. Due to the pear shaped crowns on top of the towers the building is colloquially named ‘Perenburg’ (English: ''pearburg'').
Interior
The building's interior consists of a central hall with galleries on two upper floors, surrounded by arcades and crowned by a sunroof. The public function of the building was limited to the ground floor, while the rest of the building was only accessible to personnel of the PTT. In 1987, the PTT announced that it intended to vacate the building and it was sold the next year for ƒ 7,5 million (about €3,2 million) to Larmag, aSwedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
real estate developer
Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re- lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of developed land or parcels to othe ...
, who intended to repurpose the building as a luxurious shopping mall. Maintaining and optimally using the monumental building was a main criterion. The construction started in February 1991. The exterior work was mostly limited to cleaning, repair and restoration of the facades. The interior of the building was completely rebuilt, maintaining the carrying structures and decorative elements.
Renovation and shopping mall
Unexpected technical problems delayed the work; the building's foundation had to be replaced, and several of the beams were found to be hollow. The floors of the new mall were connected by escalators and elevators. The existing stairways were maintained; two as emergency stairways and one as a public stairway. Office spaces were created in the attic. The renovation was led by H. Ruijssenaars. The shopping mall Magna Plaza, named after Larmag's CEO Lars-Erik Magnusson, was finally opened to the public on August 17, 1992.Historical images
References
{{Shopping malls in the Benelux Rijksmonuments in Amsterdam Former post office buildings Shopping malls in the Netherlands