Haagscheveer, Coolvest, Witte de Withstraat

Before Van Duffelen & Pelt built the corner, and alongside it afterwards, the firm worked out of premises downtown. Its addresses follow one another in a documented sequence. It began as an informal partnership on the Lange Warande from about 1890, kept a workshop on the Haagscheveer from about 1894, opened a showroom in the Coolvest quarter in 1902, and was listed with a magazijn on the Witte de Withstraat by the 1906 directory^{1 2 3 4}. Pictures of these streets and quarters survive, but no known image shows the firm's own downtown shopfronts^5 6 7. One photograph taken inside the firm's showroom does exist, and it comes at the end⁸. Where no door can be seen, the firm's printed advertisements supply the address, and they appear here beside the streets.

The first door comes from the firm's earliest surviving advertisement⁹. It invites customers to view the work of Van Duffelen & Pelt, Meubelmakers en Stoffeerders, at Lange Warande 77: the informal partnership of about 1890, a decade before the corner¹⁰.

This is the Haagscheveer in 1895, the canal street where the firm kept its workshop at no. 34 from about 1894 to 1900¹¹. Steamer traffic lines the quay¹². At the left stands the ticket office of the steamboat service to Den Haag, its board lettered STOOMBOOTDIENST NAAR DEN HAAG¹³.

No photograph fixes the address; the firm's own notices do. Its advertisement of 2 January 1894 already prints the factory address Haagscheveer 34, the earliest attestation of it, and a notice of 5 May 1898 repeats it¹⁴. For six years the pictures can only show an empty street, and these two notices are what anchor the firm to it in print.

The same canal street about 1900, with women and a horse-cart by the water¹⁵.

The Haagscheveer about 1900, looking towards the police station on the quay, with a barge moored in front¹⁶. This is the workshop street at the end of the firm's six years there¹⁷. It is as close as the pictures come to the firm's Haagscheveer, though not to its building¹⁸.

The same quay in 1915, crowded with cargo barges¹⁹. By then the firm had been gone from the street since 1900.

The Haagscheveer drawbridge, some time between about 1910 and 1920, again after the firm's time there²⁰.

In time, the corner comes between the Haagscheveer workshop and the Coolvest showroom. It was first advertised in the summer of 1900 under Coolhavenkade, the provisional name the Rochussenstraat briefly carried^21 22. The earliest notice, of 11 June 1900, asked for skilled cabinet-makers and an upholsterer at the Meubelfabriek van VAN DUFFELEN & PELT, Coolhavenkade hoek 's Gravendijkwal²³. A fuller Coolhavenkade page followed from 23 July. The firm was using the street's working name at its new corner, although the official name, Rochussenstraat, had in fact been fixed that March²⁴.

The Coolvest before the canal was filled in, with the corn-mill De Hoop standing over the water and a furnishing-trade advertisement painted across its body²⁵. In this quarter, on 26 November 1902, the firm opened a downtown showroom at the corner of the Coolvest and the St. Laurensstraat²⁶.

The Coolvest again, with a horse-tram working the square²⁷.

A postcard dated to 1902, the year the showroom opened, taking in the Passage and, across the Coolvest, the mill²⁸.

The showroom also appears in the firm's own announcements. On 25 November 1902 the firm's notice in the Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad opened the Coolvest shop and recorded that, besides furniture, the firm laid parquet floors and fitted panelling for offices and rooms²⁹. A De Nederlander advertisement of 14 December 1903 kept the Laurenstraat/Coolvest shop before the public³⁰. In its 1907 interview the firm remembered this first downtown shop differently, as Coolvest 96 under a representative named Wenteler; the deep dive on the interview sets that recollection against the directory's dates.

The mill De Hoop once more, with a furnishing advertisement painted across its body³¹.

Two later views of the same mill over the Coolvest, before the canal was filled in³².

The Witte de Withstraat about 1901, on one of the period postcards that record these downtown streets³³. By the 1906 directory the firm was listed here with a magazijn at no. 57³⁴.

The same street about 1902, a horse-tram running between its terraces³⁵.

The firm's own advertisements print its two ends together. A De Maasbode notice of 13 January 1909 sets the magazijn at Witte de Withstraat 57, telephone 3341, above the fabriek at Rochussenstraat 169, telephone 47: the downtown shop and the corner works, each with its own number³⁶. The pairing goes back further. A De Nederlander advertisement of 6 April 1903 already prints both doors and both telephone numbers³⁷.

Advertisements with both addresses ran on through the decade; one, for Witte de Withstraat 57 and Rochussenstraat 169, appeared in the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant in August 1911^38 39. The firm's last advertisement from the corner came on 20 March 1916, and after it the firm advertised only from downtown^40 41.

One photograph gives a view inside. In January 1907 the Industrieel Weekblad printed a photograph of the firm's showroom at Witte de Withstraat 57, captioned as the magazijn on the Witte de Withstraat⁴². It is the only interior of a downtown showroom found so far⁴³. Furniture stands set out for sale in the firm's own rooms, and it is the nearest we can get to standing inside a Van Duffelen & Pelt shop⁴⁴.

Another picture shows the firm's name in the street rather than its premises. A Beeldbank photograph, catalogued as the Coolsingel with the corn-mill De Hoop at the left, shows a Van Duffelen & Pelt signboard⁴⁵. On the plate itself you can read the firm's name over "alle genres" and "kamer-kantoor-betimmeringen"; the fuller "meubileering ... kamer- en kantoorinrichtingen" comes from the archive's own transcription, not from the image⁴⁶. The archive dates the photograph only to 1920–1935. That span sits oddly with the mill, which stood over the Coolvest before the canal was filled in between 1913 and 1922, and the plate does not show which building the board hung on.

The firm's last address was downtown. By 30 September 1922 Van Duffelen & Pelt was one of three names sharing the Coolsingel 49 showrooms of N.V. Beens' Woninginrichting-Maatschappij, and the crop below is that showroom entry⁴⁷. By then the corner works had passed to Beens, while the name lived on downtown at the Coolsingel; that story belongs to the company that took the works over.

A last plate reaches past the premises to things the firm made. Two chairs kept in the family of the founder Cornelis Pelt are held by his descendants to have been made in the factory, meaning the works at Rochussenstraat 169 rather than the downtown rooms in this gallery. They came down through a cabinet-maker's household and are shown here with the family's permission.

Both are oak with woven rush seats, and they share one ornamental language: bands of sawn geometric fretwork, rows of small turned spindles, reeded posts and plain box stretchers. The first is a two-sided corner chair, a hoekstoel; the second is a tall-backed armchair whose arched crest rail is pierced with a heart.

No known exterior photograph of the firm's downtown shopfronts has turned up among the pictures^49 50 51. For those doors, the streets and advertisements above are the documented record^52 53 54. How the firm advertised what it made there is told in its own deep dive, and the firm that kept all these addresses at once in the deep dive on the company itself.