What the record is made of
A history can be no better than the material it is read from. On 10 September 2026 this dossier registered 709 sources and 2,817 evidence records. The two are counted differently. A source describes an original record or publication; a piece of evidence can be a preserved copy of it or an annotation made from it. Both numbers are a snapshot taken on that date.
Where the sources come from
The two largest repositories are the Koninklijke Bibliotheek's digitised newspaper archive and the Stadsarchief Rotterdam, through its reading room, its image bank and material mirrored elsewhere. Behind them runs a long tail of other archives, collections and websites. Among them are the record-label catalogue that documents what was released from the venue, the city's family-history centre, the national heritage agency's photographic collection, an online encyclopaedia's media library and the venue's own website. This corner of Rotterdam is documented mostly by a national newspaper archive and a municipal one, and only after that by everywhere else.
A single example shows the kind of material the whole record is read from. In 1907 a trade paper ran a feature on the corner's furniture works. In translation it reads:
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 But in this field too, the old-fashioned workshops, where one or two journeymen were employed, have for the most part been replaced by factories fitted out as required, and the application of steam as motive power, together with the use of more perfected machinery, has brought about a great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)
What kind of sources they are
Newspaper pages, notices and cuttings make up the largest group. Web pages, photographs, advertisements, and sources from civil registration and the population registers also come in substantial numbers. The rest include address books, maps, building permits, deeds, official gazettes, genealogical indexes, paintings, postcards and posters. These are the registry's labels for source types; they do not assign equal weight to every item.
The best copy, and its limits
The record keeps the best copy an archive will give, and notes where that is not much. A faint newspaper advertisement is cropped tight to the lines that matter before it is read, so the reading is made on the print itself and not on a snippet. The many small advertisement crops are what that habit leaves behind. Some catalogues serve only a small watermarked preview, though, rather than a full-resolution master. The national art-history institute's image service does this for the surviving paintings by the painter who was one of the two boys on the foundation stone. That preview is kept, with its low resolution marked as a limit, and is not passed off as a good scan.
What is held
The 2,817 evidence records do not stand for 2,817 different original documents. Alongside preserved scans, photographs, maps and captures of text and web pages, they include the transcriptions, translations and descriptions made from them. A companion annotation records a reading; it is not a second historical document. At this snapshot something like nine hundred of the registered items have such a reading beside them. That figure changes as records are added, and it depends on how revised readings are counted, so it is given only roughly. The 709 sources and 2,817 evidence records are exact counts. The three numbers measure different things and do not form one list: the items that carry a reading are in no sense a count of the sources.
The sources that back no single finding
At this snapshot, 315 sources are not cited by any fact, either in its direct source list or in an embedded support entry. That is not automatically a mistake, but the number does not explain itself either. Some of these sources support entity or register records, some document a bounded search that came up empty, and some are waiting to be linked more tightly; others may simply be leftover material. The count marks out a set to review. It does not show that every source in it is needed, or properly connected.
None of this settles a question about the corner itself. That is the work of the deep dives. It answers an earlier question that a reader is right to put to any history: how much was actually looked at, and where did it come from? The answer is a dated snapshot of the registry. Its largest repositories are Delpher and the Rotterdam city archive, and the readings made from documents are kept apart from the preserved documents themselves. How far each finding can then be traced through those sources back to a preserved document is measured separately, in .