Maker-claim, triad, engros, telephone

Taken firm by firm, the corner's advertising looks like the work of separate businesses. Taken whole, it shows something odder. For the better part of a century the same few moves turn up, firm after firm: a maker-claim in the firm's name, the same three goods (furniture, fabrics and carpets), a wholesale promise, and the premises telephone number¹. No single advertisement makes all of them in one fixed order². Yet they return so steadily that they read as a house style of the address rather than of any one firm³.

The Rotterdam address book preserves four dated display advertisements from three of the firms that held the corner⁴. They date from 1909, 1910, 1926 and 1939. No edition was printed for 1932, 1933, 1936, 1937 or 1938⁵.

The maker-claim

Van Duffelen & Pelt's advertisement of 1909 is the earliest. It gives the firm's name and calls it Meubelfabrikanten, furniture manufacturers, then groups two addresses by a brace: the factory at Rochussenstraat 169, telephone 47, and the magazijn (store) at Witte de Withstraat 57, telephone 3341⁶.

The claim appeared in the daily press too. In March 1909 an advertisement in De Maasbode set out both lines in full, Fabriek: Rochussenstraat No. 169 over Magazijn: Witte de Withstraat No. 57, and offered more than homes: the complete fitting-out of shops and offices as well⁷.

A year later the firm's entry says it again almost word for word: Meubelfabrikanten, the factory at Rochussenstraat 169, the magazijn on the Witte de Withstraat⁸. By then the claim had settled into a fixed form⁹.

Everything else in the advertisement leans on that maker's word, and it was earned. The firm did make furniture: a 1907 trade feature photographed its workshop, with some twenty men at the benches¹⁰. It also brought the claim with it from further back. In 1890, before it reached the Rochussenstraat, Van Duffelen & Pelt advertised as Meubelmakers en Stoffeerders, makers and upholsterers, from an earlier address at Lange Warande 77^11 12.

Over the years the word carrying the claim changed. Meubelmakers became Meubelfabrikanten, and in the firms that used the corner as a factory it turned into the flat plural FABRIEKEN. Whether any of these names was ever entered in the trademark register is a separate open question.

Beens made that last word its own. In the address book of 1926 the firm has three premises in one block: showrooms on the Coolsingel, an office on the Nieuwe Kerkstraat, and the line Fabrieken: Rochussenstraat 169. Underneath, a line of trades lists the work: furnishing and joinery, paper-hanging and upholstery.

A year earlier the word was already in the newspapers. A Beens advertisement of April 1925 pairs its showroom at Coolsingel 103 with Fabrieken: Rochussenstraat 169, and this is the very advertisement on which the house-style reading rests¹³.

Here the corner is openly the factory of a business whose public face was elsewhere. The showroom had the grand address; the work was done on the Rochussenstraat¹⁴.

The triad, word for word

The clearest sign of the shared formula is a pair of newspaper advertisements from two firms at the corner that print the same three goods in the same order. In July 1936 Furnishco cleared out of the corner¹⁵. It advertised a total sale of Meubelen — Stoffen — Tapijten below wholesale prices, open even to private buyers¹⁶.

J. A. van Duyn signed a classified notice at the address in March 1938, but it was a private notice and does not prove his firm was yet trading there¹⁷. The firm's earliest traced advertisement came later, on 10 October 1939, and it used the same words: Meubelen — Stoffen — Tapijten, engros, wholesale, on telephone 30047¹⁸.

The words belonged to the corner, not to the firm¹⁹. Van Duyn himself was no newcomer. He had lived at 169b since December 1931²⁰, and from 1933 his telephone there was on 30047, the premises line that Furnishco also used at 169a²¹. The telephone directory of January 1936 lists both²². An advertisement of his own firm appeared on 10 October 1939, nearly four years later²³. In the 1938 directory, a year before that advertisement, the line already carried the whole formula: Meub., tapijten en stoffen en-gros²⁴.

He may even have brought the formula with him in person, since the 1932 telephone directory probably lists him as a director of the Furnishco/Continental firm then at the corner, with his home given as number 171, next door²⁵. His display entry in the 1939 address book keeps the triad but changes the tone. It advertises toonkamers, showrooms of meubelen, tapijten en stoffen, at Rochussenstraat 169 on telephone 30047, with no wholesale word at all²⁶.

That is the one shift the sequence records: the earlier firms advertised a factory, the later ones a showroom²⁷. Even a firm passing through used the formula^28 29. In May 1940 the home-furnishing firm P. van Reeuwijk opened temporary showrooms at 169 and advertised on 30047, the number the corner's firms had printed since 1929^30 31.

The wholesale word did not vanish with the war either. When van Duyn's advertising resumed in January 1947, it still printed Tapijten en Stoffen engros^32 33.

The three goods outlasted the rest of the house style. A van Duyn advertisement of 1950 still named them, now with curtain-stuffs added:

A quarter-century later they were still there. A 1976 advertisement for an exclusieve beeldenkast, a display cabinet made entirely by hand, printed the triad at its fullest: Meubelen, tapijten, bedden, gordijn- en meubelstoffen³⁴.

The house grammar softened as van Duyn changed trading names, first Woninginrichting, then Meubelen en Tapijten³⁵. By the closing-down sale of October 1987 it had largely gone³⁶. That last advertisement kept none of the triad, only an opheffingsuitverkoop of classic furniture at up to half off³⁷.

The correction the advertisements need

The advertisements say the corner was first a factory and then a showroom. It is tempting to read that change of vocabulary as proof that making had stopped there, with showroom words where a works had been. The sources do not allow it, because making went on after the factory closed. Cabinet-makers were advertised for at this address in 1900 and again in 1974, with long gaps between, so across three-quarters of a century³⁸. In 1950 an independent cabinet-maker, Van Kleef, worked at 169c and advertised for an apprentice³⁹. Van Duyn's own trade also ran wider than furniture. When the founder died in 1978, his staff's death notice described the firm as a business of home furnishing and ship's outfitting, scheepsstoffering⁴⁰.

Van Duffelen & Pelt, Beens, Furnishco and van Duyn each have their own story elsewhere in the book, telling how they came to the corner and how they left it. This page looks at the smaller, stranger thing they share.