Maastunnel, S100, Tunnelzicht, l'Ambassadeur
The corner stayed where it was, but its setting changed fast. Within one generation the quiet crossing of the Rochussenstraat and the 's-Gravendijkwal became a piece of major road engineering, with a modern apartment block and a nightclub beside it. Unlike the city centre to the east, it lay west of the fire line.
West of the fire line
On the 1940 Bommenkaart the burned zone lies east of the 's-Gravendijkwal, and no. 169 sits outside it.
The tunnel and its traverse
Road engineering reached the crossing with the Maastunnel. The Maastunnel was the work of the municipal engineer J. P. van Bruggen with the architect Ad van der Steur. It was built between 1937 and 1942 and opened on 14 February 1942: an immersed-tube road tunnel (afgezonken, sunk in prefabricated sections rather than bored). Its northern feeder, the sunken 's-Gravendijkwal tunneltraverse on route S100, was designed from about 1939. It runs past the corner and crosses the Rochussenstraat itself. The traverse belongs to the Maastunnel complex and is Rijksmonument no. 529886. No. 169 faces this protected road structure but has no monument status of its own . A colour photograph on Wikimedia Commons, whose title names it the building of the traverse at the Rochussenstraat/'s-Gravendijkwal in 1938–39, records works of the scheme:
It shows a building site of the period: timber hoardings, scaffold poles and site sheds, two men riding one bicycle across the cobbles, and behind them the district's houses and a domed church tower. Only the Commons file title gives the 1938–39 date and the reading as traverse construction. It should not be taken as proof of the deep sunken cut beside no. 169. The sources held do not settle when the deep section beside no. 169 was dug: the traverse works are dated to the late 1930s and early 1940s, yet a 1945 photograph whose filename places it at the 's-Gravendijkwal crossing still shows tram tracks at street level.
Tunnelzicht, 1939
In the same years real building went up at the crossing, not only roadworks. In 1939 the architect J. P. L. Hendriks completed Tunnelzicht, "tunnel view," a residential block at 's-Gravendijkwal 150–160, on the opposite side of the Rochussenstraat from no. 169. A photograph whose filename names the Tunnelzicht corner shows a curved brick apartment building in the Nieuwe Bouwen idiom. It has a rounded corner wing, ribbon windows and projecting balconies, with a signpost to Den Haag at its foot:
The picture may well be Tunnelzicht. But the identification rests on the filename and accession number alone, since no catalogue description is held, and the image itself confirms neither the building nor its corner. The sources do establish that a modern apartment house rose across the junction from the old furniture works just as the tunnel scheme was reshaping the road between them.
The nightclub, and the setting complete
Entertainment arrived too. Around 1941 a white-plastered nightclub and cabaret, l'Ambassadeur, was put up as a wartime noodvoorziening and ran until it was demolished in June 1967. It stood at Rochussenstraat 172, on the even-numbered side of the street, an address distinct from no. 169. An aerial photograph of 18 July 1957, catalogued as l'Ambassadeur op de hoek van de 's-Gravendijkwal en de Rochussenstraat, shows the club low and white at the crossing: