The dead-claims ledger
A history earns trust by correcting its errors in the open. This project keeps a running ledger of values it once held and later corrected. Each superseded value stays on file beside its replacement and the reason for the change, so that no later draft can restate it by accident. If one of them ever reappears in the finished text, it is a mistake to put right, not a matter of opinion.
Some of the corrections were plain misreadings. The building's 1899 permit approval was first recorded as 23 June, a date a machine read wrongly off the stamp. It was corrected to 23 May, which sits where it should, just before the first stone was laid. A son of the painter's family was first written down as Elis; read again against the birth act itself, he is Kees. The family's Rotterdam home street was first read from a hard hand as Eendrachtsstraat. A careful re-reading made it Eenhoornstraat, a reading the address books and the city's photographs of that street then bore out.
Some gave work to the wrong person. The architect of the 1899 drawings was at first taken for a different man entirely. He was named as Nicolaas Tinbergen only when four separate documents agreed: an address book, a jubilee notice, an 1892 birth act and his matched signature. The jubilee notice decided the matter. A 1922 shipping-line poster was for a time credited to a namesake. It is now established as the work of the painter Gerrit van Duffelen, one of two men of that name in the record. Two figures, finally, were invented rather than misread, and each was handled as its kind demanded. A table of ceiling heights that the sheets never carried was simply struck out. A precise ground-floor area of 210 square metres was replaced by an honest estimate of roughly 160 to 185, the 1899 permit noting no floor areas at all.
One correction ran the other way, and that is reason enough to keep it. The building's earliest years were thought to be a photographic blank, and 1937 was the earliest image then on file. A single page of a 1907 trade paper overturned that: it prints a half-tone of the works' own facade under the caption Voorgevel fabriek en magazijn. Where the project once recorded an absence, it now holds an image.
In translation, the page plainly belongs to the corner's works, and it dates its own picture:
Header: INDUSTRIAL WEEKLY. 255 Title: ON FURNITURE MANUFACTURE. — The firm VAN DUFFELEN & PELT of ROTTERDAM. Article body: For years the furniture trade — or rather the joiner's trade — was a handicraft in which no tools were used other than the simple hand-operated saw, plane, drill, etc. But in this field too, the old-fashioned workshops, where one or two journeymen were employed, have for the most part been replaced by factories fitted out as required, and the application of steam as motive power, together with the use of more perfected machinery, has brought about a great evolution. World cities such as Berlin, Paris and Vienna have led the way in this, and it is above all the capital of the German Empire that has furnished eloquent proof of this relatively rapid transition; in 1861 only 1/20th of the furniture-makers established there worked in factories, whereas thirty years later — in 1891 — only 1/6th of the 17,000 tradesmen were still to be found in smaller workshops. That evolution has done the furniture industry good service; indeed, an inquiry that was instituted showed that in this trade too, [Photo caption:] FRONT ELEVATION OF FACTORY AND WAREHOUSE. contrary to popular belief, poor, flimsy, tasteless work does not originate from the factories but precisely from the smaller workshops that do not possess the modern tools: the circular, band and fret saws, the grooving, planing, boring and moulding machines. By applying these tools the factories can turn out better work than the best workman with inadequate aids. [Photo caption:] MACHINE WOODWORKING. And if the latter wishes to compete on price with the former, he finds himself forced to resort to inferior kinds of wood. The furniture industry on our own soil has reached a high degree of development, both through sound workmanship and through the artistic sense (kunstzin) that speaks from it. In the period of French rule, and for another half-century afterward, our countrymen valued only what came from the City of Light [Paris], but the last 25 years have changed this state of affairs, which may be attributed in part to our excellent trade and craft schools, which have also supplied the furniture trade with a body of capable young men who have succeeded in demonstrating an independent character, a distinctive modern direction. We were again convinced of this when we recently paid a visit to a well-appointed furniture factory in Rotterdam. Messrs G. J. van Duffelen and C. Pelt, who act as the managers of this factory, went into partnership in 1889 and began their business at Lange Warande nos. 75 and 77. Already four years later the premises proved no longer sufficient to carry out all the work ordered, and it became necessary to look for a more suitable location, which was found at Haagscheveer no. 34. There too they soon faced the same situation. The abundance of work allowed them to spread their wings more broadly, but the cramped space of the workshops made this quite impossible. Still, being cautious men who did not like to leave the stable too hastily, they remained where they were for some time yet. Eventually, however, the pressure of circumstances proved too strong, and plans had to be made for a factory equipped with power-driven machinery. Seven years ago now, the inner city was accordingly left behind in order to move into a substantial building at Rochussenstraat no. 169, where — as the first occupants of a new street development in the West — they could breathe freely and enjoy space and light without hindrance. It was in this building that we took a look around on one of the last days of last year. Immediately on entering the warehouse we noticed a certain simplicity, entirely in keeping with the character of the managers, which favourably distinguishes itself […] (sentence and article cut off at the foot of the page; continues on p. 256)